Gender Construction in Advertising and Media

Gender and Society

Advertisements are not the only medium that should be blamed for how the media effects people today. Books, movies, TV commercials, and television shows all show how much we as a people have changed our views of sexuality and beauty since the modest times of before. Sex has become more openly accepted as more half naked men and women appear on media devices all around us. People made a huge scene when Elvis was seen “shaking his hips” on public television and he had to be censored, and now, forty years later, 50 cent can be seen grinding provocatively with scantily dressed women in his music videos. The naked Gucci man discussed in Susan Bordo’s “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” is another example of how times have changed. The main focus of this paper is on how men and women are portrayed in the movies, more specifically, horror movies. From the time when Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds was released in 1963 to the 2002 release of Cabin Fever, the portrayal of men and women had changed dramatically. The way the women and men dressed and behaved in the movie had changed from modest and protective to more sexual and independent. Over a period of forty years, the way in which society viewed both sexes had significantly changed.
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds came out in 1963 (“The Birds”) and was one of the biggest thrillers of that time. The story follows a playgirl from California who goes to visit her potential boyfriend but all things go awry when the birds go crazy and start to attack everyone. Tippi Hedren portrays the wealthy playgirl and Rod Taylor is the man she is dating. Taylor’s character has a small sister with whom he is very close to. He is also quite close with his mother. They display a very loving family dynamic as they work together to save each other from the vicious birds (The Birds). On the contrary, Cabin Fever, released in 2002, is a completely different story. The story is centered around five sexually active teenagers who go to a cabin in the woods for vacation. A diseased man that they had encountered dies and falls into the water supply and as a result, infects one of the teenagers. They all struggle to survive and stay away from this flesh eating disease. The first girl to contract the disease is the love interest of one the male characters and after finding that she has been infected, they throw her into a small shed with a bed to keep her from infecting the others. Most of the kids end up getting the disease and in the end, one boy lives on to tell the story of their tragedy. (Cabin Fever(1))
One of the most noticeable differences between horror movies today and forty years ago is the way in which the actors dress, specifically women. In The Birds, the Tippi Hedren portrays a playgirl from California, but she dresses more like a business woman. She has on a nice, tailored suit and a neckline that shows nothing but neck. Her skirt is below her knees and even her arms are covered. On the picture to the right of it, there are the three “Girls Next Door” that are shown on E! TV and allow people a view into the world of a playmate. The amount of skin shown has drastically changed, and if you were not aware of whom the woman on the left was, I am sure your first guess would not be playgirl. Tippi Hedren is a beautiful woman, but she is completely covered and is not dressed sexually at all. Most of the male population today would rather see videos and TV shows that featuregirls with more skin and less clothes, compared to the modest dress of the 1960’s. In Justin L. Matthew’s Hidden Sexism: Facial Prominence and Its Connections to Gender and Occupational Status in Popular Print Media, he creates a mathematical procedure to determine the amount of skin shown and where in men and women. His methods are mainly for advertising, but if someone took a picture from a movie, the same concept could be applied. He did a lot of research on all types of magazines from different time periods to show the “hidden sexism” that is apparent in advertisements today. He uses face to body ratios to analyze the images and the different ratios between genders, what percent of their face is shown compared to their body. Some of his theories are that men are valued to their cerebral qualities and women for their physical and emotional qualities. From the pictures above, you can see that the ratios are completely different than they were when The Birds was filmed, the amount of skin shown has greatly increased. He also states that “the way in which men and women are depicted… has changed. However, this change was not facilitated by the removal of the bias detected… rather just a change in the way the ratios are manifested.” (523 Matthews) This picture is a shot from Cabin Fever, where the two characters are lying on a pier, barely dressed and sitting very closely to each other. The “raw” sexual attraction today is much more open than the clandestine flirtation of year ago. They are looking at each other as if they want to ravish each other, not as if they are in love. This next picture is from The Birds and the couple is in the same situation and the ones from above, yet they are staring lovingly into each others eyes and look as if they genuinely care about each other. Sex is not apparent in this scene, but in the scene above, sex is on both of their minds. The difference is clear, but the reason is not, why has society’s view on sex and love changed so much in only forty years? The innocent love of years ago has now morphed into the sexual lust of today, and it is apparent all over the movie screen.
In the 1960’s, there was always the idea that the man had to “bring home the bread”. A woman was there to cook, clean, and raise children while it was the man’s job to make the money and protect the family. Many men still feel the need to be the patriarch, the protector of the family while many feminists are trying to challenge these ideas. From the movie The Birds, this shot was taken of the actor shielding the actress from a swarm of rabid birds. It seems natural that the man is there to protect her, since this idea has become so common in the world today. Since then, women taking their own and standing up for themselves, without a man, has become pretty normal. A good example is from Cabin Fever, where one of the girls finds a gun and uses it to protect herself after her boyfriend gutlessly runs away. In this movie there is another example of how men are no longer the all mighty protectors. When the first girl gets sick with the flesh eating disease, her boyfriend freaks out and will not go near her, so puts a mattress and blankets in a small shed and locks her in there, to keep himself safe. No longer is the idea of the man never being afraid present, he now acts like the woman is supposed to, scared and afraid. The man in The Birds never failed to take care and protect his girlfriend, but the actor in Cabin Fever did anything but. This change in the male’s role is evidence to how times have changed and how males are viewed. Women and men are becoming more equal in the eyes of the people. Women today are becoming more independent and are not willing to accept a man being their sole provider and protector. In the 1960’s it was more appropriate for a woman to act like a helpless woman, it was socially acceptable, but in the 2000’s independent women are very common.
Sex appeal is something that everybody strives for and can not help looking at people who have a lot of it. Basically, sex sells and movie producers want to make the most money by hiring the best looking people they can. This is something that has not changed over the years. In Cabin Fever and in The Birds, all of the actors and actresses are beautiful. They possess such a beauty that it is almost impalpable for the average person to achieve such a thing. There is a lot of nudity and sexual acts in Cabin Fever and in order for people to want to watch it, the actors must be good looking. Society has become obsessed with the way that they look, and it is all based on the Hollywood idea, which affects people both by media and advertising. Eating disorders and plastic surgery have grown almost 400% since the 1960’s and media plays a big part in it. (Ghali) The actress Tippi in The Birds is gorgeous, but she isn’t ridiculously skinny, and has not had any plastic surgery, while the actresses in Cabin Fever are all extremely skinny and seem to possess an unnatural beauty. The beauty has not changed in forty years, what society views as beautiful has. Since the technological advances in plastic surgery and how easy it has now become to “alter” yourself, people are no longer willing to settle for what they were born with. With enough money, anyone can transform themselves from the average Joe to an American beauty. Therefore, with people being able to become more attractive through surgery the standards of beauty have risen as a result.
Bedroom scenes and sex talk are extremely common in Cabin Fever, conversations about masturbation and very explicit sex scenes are frequent throughout the movie. It is a horror movie, but none of this seems very horrific. You see the girls in the shower, and the girls naked, but you don’t see much of the guys. As in Bordo’s essay, it shows how male nudity is in a totally different category than female nudity. Her essay talks about nudity in advertising, but the same holds true for movies. Female nudity is more generally accepted by society than male nudity .In a study by Deborah Blum on men and women and how they view nudity, she concludes that, “ 54% of the men were erotically aroused versus 12% of women… The $500 million-plus [porn] industry in the U.S. which caters almost exclusively to men.” (Bordo 175) In this study it shows how males are more accepting towards nudity than women, and therefore more women are shown naked in these newer movies than men. Classic horror movies have more horror than sex, but the same is definitely not true for The Birds. Kissing is about as sexual as it gets in The Birds, there is nothing even close to nudity in this film, which shows how modest things were in the 1960’s. Horror movies today are turning more into pornography than actual horror, people that want nudity can go to the adult section of Blockbuster, while those of us who want horror should see the blood and guts, and only that. The nudity is also based solely on women, this is most likely because horror movies are targeted more for males. Because males are supposed to be the strong and unafraid sex, horror movies are aimed for them, hence the excess of female nudity. On the advertising aspect of these movies, things have also changed. The movie covers themselves have not changed all that much, as you can see in both of the pictures. Both covers portray a scene of horror and fright but in the movie trailers and advertising is where they differ. In the trailer for Cabin Fever and on the official website, they use words such as sexy to describe the film. On the trailer they show a lot more of the women than the men, helping to support the findings on Susan Bordo in her essay, Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body. The producers mixed horror with a little sex appeal to hope to entice more people to see the film. The Birds does not show any type of sexuality in the advertising, it is mainly just horror, which in retrospect, is how it should be. With today’s film industry, the better looking the people in the movie are, the more the movie will make. This is something that society hates to admit, but everyone knows that it is true. Blood, guts, and severed limbs are what every horror film fanatic looks forward to, but how has that changed over the years? In both films, there was blood, but in The Birds, there were no severed limbs or guts. The most gruesome picture that could be found from this movie was this one, of Tippit Hedren with a few scratches on her face. The woman has just been attacked by swarms of birds, and she is only slightly hurt and bleeding. Their were a few dead people seen lying in the streets during the movie, but the woman was the main character with the most damage done to her, her boyfriend was barely hurt at all. The same holds true for Cabin Fever, except for the fact that special effects and makeup have greatly improved since the 1960’s. In this movie, the first girl is left in a shed to rot to death and she is shown, very gruesomely and frequently during the movie, as seen in the picture. The other most frightening scene in the movie is when the other girl in the film is eaten to death by a fanatical dog. Her foot is shown detached from her body after you watch the dog rip her to pieces. These scenes are pretty horrific, but the horror has greatly increased since the 1960’s, showing that people’s views on what is frightening has also changed. The simple bird pecks are no longer scary, but people need to be ripped apart by animals in order to convey a sense of fear and gruesome horror.
Horror films have changed a lot since the 1960’s, but mostly in the way that men and women are viewed. The women in the newer movies seem to be able to take care of themselves more than in the older movies. Now the women are using guns and sticking up for themselves, rather running to the biggest guy in the room for protection. The sex appeal of women has also changed, it seems that the more skin they show, the sexier they are. The women are becoming more vuluptous and naked as the years go on, but what will actresses be wearing twenty years from now. body paint? The men in both movies seem to have become less the knight in shining armor type and more the save Locking your dying girlfriend into a shed to save yourself is definitely not knight in shining armor material. It is obvious to see how times have changed from the business suit of a playgirl in The Birds, to the bra and underwear attire of the women in Cabin Fever. But have we changed for the better or worse? This question is hard to answer because everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but the real question is; when watching horror films, what do you really want to see, nudity of horror?

Works Cited
Bordo, Susan. Ways of Reading. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1998.
"Cabin Fever." IMDb. 20 Nov 2007 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303816/>.
Cabin Fever. 2003. Lions Gate Films. 29 Nov 2007 <http://www.cabinfevermovie.com/index_flash.html>.
Ghali DDS, MD, G.E. . "Cosmetic Surgery Considerations in the Female Patient ." Science Direct. May 2007. Elsevier B.V. . 4 Dec 2007 <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B75JJ-4NT83VR-D&_user=669286&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000036298&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=669286&md5=485df38a61f9cd3ed6f343066e256b97>.
Matthew, Justin L.. "Hidden Sexism: Facial Prominence and Its Connections to Gender and Occupational Status in Popular Print Media." 17 August 2007 1-11. 15 November 2007 <http://www.springerlink.com/content/x8186w485j24pv41/fulltext.pdf>.
"The Birds." IMDb. 20 Nov 2007 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/>.

Cited: Bordo, Susan. Ways of Reading. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1998. "Cabin Fever." IMDb. 20 Nov 2007 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303816/>. Cabin Fever. 2003. Lions Gate Films. 29 Nov 2007 <http://www.cabinfevermovie.com/index_flash.html>. Ghali DDS, MD, G.E. . "Cosmetic Surgery Considerations in the Female Patient ." Science Direct. May 2007. Elsevier B.V. . 4 Dec 2007 <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B75JJ-4NT83VR-D&_user=669286&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000036298&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=669286&md5=485df38a61f9cd3ed6f343066e256b97>. Matthew, Justin L.. "Hidden Sexism: Facial Prominence and Its Connections to Gender and Occupational Status in Popular Print Media." 17 August 2007 1-11. 15 November 2007 <http://www.springerlink.com/content/x8186w485j24pv41/fulltext.pdf>. "The Birds." IMDb. 20 Nov 2007 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/>.