Journal of Strategic and Social Researches

Abstract

Advertisements are in a mutual interaction with
cultural and social structures of societies in which they are produced. Social
values and assumptions are reflected in advertisements and they are reproduced
and reinforced through them. Therefore, besides actively affecting context of
advertisements, social gender codes are influenced by them. This mutual
interaction creates a significant discussion topic. In this context, based on
the continuous changes in social understandings of gender roles, advertisements
aim at creating a reflection of this process and results of it. The goal of
this study is to present society’s understanding of gender and the image of
woman in scope of the changes in recent years and to analyze its reflections on
advertisements for women. For this reason, commercial films of cosmetic brands
whose target audience is women are chosen with purposive sampling method and
they are analyzed through semiotic analysis method. At the end of the research,
it is seen that changes in the aspects and values attributed to woman in
society are reflected on advertising messages. It is determined through
different researches that, until recently the image of women were represented
generally through the roles of ‘traditional woman, mother, wife, sexual object’;
but it has turned into ‘powerful and independent woman’ image in parallel with
social changes.  It is observed that
messages about this image have been delivered with the emphasis on ‘change’ in
these advertisements. It can be said that the message of ‘women have the power
of breaking the rules’ is the basic highlight of analyzed commercial films.