Advertising Gender

In Tom Ford’s risqué new fragrance campaign a very nude woman is featured wearing nothing but the product. The bottle of cologne is placed between her legs. In the attempt to make sex and the naked body glamorous and chic, the ad uses photoshopped body parts, producing a shiny and plastic image of a woman’s body that looks like an unclothed Barbie doll. This is not anywhere near a natural body. The woman has no head. She is not a real person.

One example Suzanne Romaine offers of all the contradictions that are embedded in media is promoting the “natural look,” so we are trying to copy this ideal as if it is based on a real woman, which in fact is not a real woman. It is a cartoon image.

In Tom Ford’s most recent menswear ad, a young gentleman, who is dressed in a white suit and holds a bottle of beer and a cigar appears with a fully naked woman, and we see only her toned and tanned body with no face. This is an example of the way women and the promise of women is explicitly used to sell things to men – advertizing gender.

As Tom Ford claims, “we are selling to men – put the fragrance where they want to look,” admitting that objectifying women is very profitable in the fashion industry.

Tom Ford is an equal opportunity objectifier, however. In a parallel process his ads also depict boldly naked men. The campaign includes images of the ideal male body, putting more pressure on men to make a spectacle of themselves with the cut abs and the cartoonish biceps.

Romaine argues that ads call on us to do gender in a way that is truly in drag. We are not copying an original; we are copying what is in essence a hyper-feminine or masculine cartoon. And eventually everyone ends up feeling pressured. Advertisement plays a strong role in this.

In menswear ads masculinity is represented in a fierce formal look. Men appear in suits with immaculately groomed hair. But it is not only the heterosexual man portrayed here. Tom Ford’s PR campaign uses photo and video ads with same-gendered couples in the midst of passionate acts or posing as sophisticated looking professionals (which seems a lot to handle for some people without any warning).

Although homosexual, the male protagonist is of high class, white, similar to the notion of the universal male who is young, fearless and secure.

The femininity is depicted by reducing women to just their body parts. Romaine points out how body parts and gendered images of body parts are invoked even in ads that have nothing to do with sexuality. In this case the ad for cologne is used to evoke sensuality versus sex.

This relates to creating need around ideal beauty and the use of sexuality to sell things, by making the product look like it is associated with a desirable lifestyle.

This is how need is created around ideal beauty, as Romaine claims it. That if you consume the product, it will lead you to this beauty ideal, it will enhance your lifestyle, your relationships, and your status in the world. And we get sucked into particular brand from the basis of those image associations.

Tom Ford brand isn’t selling clothes. It’s selling a culture, an identity. The clothes make you. Buying something from Tom Ford is like joining an elite club.