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Findings

Of the 25 ads I analyzed, I found that…

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  • 20 percent of photos sexualized womxn

  • 75 percent depicted womxn in a stereotypical, ultra-feminine manner

  • 20 percent of photos depicted womxn in an empowering way

There will be a graph here. 

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Analysis

From the group of images I analyzed, findings suggest that Glossier still has work to do if they intend to representation womxn in an empowering, non-stereotypical manner. 

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It's possible, and even likely, that some images put out by the company are intended to be empowering, or at least not harmful. For example, the image on the right has a denotative meaning or literal (Chandler, 2014) as simple as woman with flowers. It fits the brand's aesthetic and thus serves as a good Instagram photo. But analyzing the image for it's connotation or implied meaning (Chandler, 2014), we find that the color palette is feminine or infantile. The women is obscured, tucked away. She seems to be hiding. She's certainly diminutive in the context of the photo. The florals suggest something delicate. Adding onto that analysis by employing feminist theory, we are able to understand the photo in the context of generations of advertisements in which women have been demeaned, diminutive and stereotyped. As Sumi Kim (2008) stated, women's position as oppressed in a patriarchal capitalistic society is reproduced and maintained by media reproductions of such tropes. In the case of this photo, those tropes might be that women are delicate, sneaky and/ or an afterthought. 

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In 1992, Soloman et. al. affirmed their "beauty match-up hypothesis" in which they proved that the beauty of a model is essentially the product. Nearly 30 years later, Glossier continues to prove their hypothesis true. In 2018, MarketingWeek interview Glossier's chief operating officer Henry Davis. In that interview, Davis admitted the brand created their extremely popular Milky Jelly cleanser based off of a poll given to their audience which asked, “What celebrity would play a [facial] cleanser in a film?” The answer: Emma Stone and Eddie Redmayne by a landslide. As the article states, “both actors have milky white skin.” Furthermore, a study done by Schwemmer and Ziewiecki (2005) found that social media marketing has a large economic and social influence, especially among teenagers. Gill (2008) brings a poststructuralist narrative to the conversation on contemporary advertising and suggests that while contemporary advertising allows consumers to have more of a voice, young girls sexualizing themselves for a brand image is in fact a form of regulation in and of itself. Glossier engages in the expolitation of female sexual agency by their frequent reposting of selfies in which womxn wearing their products often appear scantily clad or with an affixed, seductive stare. 

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