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Gender Advertisements
Gender Advertisements is concerned with the behavioural representation of our cultural assumptions about the nature of the sexes. The first part of the book deals with the properties of gender displays, with the nature of those interpersonal rituals through which we affirm in daily life our apparent beliefs regarding the character of males and females and the relationship that is approved within and across sex status.
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 31, 1979
About the author
Erving Goffman
44 books558 followersErving Goffman was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".
In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences.
Goffman was the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman's other major works include Asylums (1961), Stigma (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), Frame Analysis (1974), and Forms of Talk (1981). His major areas of study included the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, social organization (framing) of experience, and particular elements of social life such as total institutions and stigmas.
In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences.
Goffman was the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman's other major works include Asylums (1961), Stigma (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), Frame Analysis (1974), and Forms of Talk (1981). His major areas of study included the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, social organization (framing) of experience, and particular elements of social life such as total institutions and stigmas.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 19, 2013
This is a remarkably interesting book. But the argument needs a bit of space to develop.
One of the main ways we split up society is between men and women – we have a remarkably gendered society. And how you are likely to be treated in our society depends on which gender you are perceived to belong to. So much so that if you are intending to be taken seriously, it is probably in your interests to be born male.
Given the difference between how males and females are treated it is very important to be able to identify one from the other as quickly and easily as possible. So, even babies are dressed in coded ways to make their sex instantly recognisable. Our obsessive categorisation is so all encompassing from the earliest of ages that eventually we take it as ‘natural’ and a manifestation of male and female genetic dispositions.
However, I’m going to side-step the remarkably boring nature/nurture debate, as even if the differences between the sexes where 100% due to their natures, the need for such explicit displays would still need to be explained sociologically.
These displays are mandatory and consequential – I recently watched a film Marwencol showing the after effects on an artist after he mentioned in a bar that he liked to wear women’s clothing occasionally – he was nearly beaten to death. People have been socialised to take these external displays incredibly (disproportionately?) seriously.
Given that these displays exist and that they are different depending on the culture you belong to, it makes sense that they must be learned within your culture.
Photographs are an interesting place to start looking at these displays. You see, when we walk down a street we see people engaged in social practices. In a sense these too are social displays. Now, the problem is that many of these people are literally fleeting trespassers in our lives. We know nothing of their lives, and yet we are all too good at ‘filling in the details’ of their lives and deciding on a likely pathway their lives have taken to have reached this particular tableau. There are good reasons for us being able to do this, as being able to interpret the intentions of strangers has pretty clear benefits (my one concession to evolutionary psychology).
So, here we are – we have a propensity for interpreting glimpsed scenes and what appears to us as a completely natural need to display certain aspects of our identities to anyone that might be watching. This doesn’t just go for our gender, but also social class status, youth and so on, all of which place us within relationships with others we are likely to meet.
It is hardly surprising, then, that people who would like to sell you stuff would make use of these displays. That they would create little worlds that can be glimpsed in a moment and transfer meaning to the viewer that impact on the viewers behaviour in the real world.
The point being that these tableaus are more two-way mirrors. What we see says as much about the seer as it does about the seen. By doing an analysis of how gender is represented in advertisements, we get an idealised version of how gender is performed in our society.
And the analysis is anything but pretty. Goffman makes the point that we tend to infantilise (a word, I’ve discovered, I can’t for the life of me say unless I see it written before me) women. They are given the same license as children – to have their little displays of emotion, to be exuberant and even a little reckless – but this is only possible under the watchful and protective eye of the eternal adult male.
This line of argument leads to one of his most devastating claims:
“Cross-sex affectional gestures choreograph protector and protected, embracer and embraced, comforter and comforted, supporter and supported, extender of affection and recipient thereof; and it is defined as only natural that the male encompass and the female be encompassed. And this can only remind us that male domination is a very special kind, a domination that can b e carried into the gentlest, most loving moment without apparently causing strain—indeed, these moments can hardly be conceived of apart from these asymmetries. Whereas other disadvantaged groups can turn from the world to a domestic scene where self-determination and relief from inequality are possible, the disadvantage that persons who are female suffer precludes this; the places identified in our society as ones that can be arranged to suit oneself are nonetheless for women thoroughly organised along disadvantageous lines.” Page 9
He also says that English is unfortunate in having only one word for the idea of someone in a picture. No matte what the context, the photograph is said to have been taken of them. However, there is a useful distinction to be made between photographs that are taken of ‘real’ people and photographs that are taken of models. He makes the interesting observation that when we want a picture of a nurse, we very rarely photograph a real nurse doing real nurse duties – but rather a model doing idealised nurse duties.
He refers to this stuff as ‘hyper-ritualisation’ – and Plato would have approved, I’m quite certain.
He also distinguishes between portraits and scenes. In portraits we tend to believe that the model and the subject are the same person. They are being themselves, but a ‘as I would like to be remembered’ version of themselves. I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with the photographs people choose to use as their profile picture here on good reads – I have to recommend it. It is utterly fascinating.
Goffman ends this with an extensive display of advertisements that support his various ideas. These are broken down into the following categories:
Relative Size – women tend to presented as smaller than men unless they are beside their social inferiors.
The Feminine Touch – generally ineffectual, it is a caressing, rather than an agentic engagement with the world.
Function Ranking – men are the executive, women the assistant (pages 32-33)
(however, men are often depicted as hopeless and childlike in the ‘feminine realm’)
The Family – special relationship exist (or at least are displayed) between men and their sons, women and their daughters
The Ritualization of Subordination – making yourself smaller so as to show deference. Women are often shown lying on beds and floors – sexual availability is the other constant theme in how women are displayed.
Body cant as sign of deference. Smiles too – in both women are much more likely to engage.
Unseriousness (page 50-1) women and changing fashions mean that women tend to be less invested in their clothes as an ongoing statement and are therefore playful in apparently not taking their clothes seriously – but this also implies not taking themselves seriously.
The shoulder hold – the man over the shoulder of his partner – hand holds are also used as directives – men leading women
Licensed Withdrawl – of women mostly, allowed to show remorse or fear – removing themselves from the scene by covering their faces, mouths, bringing hands to faces. Or averting their gaze – overcome with the emotions of the moment. This is often shown from within the protective company of a strong man who will remain vigilant in case there is any impending danger.
But interestingly, women are allowed to touch men in ways men probably aren’t allowed to touch women – as there is less notion of women as sexually aggressive or assertive.
Some quotes:
The divisions and hierarchies of social structure are depicted microecologically, that is, through the use of small-scale spatial metaphors.
Page 1
Displays don’t communicate in the narrow sense of the term; they don’t enunciate something through a language of symbols openly established and used solely for that purpose. They provide evidence of the actor’s alignment in the situation. And displays are important insofar as alignments are.
Page 1
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex (whether in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display refers to conventionalised portrayals of these correlates.
Page 1
Displays very often have a dialogic character of a statement-reply kind, with an expression on the part of one individual calling forth an expression on the part of another
Page 1
Given people have work to do in social situations, the question arises as to how ritual can accommodate to what is thus otherwise occurring. Two basic patterns seem to appear. First, display seems to be concentrated at beginnings and endings of purposeful undertakings, that is, at junctures.
Page 1
…displays can be, and are likely to be, multivocal or polysemic, in the sense that more than one piece of social information may be encoded in them.
Page 2
Displays are part of what we think of as ‘expressive behaviour’ and as such tend to be conveyed and received as if they were somehow natural, deriving, like temperature and pulse, from the way people are and needful, therefore, of no social or historical analysis.
Page 4
There is an obvious generalization behind all these forms of license and privilege. A loving protector is standing by in the wings, allowing not so much for dependency as a copping out of, or relief from, the ‘realities,’ that is, the necessities and constraints to which adults in social situations are subject. In the deepest sense, then, middle-class children are not engaged in adjusting to and adapting to social situations, but in practicing, trying out, or playing at these efforts. Reality for them is deeply forgiving.
Page 5
You will note that there is an obvious price that the child must pay for being saved from seriousness.
Page 5
However, routinely the question is that of whose opinion is voiced most frequently and most forcibly, who makes the minor ongoing decisions apparently required to for the coordination of any joint activity, and whose passing concerns are given the most weight. And however trivial some of these little gains and losses may appear to be, by summing them all up across all the social situations in which they occur, one can see that their total effect is enormous.
Page 6
Here let me restate the notion that one of the most deeply seated traits of man, it is felt, is gender; femininity and masculinity are in a sense the prototypes of essential expression—something that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and yet something that strikes at the most basic characteristic of the individual
Page 7
…expression in the main in not instinctive but socially learned and socially patterned…
Page 7
There is no relationship between the sexes that can so far be characterised in any satisfactory fashion. There is only evidence of the practice between the sexes of choreographing behaviourally a portrait of relationship.
Page 8
Gender displays, like other rituals, can iconically reflect fundamental features of the social structure; but just as easily, these expressions can counterbalance substantive arrangements and compensate for them.
Page 8
…sex-biased linguistic practices, such as the use of ‘he’ as the unmarked relative pronoun for ‘individual’—amply illustrated in this paper—provide a bases for unthinkingly concerted usage upon which the efficiency of language depends
Page 8
The easy sense of the man in the street that the meaning of pictures is clear enough comes from an easy willingness to avoid thinking about the meanings of meaning.
Page 13
The term ‘realistic’, like the term ‘sincerity’ when applied to a stage actor, is self-contradictory, meaning something that is praiseworthy by virtue of being like something else, although not that something else.
Page 15
Asked whether we think the four persons who modelled for the picture are really a family or if there are hooks on the lines, the answer could well be, ‘Probably not, but what does it matter?’ The point about an ad is what its composer meant us to infer as to what is going on in the make-believe pictured scene, not what had actually been going on in the real doings that were pictured. The issue is subject, not model.
Page 15
…portraits, these being pictures—fabricated, keyed, or actually of—where action is absent or incidental, and it cannot quite be said that a scene is in progress. A subject is featured more than a steam of events.
Page 16
The capacity to put together a realistic looking scene to photograph is not far away from the capacity to put together a scene whose individual elements are imaginable as real but whose combination of elements the world itself could not produce or allow.
Page 18
A feature of social situations is that participants are obliged to sustain appearances of spontaneous involvement in appropriate matters at hand…Now it seems that of all obligatory appearances, that of correct involvement is the hardest to simulate, and this as if by design. Any attempt to produce an appropraiate show of involvement in something tends to produce instead an appearance of involvement in the task of affecting such involvement…May I add that our capacity to discern microscopic discrepancies in anticipated alignments of eyes, head, and trunk is simply enormous.
Page 18
It is clear that although an image of a person or even a group of persons (if in a staggered array) can be rather fully caught from the front by the camera’s straight-on eye, the activity in natural social situations can rarely be well pictured from such an angle.
Page 18
Thus in political publicity shots, one practice is to have the leader’s advisors and children turn their faces from the camera and self-effacingly look at the main figure, deictically pointing with their faces and sometimes their hands in the direction that attention is to follow…All of this is found only where there is a front-on audience or a camera, and is radically different from the inward turning exhibited in ordinary face-to-face interaction.
Page 18
Presumably, what the advertisement is concerned to depict is not particular individuals already known, but rather activity which would be recognizable where we to see it performed in real life by person not know to us personally.
Page 19
In effect, pictured scenes show examples of categories, unless we also know them personally or have good business reasons to be dealing with them, we are not in a position to witness what we witness about them in commercial scenes.
Page 19
And what we see is not a photographic record of an actual scene from the scientist’s life…but something that is only to be found as a posing for a picture…a conception of what constitutes an appropriate convention for ‘representing’ the particularly calling…What in fact probably happened is that the staff photographer has okayed the pose, and what probably will happen next is that the scientist will soon exchange guests—these events belonging to an order of activity radically different from the one intendedly portrayed in the picture.
Page 19
It is plain, then, that except in the case of caught scenes, the arrangements of models and scenic resources that the camera photographs will differ systematically from the way that unposing world is.
Of course, one is likely to be interested in photographable behavioural practices because they are routinely associated with particular social meanings, and it is admittedly the sign vehicle, not the signification, that is precisely illustratable.
Page 20
Commercial realisms…provides, then, something of the same sort of realm as the one a stranger to everyone around him really lives in. The realm is full of meaningful viewings of others, but each view is truncated and abstract in the ways mentioned.
Page 23
First, ads … are intentionally choreographed to be unambiguous about matters that uncontrived scenes might well be uninforming about to strangers…Second, scenes contrived for photographing…can be shot from any angle that the cameraman chooses, the subjects themselves splayed out to allow an unobstructed view…
Page 23
The magical ability of the advertiser to use a few models and props to evoke a life-like scene of his own choosing is not primarily due to the art and technology of commercial photography; it is due primarily to those institutionalized arrangements in social life which allow strangers to glimpse the lives of persons they pass, and to the readiness of all of us to switch at any moment from dealing with the real world to participating in make-believe ones.
Page 23
How can stills present the world when in the world persons are engaged in courses of action, in doings through time (not frozen posturings), where sound is almost as important as sight, and smell and touch figure as well? Moreover, in the world, we can know the individuals before us personally, something unlikely of pictures used in advertising.
Page 26
One of the main ways we split up society is between men and women – we have a remarkably gendered society. And how you are likely to be treated in our society depends on which gender you are perceived to belong to. So much so that if you are intending to be taken seriously, it is probably in your interests to be born male.
Given the difference between how males and females are treated it is very important to be able to identify one from the other as quickly and easily as possible. So, even babies are dressed in coded ways to make their sex instantly recognisable. Our obsessive categorisation is so all encompassing from the earliest of ages that eventually we take it as ‘natural’ and a manifestation of male and female genetic dispositions.
However, I’m going to side-step the remarkably boring nature/nurture debate, as even if the differences between the sexes where 100% due to their natures, the need for such explicit displays would still need to be explained sociologically.
These displays are mandatory and consequential – I recently watched a film Marwencol showing the after effects on an artist after he mentioned in a bar that he liked to wear women’s clothing occasionally – he was nearly beaten to death. People have been socialised to take these external displays incredibly (disproportionately?) seriously.
Given that these displays exist and that they are different depending on the culture you belong to, it makes sense that they must be learned within your culture.
Photographs are an interesting place to start looking at these displays. You see, when we walk down a street we see people engaged in social practices. In a sense these too are social displays. Now, the problem is that many of these people are literally fleeting trespassers in our lives. We know nothing of their lives, and yet we are all too good at ‘filling in the details’ of their lives and deciding on a likely pathway their lives have taken to have reached this particular tableau. There are good reasons for us being able to do this, as being able to interpret the intentions of strangers has pretty clear benefits (my one concession to evolutionary psychology).
So, here we are – we have a propensity for interpreting glimpsed scenes and what appears to us as a completely natural need to display certain aspects of our identities to anyone that might be watching. This doesn’t just go for our gender, but also social class status, youth and so on, all of which place us within relationships with others we are likely to meet.
It is hardly surprising, then, that people who would like to sell you stuff would make use of these displays. That they would create little worlds that can be glimpsed in a moment and transfer meaning to the viewer that impact on the viewers behaviour in the real world.
The point being that these tableaus are more two-way mirrors. What we see says as much about the seer as it does about the seen. By doing an analysis of how gender is represented in advertisements, we get an idealised version of how gender is performed in our society.
And the analysis is anything but pretty. Goffman makes the point that we tend to infantilise (a word, I’ve discovered, I can’t for the life of me say unless I see it written before me) women. They are given the same license as children – to have their little displays of emotion, to be exuberant and even a little reckless – but this is only possible under the watchful and protective eye of the eternal adult male.
This line of argument leads to one of his most devastating claims:
“Cross-sex affectional gestures choreograph protector and protected, embracer and embraced, comforter and comforted, supporter and supported, extender of affection and recipient thereof; and it is defined as only natural that the male encompass and the female be encompassed. And this can only remind us that male domination is a very special kind, a domination that can b e carried into the gentlest, most loving moment without apparently causing strain—indeed, these moments can hardly be conceived of apart from these asymmetries. Whereas other disadvantaged groups can turn from the world to a domestic scene where self-determination and relief from inequality are possible, the disadvantage that persons who are female suffer precludes this; the places identified in our society as ones that can be arranged to suit oneself are nonetheless for women thoroughly organised along disadvantageous lines.” Page 9
He also says that English is unfortunate in having only one word for the idea of someone in a picture. No matte what the context, the photograph is said to have been taken of them. However, there is a useful distinction to be made between photographs that are taken of ‘real’ people and photographs that are taken of models. He makes the interesting observation that when we want a picture of a nurse, we very rarely photograph a real nurse doing real nurse duties – but rather a model doing idealised nurse duties.
He refers to this stuff as ‘hyper-ritualisation’ – and Plato would have approved, I’m quite certain.
He also distinguishes between portraits and scenes. In portraits we tend to believe that the model and the subject are the same person. They are being themselves, but a ‘as I would like to be remembered’ version of themselves. I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with the photographs people choose to use as their profile picture here on good reads – I have to recommend it. It is utterly fascinating.
Goffman ends this with an extensive display of advertisements that support his various ideas. These are broken down into the following categories:
Relative Size – women tend to presented as smaller than men unless they are beside their social inferiors.
The Feminine Touch – generally ineffectual, it is a caressing, rather than an agentic engagement with the world.
Function Ranking – men are the executive, women the assistant (pages 32-33)
(however, men are often depicted as hopeless and childlike in the ‘feminine realm’)
The Family – special relationship exist (or at least are displayed) between men and their sons, women and their daughters
The Ritualization of Subordination – making yourself smaller so as to show deference. Women are often shown lying on beds and floors – sexual availability is the other constant theme in how women are displayed.
Body cant as sign of deference. Smiles too – in both women are much more likely to engage.
Unseriousness (page 50-1) women and changing fashions mean that women tend to be less invested in their clothes as an ongoing statement and are therefore playful in apparently not taking their clothes seriously – but this also implies not taking themselves seriously.
The shoulder hold – the man over the shoulder of his partner – hand holds are also used as directives – men leading women
Licensed Withdrawl – of women mostly, allowed to show remorse or fear – removing themselves from the scene by covering their faces, mouths, bringing hands to faces. Or averting their gaze – overcome with the emotions of the moment. This is often shown from within the protective company of a strong man who will remain vigilant in case there is any impending danger.
But interestingly, women are allowed to touch men in ways men probably aren’t allowed to touch women – as there is less notion of women as sexually aggressive or assertive.
Some quotes:
The divisions and hierarchies of social structure are depicted microecologically, that is, through the use of small-scale spatial metaphors.
Page 1
Displays don’t communicate in the narrow sense of the term; they don’t enunciate something through a language of symbols openly established and used solely for that purpose. They provide evidence of the actor’s alignment in the situation. And displays are important insofar as alignments are.
Page 1
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex (whether in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display refers to conventionalised portrayals of these correlates.
Page 1
Displays very often have a dialogic character of a statement-reply kind, with an expression on the part of one individual calling forth an expression on the part of another
Page 1
Given people have work to do in social situations, the question arises as to how ritual can accommodate to what is thus otherwise occurring. Two basic patterns seem to appear. First, display seems to be concentrated at beginnings and endings of purposeful undertakings, that is, at junctures.
Page 1
…displays can be, and are likely to be, multivocal or polysemic, in the sense that more than one piece of social information may be encoded in them.
Page 2
Displays are part of what we think of as ‘expressive behaviour’ and as such tend to be conveyed and received as if they were somehow natural, deriving, like temperature and pulse, from the way people are and needful, therefore, of no social or historical analysis.
Page 4
There is an obvious generalization behind all these forms of license and privilege. A loving protector is standing by in the wings, allowing not so much for dependency as a copping out of, or relief from, the ‘realities,’ that is, the necessities and constraints to which adults in social situations are subject. In the deepest sense, then, middle-class children are not engaged in adjusting to and adapting to social situations, but in practicing, trying out, or playing at these efforts. Reality for them is deeply forgiving.
Page 5
You will note that there is an obvious price that the child must pay for being saved from seriousness.
Page 5
However, routinely the question is that of whose opinion is voiced most frequently and most forcibly, who makes the minor ongoing decisions apparently required to for the coordination of any joint activity, and whose passing concerns are given the most weight. And however trivial some of these little gains and losses may appear to be, by summing them all up across all the social situations in which they occur, one can see that their total effect is enormous.
Page 6
Here let me restate the notion that one of the most deeply seated traits of man, it is felt, is gender; femininity and masculinity are in a sense the prototypes of essential expression—something that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and yet something that strikes at the most basic characteristic of the individual
Page 7
…expression in the main in not instinctive but socially learned and socially patterned…
Page 7
There is no relationship between the sexes that can so far be characterised in any satisfactory fashion. There is only evidence of the practice between the sexes of choreographing behaviourally a portrait of relationship.
Page 8
Gender displays, like other rituals, can iconically reflect fundamental features of the social structure; but just as easily, these expressions can counterbalance substantive arrangements and compensate for them.
Page 8
…sex-biased linguistic practices, such as the use of ‘he’ as the unmarked relative pronoun for ‘individual’—amply illustrated in this paper—provide a bases for unthinkingly concerted usage upon which the efficiency of language depends
Page 8
The easy sense of the man in the street that the meaning of pictures is clear enough comes from an easy willingness to avoid thinking about the meanings of meaning.
Page 13
The term ‘realistic’, like the term ‘sincerity’ when applied to a stage actor, is self-contradictory, meaning something that is praiseworthy by virtue of being like something else, although not that something else.
Page 15
Asked whether we think the four persons who modelled for the picture are really a family or if there are hooks on the lines, the answer could well be, ‘Probably not, but what does it matter?’ The point about an ad is what its composer meant us to infer as to what is going on in the make-believe pictured scene, not what had actually been going on in the real doings that were pictured. The issue is subject, not model.
Page 15
…portraits, these being pictures—fabricated, keyed, or actually of—where action is absent or incidental, and it cannot quite be said that a scene is in progress. A subject is featured more than a steam of events.
Page 16
The capacity to put together a realistic looking scene to photograph is not far away from the capacity to put together a scene whose individual elements are imaginable as real but whose combination of elements the world itself could not produce or allow.
Page 18
A feature of social situations is that participants are obliged to sustain appearances of spontaneous involvement in appropriate matters at hand…Now it seems that of all obligatory appearances, that of correct involvement is the hardest to simulate, and this as if by design. Any attempt to produce an appropraiate show of involvement in something tends to produce instead an appearance of involvement in the task of affecting such involvement…May I add that our capacity to discern microscopic discrepancies in anticipated alignments of eyes, head, and trunk is simply enormous.
Page 18
It is clear that although an image of a person or even a group of persons (if in a staggered array) can be rather fully caught from the front by the camera’s straight-on eye, the activity in natural social situations can rarely be well pictured from such an angle.
Page 18
Thus in political publicity shots, one practice is to have the leader’s advisors and children turn their faces from the camera and self-effacingly look at the main figure, deictically pointing with their faces and sometimes their hands in the direction that attention is to follow…All of this is found only where there is a front-on audience or a camera, and is radically different from the inward turning exhibited in ordinary face-to-face interaction.
Page 18
Presumably, what the advertisement is concerned to depict is not particular individuals already known, but rather activity which would be recognizable where we to see it performed in real life by person not know to us personally.
Page 19
In effect, pictured scenes show examples of categories, unless we also know them personally or have good business reasons to be dealing with them, we are not in a position to witness what we witness about them in commercial scenes.
Page 19
And what we see is not a photographic record of an actual scene from the scientist’s life…but something that is only to be found as a posing for a picture…a conception of what constitutes an appropriate convention for ‘representing’ the particularly calling…What in fact probably happened is that the staff photographer has okayed the pose, and what probably will happen next is that the scientist will soon exchange guests—these events belonging to an order of activity radically different from the one intendedly portrayed in the picture.
Page 19
It is plain, then, that except in the case of caught scenes, the arrangements of models and scenic resources that the camera photographs will differ systematically from the way that unposing world is.
Of course, one is likely to be interested in photographable behavioural practices because they are routinely associated with particular social meanings, and it is admittedly the sign vehicle, not the signification, that is precisely illustratable.
Page 20
Commercial realisms…provides, then, something of the same sort of realm as the one a stranger to everyone around him really lives in. The realm is full of meaningful viewings of others, but each view is truncated and abstract in the ways mentioned.
Page 23
First, ads … are intentionally choreographed to be unambiguous about matters that uncontrived scenes might well be uninforming about to strangers…Second, scenes contrived for photographing…can be shot from any angle that the cameraman chooses, the subjects themselves splayed out to allow an unobstructed view…
Page 23
The magical ability of the advertiser to use a few models and props to evoke a life-like scene of his own choosing is not primarily due to the art and technology of commercial photography; it is due primarily to those institutionalized arrangements in social life which allow strangers to glimpse the lives of persons they pass, and to the readiness of all of us to switch at any moment from dealing with the real world to participating in make-believe ones.
Page 23
How can stills present the world when in the world persons are engaged in courses of action, in doings through time (not frozen posturings), where sound is almost as important as sight, and smell and touch figure as well? Moreover, in the world, we can know the individuals before us personally, something unlikely of pictures used in advertising.
Page 26
January 26, 2022
picture book that makes you hate men and advertising
April 1, 2025
Muitas imagens amei
March 1, 2021
In Gender Advertisements, Erving Goffman discusses several aspects of photographical advertisements. He mainly looks at the way women are pictured in these advertisements and he compares that with the way men are pictured. Goffman's approach is inductive. He's used many different advertisements and discusses its many different aspects, a.o. body gesture and facial expressions. Goffman uses many different examples to support the patterns he's describing (most of the pages are actually filled with pictures). He also gives some background information on photography and the goals of advertisers.
This book purely focusses on describing gender patterns in photographical advertisements, nothing more. It doesn't contain a lot of theoretical background, it doesn't really discuss the way advertisements influence society (maybe a little bit). From a purely scientific perspective it does miss some theoretical background and an in-depth methodological explanation.
I found it an interesting read and the pictures he uses as examples really visualize the patterns he's describing.
It's important to remind that this book was published in the 1970s and many things have changed since then.
This book purely focusses on describing gender patterns in photographical advertisements, nothing more. It doesn't contain a lot of theoretical background, it doesn't really discuss the way advertisements influence society (maybe a little bit). From a purely scientific perspective it does miss some theoretical background and an in-depth methodological explanation.
I found it an interesting read and the pictures he uses as examples really visualize the patterns he's describing.
It's important to remind that this book was published in the 1970s and many things have changed since then.
March 7, 2025
Fiquei sabendo deste livro de Erving Goffman através da fala de uma pesquisadora num canal de YouTube. Então fui atrás do PDF. Gosto bastante das ideias do Goffman, tendo usado alguns livros dele na minha dissertação de mestrado. Fiquei curioso em saber como o sociólogo das performances cotidianas e sociais encararia o gênero. Este livro, em sua maior parte traz exemplos de anúncios impressos, em sua maioria de revistas, com pequena análises acompanhando-os. Poucos dele se volta para a teoria. Quando Erving Goffman vai traçar a teoria sobre anúncios impressos relacionados com gênero, ele se foca quase que exclusivamente no assunto publicidade e fotografia, no lado social do gênero, do que naquilo que estamos acostumados a percebe dentro das teorias que tratam sobre o gênero. Portanto, se você está buscando um livro sobre publicidade, esse livro pode ser bem legal. Mas se, como eu, gostaria de saber mais sobre as diferenças de tratamento dos gêneros na produção de anúncios, vai sair bastante decepcionado.
June 30, 2013
Title: Gender Advertisements
Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Num. of Pages: 94 pages
Published: February 1988
As the title suggests, this book is about gender advertisement. Meaning that it covers the use of genders' potrayal in advertisements.
I "accidentally" read this book as I was helping my friend with his paper. I found it quite interesting. I never know that when women lay on the bed/couch/sofa in a photograph, it suggests a "sexual readiness".
There are many picture example that helped me to understand the points the author made. An interesting reading.
This book is for the following reading challenge:
- 2013 Nerdy Non-Fiction Reading Challenge
Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Num. of Pages: 94 pages
Published: February 1988
As the title suggests, this book is about gender advertisement. Meaning that it covers the use of genders' potrayal in advertisements.
I "accidentally" read this book as I was helping my friend with his paper. I found it quite interesting. I never know that when women lay on the bed/couch/sofa in a photograph, it suggests a "sexual readiness".
There are many picture example that helped me to understand the points the author made. An interesting reading.
This book is for the following reading challenge:
- 2013 Nerdy Non-Fiction Reading Challenge
May 10, 2017
If only Goffman had lived to see the Instagram era. The commentary here is still interesting, although I think a lot of assertions are made without much evidence or rationale to support them, even if I might happen to agree with them. The methodology is also not discussed in any depth, while questions like "what is a picture" are treated meanderingly. Still, this is interesting work and I'd like to find followups from this perspective on modern advertising.
May 12, 2018
Erving Goffman presents analysis of gender roles and general treatment in the print advertising of the 1970s. He studies everything from relative positioning of men and women to even the cant of a woman's body indicating subordination to men. One of the most surprising conclusions from his research is that even well into the second wave of feminism in the late 20th century, women are treated as inferior to men by advertisers. Way to win over half of your audience!
February 10, 2026
In essence, the author argues that advertisements, beyond simply "selling goods", also serves as an enforcement/education method of what "gender". The author argues that gender roles are often reinforced by advertisers using imagery techniques such as heights and postures to show what a "female" "ought" to behave during certain environments. And that gender role are often nothing more than the persona one plays in the world to signal one knowing one's place in the society.
June 1, 2017
Perhaps one of Goffman's most accessible books. Very short, not very much theory (which is why I read Goffman) and tons of pictures. Will be of interest to semiotics inclined persons, also feminist readers, media studies, and those interested in the "body."
January 21, 2021
This is a fascinating book. But the argument needs a bit of space to develop.
One of the main ways we split up society is between men and women – we have a remarkably gendered society. And how you are likely to be treated in our society depends on which gender you are perceived to belong to. So much so that if you intend to be taken seriously, it is probably in your interests to be born male.
Given the difference between how males and females are treated, it is essential to identify one from the other as quickly and easily as possible. So, even babies are dressed in coded ways to make their sex instantly recognisable. Our obsessive categorisation is so all-encompassing from the earliest of ages that eventually we take it as ‘natural’ and a manifestation of male and female genetic dispositions.
One of the main ways we split up society is between men and women – we have a remarkably gendered society. And how you are likely to be treated in our society depends on which gender you are perceived to belong to. So much so that if you intend to be taken seriously, it is probably in your interests to be born male.
Given the difference between how males and females are treated, it is essential to identify one from the other as quickly and easily as possible. So, even babies are dressed in coded ways to make their sex instantly recognisable. Our obsessive categorisation is so all-encompassing from the earliest of ages that eventually we take it as ‘natural’ and a manifestation of male and female genetic dispositions.
June 12, 2025
I guess it's a surprising journey: from Darwin and ethology to the denaturalization of gendered behavior styles to the analogy of ads and social ceremony; but at the end of it all it mostly felt like a thought experiment. I had to skip the Picture Frames essay bc it was the dullest one by far. I think you could find similar thematic analyses in any feminist history of art, so what's left is not much: Goffman's arcane interactionist terminology and his wonderfully precise eye!
August 2, 2021
A very interesting book and very relevant even in today’s time.
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March 4, 2024To be honest, I didn't read every single page. Only the ones which I thought were useful for my project, which is more than half of it.
November 8, 2025
purtroppo è tradotto piuttosto male, quindi non si riesce a capire bene in certi punti, ma di base l'argomento è molto interessante e stimolante
March 11, 2013
Although a brilliant array of examples, the theoretical context seems to merely skim the surface. It feels incomplete somehow and like a complementary 'visual' textbook illustrating ideas. The examples are also dated now and so the gendered identity of many of the advertisements are telling a patriarchal story that is a common hymn sheet.
July 10, 2013
Still great, a classic!
November 30, 2016
Looney tunes
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