the self (sex roles and body image)

OBJECTIVE 3 Society’s expectations of masculinity and femininity help to determine the products we buy to meet these expectations.

OBJECTIVE 4 The way we think about our bodies (and the way our culture tells us we should think) is a key component of self-esteem.

Sex Roles

Sexual identity is a very important component of a consumer’s self-concept.

Sex Roles

Gender-role identity is a state of mind as well as body.

A consumer’s subjective feelings about his or her sexuality are crucial as well.

Gender versus Sexual Identity

A behavior that one culture considers to be masculine might get a different response in another.

masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviors and roles generally associated with boys and men.

femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women.

Unlike maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity are not biological characteristics.

Gender versus Sexual Identity

People often conform to their culture’s expectations about how those of their gender should act, dress, or speak; we refer to these sets of expectations as sex roles .

Sex Roles

Gender Differences in Socialization

It’s not clear to what extent gender differences are innate rather than culturally shaped, but they’re certainly evident in many consumption situations.

Many commercial sources, in addition to parents and friends, provide lessons in gender socialization for both girls and boys.


As one of the developers observed, “Boys enjoy stacking blocks and working towards a goal, such as finishing a building. Their play is more physically active, and they like to create conflict between characters.

Girls don’t like repetitive stacking. They prefer to create relationships between characters, building communities and decorative spaces.


One study even found that people perceived a male voice emanating from a computer to be more accurate and authoritative than a female voice reading the very same words. Participants also valued computer-generated words of praise to a greater extent when the voice was male!


Women the world over spend 20 percent more time on retail sites overall than men. women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to 4 hours for men.


Female Sex Roles

New managerial class of women has forced marketers to reexamine strategies.

Sporting goods, car accessories, and electronics products targeted to women.

Sex-Typed Products

Marketers often encourage the sex typing of products Dell recently launched Della

smart marketers know they can’t assume that all female consumers have been socialized the same way. a research company called Cohorts identifies nine segments of single women alone.

Female Sex Roles

Female Sex Roles

Male Sex Roles

Other ads for long-time household products spokes character Mr. Clean claim that only a strong man is powerful enough to tackle dirt.

Our culture’s stereotype of the ideal male is a tough, aggressive, muscular man who enjoys “manly” sports.

Three traditional models of masculinity:o Breadwinnero Rebelo Man-of-action hero

Male Sex Roles

One consequence of the continual evolution of sex roles is that men are concerned as never before with their appearance. -Men spend $7.7 billion on grooming products globally each year.

- L’Oréal Paris reports that men’s skincare products are now its fastest-growing sector.

Male Sex Roles

- In Europe, 24 percent of men younger than age 30 use skincare products. - In the United States, Norelco reported a 24 percent rise in sale of facial hair grooming products in 2008.

Male Sex Roles

Differences in sex-role orientation can influence how we respond to marketing stimuli, at least under some circumstances.

For example, females are more likely to undergo more elaborate processing of message content, so they tend to be more sensitive to specific pieces of information when they form a judgment, whereas males are more influenced by overall themes.

Male Sex Roles

Gender-Bending Products

Smart marketers try to think about new markets for their products.

Some companies that sell exclusively to one gender therefore may decide to test the waters with the other sex when they promote gender-bending products a traditionally sex-typed item adapted to the opposite gender.

Gender-Bending Products

Body Image

OBJECTIVE 5 Our desire to live up to cultural expectations of appearance can be harmful.

OBJECTIVE 6 Every culture dictates certain types of body decoration or mutilation.

Body Image

A person’s physical appearance is a large part of his self-concept.

A person’s feelings about his or her body can be described in terms of Body Cathexis.

Body image refers to a consumer’s subjective evaluation of his physical self. As with a person’s overall self concept, this image is not necessarily accurate.

A man may think of himself as being more muscular than he really is, or a woman may feel she appears fatter than is actually the case.

Body Image

Some marketers exploit consumers’ tendencies to distort their body images when they prey on our insecurities about appearance. They try to create a gap between the real and the ideal physical selves and consequently motivate a person to purchase products and services he thinks will narrow that gap.

Body Image

Ideals of Beauty

An ideal of beauty is a particular model, or exemplar, of appearance. “What is beautiful is good” stereotype.

Examples of ideals are physical features:

- Clothing styles, cosmetics, hairstyles, skin tones. - Attractive faces.- Good health and youth.- Balance/symmetry.- Feminine curves.- “Strong” male features.

A person’s satisfaction with the physical image he or she presents to others is affected by how closely that image corresponds to the image valued by his or her culture.

Advertising and other forms of mass media play a significant role in determining which forms of beauty we consider desirable at any point in time.

Ideals of Beauty

Consumers compare themselves to some standard (often one the fashion media advocate at that time), and they are dissatisfied with their appearance to the extent that they don’t match up to it.

This may lower their own self-esteem or, in some cases, possibly diminish the effectiveness of an ad because of negative feelings aroused by a highly attractive model.

Ideals of Beauty

Women’s exposure to thin-and-beautiful media images: body image effects of media-ideal internalization and impact-

reduction interventions

Yuko Yamamiyaa , Thomas F. Cashb, *, Susan E. Melnykb , Heidi D. Posavacc , Steven S. Posavac

Article

Exposure to media images of thin-and-beautiful women negatively affects the body image and mood states of young women.

the researchers hypothesized that: (1) without the psycho educational, media-literacy information described above, women’s state body image experiences would be negatively. affected by thin-and-beautiful media image exposure.(2) giving the psycho educational, media-literacy information would reduce these media-exposure effects.(3) having individuals construct arguments against thin-ideal based on the media-literacy information would also reduce the effects.

Article

Participants were 123 White female students at Old Dominion University. They were between 18 and 29 years old.

20 pictures of young White fashion models. the exposure time of each slide was 15 s.

Article

This questionnaire asked about the clarity, importance, usefulness, and agreeability of the information given in the tape.

The study’s results indicate that even a 5 min exposure to thin-and-beautiful media images results in a more negative body image state than does exposure to images of neutral objects, particularly among young women with high media-ideal internalization levels and social comparison tendencies.

Article

The adverse effect of the media exposure was significantly reduced among high-internalization women when they were given media-literacy information and either asked to recall and write down the information or induced to make written arguments against the media’s thin ideals based on the information.

Article

the number of stimuli exceeded 10, viewers were somewhat less influenced, probably due to habituation. media exposure in daily life is considerable and effects may be cumulative. One prospective study concluded that girls who are acutely affected most negatively do develop greater trait body dissatisfaction over a 2-year period.

Article

In many Asian cultures, people historically equate light skin with wealth and status, and they associate dark skin with the laboring class that toils in the fields.

The Western Ideal of Beauty

This stereotype persists today: In a survey, 74 percent of men in Malaysia, 68 percent in Hong Kong, and 55 percent in Taiwan said they are more attracted to women with fair complexions. About a third of the female respondents in each country said they use skin-whitening products.

The Western Ideal of Beauty

Ideals of Beauty over Time


Our culture communicates these standards—subtly and not so subtly—virtually everywhere we turn: on magazine covers, in department store windows, on TV shows. Feminists argue that fashion dolls, such as the ubiquitous Barbie, reinforce an unnatural ideal of thinness.

Modern

high heels

body waxingeyelifts

liposuction


Male Ideals of Beauty

one national survey that asked both men and women to comment on male aspects of appearance found that the dominant standard of beauty for men is a strongly masculine.

A study of men who appear in advertisements found that most sport the strong and muscular physique of the male stereotype

Fattism

A study found that teens who watched TV three or more nights per week were 50 percent more likely to feel too fat than were other girls. Participants cited actresses as inspiration to change their bodies.

Japan now requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of citizens between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. the government plans to impose financial penalties on organizations that fail to meet weight targets.

Mocking people who are overweight should be banned in the same way as racism and sexism.

Fattism

Cosmetic Surgery

Consumers increasingly choose to have cosmetic surgery to change a poor body image or simply to enhance appearance.

Young people often request these procedures as a high school graduation present to enhance their prospects in the competitive job market.

According to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, doctors in the U.S.A. perform nearly 860,000 cosmetic-surgery procedures each year.

Cosmetic Surgery

Body Image Distortions

Some people exaggerate the connection between self-esteem and appearance to such an extent that they sacrifice their health to attain what they consider to be a desirable body image.

In one survey, two-thirds of college women admitted that they resort to unhealthy behavior to control weight.

Advertising messages that convey an image of slimness help to reinforce these activities when they arouse insecurities about weight.


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the self (sex roles and body image)

Marketing