Gender Narration In Modern Advertising

This paper is a study of the Gender Narration in Chinese advertising since China's initiation of reform and opening-up. It not only reviews Gender Narration in advertising, but also has a perspective and thinking over current new trends of Gender Narration.Specifically, influenced by traditional notions, advertising images of men present the status of middle class as an annotation to the present definition of masculinity, mainly such dominant features as success, glory and power. Images of women are molded into "a virtuous wife and caring mother" and "a modern 'flower vase'" for visual enjoyment; the connotation of femininity is an representation of such traditional notions as softness, beauty, and housekeeping. With social development, advertising images of both genders are representing modern civilization's impacts on traditional notions in new ways of power evasion and awakening of independence respectively. On the one hand, advertising images of men are represented by domesticated "good men", free and enjoyable "little men" and fashionable images of beautiful men, and thus consciousness of male dominance has become hidden; on the other hand, advertising images of women go beyond the beauty appreciation outlook of purely being gazed, and the advertising that represents femininity from the perspective of being full of vigor such as health and self-confidence have come forth. The notion of gender equality has gradually gained popularity.On this basis, this paper makes an analysis of ideology and power relationships contained behind advertising images of genders, and concludes that gender temperament is being given a new connotation in the course of building harmonious genders, which is a result of social modernization, and also a representation of fullness and variation of connotation of gender temperament. This paper aims at providing a perspective of research for having a deep thinking over media-built gender culture by analyzing gender ideology in modern advertising.