After watching “The Codes of Gender: Identity & Performance in Popular culture,” I undeniably agree with the film’s assertion that media and advertising use certain gender “codes.” Until now, I failed to realize how body language in advertising could say so much about gender; especially the way females are depicted. Find any issue of Vogue, Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag, or Calvin Klein poster and you’ll see them: the knee pop, head tilted, laying down, touching themselves, biting their lower lip, legs twisted, twirling hair, crawling on all floors. This list is merely scratching the surface. In this documentary, Erving Goffman’s theories about femininity in media help us understand how and why these images all carry meaning far beyond the photographs and television screens. I learned that by
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They are non-assertive and checked out of the social scene with their eyes averted—what this documentary calls “dazed zombies.” While frolicking in a field wearing nothing but a loose men’s white button down shirt, these girls look lost, frequently nervous, fragile and emotionally weak. This feminine code shows that men are presented as active, in control, and aware of the world around them. I found this interesting, because I see ads of women in men’s clothes all the time and never thought anything of it. All of these codes are “seemingly normal in everyday life,” according to Goffman. We don’t notice them as being strange until a man does it. The film uses the critical example of a man with his hands over his face, distraught after a stock market fall. This is seen as unusual and odd, because the media normally plays men as “powerful,” hands in pockets to show comfort and arms crossed to show dominance. In many advertisements, the women mentally drift away, while the men anchor and protect her, arms tightly wrapped around her from
They are non-assertive and checked out of the social scene with their eyes averted—what this documentary calls “dazed zombies.” While frolicking in a field wearing nothing but a loose men’s white button down shirt, these girls look lost, frequently nervous, fragile and emotionally weak. This feminine code shows that men are presented as active, in control, and aware of the world around them. I found this interesting, because I see ads of women in men’s clothes all the time and never thought anything of it. All of these codes are “seemingly normal in everyday life,” according to Goffman. We don’t notice them as being strange until a man does it. The film uses the critical example of a man with his hands over his face, distraught after a stock market fall. This is seen as unusual and odd, because the media normally plays men as “powerful,” hands in pockets to show comfort and arms crossed to show dominance. In many advertisements, the women mentally drift away, while the men anchor and protect her, arms tightly wrapped around her from