Thursday, 31 March 2011

An Introduction to the New Man and the Female Gaze

‘The New Man’, he is the tanned, toned and fully waxed male that struts his stuff in perfume advertisements, the man who bares all whilst selling fixated females Diet Coca Cola at the eleven thirty appointment and the oil drenched body that dominates the screen in the Dolce and Gabanna Light Blue advertisement. The New Man is caring, domesticated and slightly in touch with his feminine side, perfecting his looks with not a hair out of place.
Before the twentieth century, Laura Mulvey’s well established theory on ‘the male gaze’ dominated the world of advertising. Women were ‘objectified' and portrayed as an image or spectacle in order to grab the attention of the sex crazed male, such as the infamous Cadbury’s Flake advertisement which sees a woman sensually wrapping her red lips around the chocolate bar. Essentially, this would gain a mass of male consumers in order to sell the product as they would become fixated on the woman and her sexual posture.  However, Levi Strauss’ notorious Jeans advertisement turned this theory around and introduced the stripped ‘New Man’ to television screens across the country in 1985. Many argue that he is the ‘recipient of the gaze’ such as Rowena Chapman who discusses the theory of ‘The New Man’ in her book Male Order. It could be argued that this was the beginning of the evolving ‘female gaze’ as he began ‘strutting his stuff across posters, calendars and magazines’ (Chapman, 1988) allowing himself to be gazed at and admired by the female consumer, as though he were an object or product himself, just like the female body has been used in advertisements for over three decades.
In the 1970s the idea of ‘the new man’ coincided with a number of new developments in popular culture. Advertising companies were seeking for a new market (the female) and magazines were focusing on lifestyle rather than products. This landed the slick young man inside the covers of the glossy women’s magazines such as Company and Cosmopolitan. It could be argued that men were feminised due to the men’s liberation movement of the 70s in which it was made accepted for men to open up emotionally whilst still maintaining their masculine status, leading women to see them as the newly caring and loving ‘new man’ whom was finally on the same wavelength emotionally.
It could be argued that ‘The New Man’ has become a well established stereotype in itself. The majority of advertisements that aim to win over the female consumer portrays a tall dark and handsome figure who is muscular and tanned with a chiselled jaw, such as the male model Garrett Neff in the ‘Calvin Klein MAN’ fragrance advertisement from 2007. These stereotypical images of the perfect man have been cloned time again to the point where the new man is seen as a particular type, the type of man that all women want as the media has constantly reiterated that he is the dream man by portraying him as a compassionate fashion fanatic who takes care in his appearance, in order to sell a product. Phillip Patterson argues in his essay Stereotypical Images of Men in Advertising that commercials or print advertisements display ‘more of the ideal male body in the ad than the product being advertised’ (Lester, 1996) suggesting that the male body is seen as an image, object and even a product emphasising the theory of the ‘female gaze’ as the male is there to be admired and fantasised about.
The following media texts will analyse in depth how the male is portrayed in print and television advertisements in terms of the ‘female gaze’, and how the stereotype of ‘the new man’ is applied in each media text that's mission is to sell the man in order to sell the product.

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