How Does the Representation of Women in Billie's Advertisement
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How does the representation of women in Billie’s advertisement affect its message of empowerment? An analysis of the campaign video, “Project Body Hair” 11. December 2018 Roskilde Universitet Claudia Maria Bednorz - 64633 Rebecca Elise Glitfeldt - 35492 Dario Napoli - 64284 Christina Juhl Pausgaard - 64914 Elsa Lea Cecile Perrin - 62524 Group Project in Communication Studies, Autumn 2018 Page 1 of 71 Total Characters: 140355 Table of Contents I. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 4 A. Research question and approach ...................................................................................... 6 B. Relevance ......................................................................................................................... 7 C. Structure ........................................................................................................................... 8 II. Methodological Approaches ................................................................................................ 8 A. Feminist Research Ethic ................................................................................................... 9 1. Epistemology .................................................................................................................. 11 2. Boundaries and Limitations ........................................................................................... 12 3. Relationships .................................................................................................................. 14 4. Our Situatedness ............................................................................................................. 14 B. Visual Analysis .............................................................................................................. 15 C. Focus Groups.................................................................................................................. 16 1. Sampling process............................................................................................................ 16 2. Method ........................................................................................................................... 18 D. Research Limitations ...................................................................................................... 19 1. Limitations regarding the general research .................................................................... 19 2. Limitations regarding focus group discussions .............................................................. 20 III. Theoretical Approaches ..................................................................................................... 21 A. Situating the Research .................................................................................................... 21 B. Theories .......................................................................................................................... 22 1. Representation and Social Semiotics ............................................................................. 22 2. Discourse Analysis ......................................................................................................... 23 3. Gender as Performance .................................................................................................. 26 4. Compositional Interpretation ......................................................................................... 29 IV. Analysis.............................................................................................................................. 30 A. Billie Campaign Video ................................................................................................... 30 1. Advertisement Description ............................................................................................. 30 2. Compositional Analysis ................................................................................................. 31 3. Women in the Advertisement (Coding Process) ............................................................ 39 4. Analysis of the Representation of Women ..................................................................... 42 B. Focus Group Discussions ............................................................................................... 53 1. Summary of Findings ..................................................................................................... 53 2. Presentation of Findings ................................................................................................. 55 Page 2 of 71 V. Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 66 VI. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 68 VII. Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 69 Page 3 of 71 I. Introduction “Hair. Everyone has it. Even women” (Mybillie, n.d.). This statement is part of the 2018 campaign video for “Project Body Hair,” launched by an American company named Billie, who makes shaving products, such as lotions and razors. The campaign started as a response to the lack of female body hair shown in razor advertisements and on the internet in general (ibid.). Up until that time, women in these products’ advertisements were always “mimicking the removal of hair from already hairless bodies” (Lesnik, 2007: 1; see also Scuriatti, 2007: 146). Billie’s video breaks with this tradition by being the first razor advertisement to show actual hair being removed (or not removed) (Barr, 2018; Mybillie, n.d.). The innovative campaign’s message of female empowerment has been praised all across social media (Barr, 2018). Billie’s new approach to the topic of body hair attempts to normalise what arguably has always been normal, and fight a taboo directed at women’s bodies (ibid.). Indeed, hair covers almost the entire human body regardless of sex or gender, with the only exceptions being the lips, urogenital openings and areas on the hands and feet (Fernandez et al., 2013: 153). The sheer extent and amount of body hair might logically dictate its normativity and acceptability in society at large. However, these terms seem to apply more to removing body hair than to having it. Indeed, hair removal practices date back to prehistoric times, in which different populations are assumed or known to have used flint razors, sharpened animal teeth or seashells to remove unwanted hair (Fernandez et al., 2013: 156). Different techniques and products have appeared throughout the years, some of which were mainly utilized by women, such as homemade remedies, prefabricated, packaged powders and creams during the 18th and 19th centuries (Herzig, 2015: 35, 40). The motivations behind these various types of hair removal have changed with time, and often have very different meanings (Fernandez et al., 2013). However, the main influence behind these practices predominantly comes from the social and cultural norms of the day (ibid.: 153-154). The current norms surrounding Western women’s body hair can be related back to the beginning of the 1900’s, when “clothes became more revealing due to society encouraging the unveiling of the female body” (ibid.: 155; see also Herzig, 2015: 11; and Retallack, 1999: endnote 4). This Page 4 of 71 phenomenon is linked to a women’s magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, published in 1914, which is credited with “the first hair removal advertisement [...] encouraging women to shave” (Fernandez et al., 2013: 155). These types of advertisements only increased after Gillette introduced the first female razor in 1915 (ibid.). The form these advertisements took adapted with technological advances. For this reason, the first shaving advertisements were texts and images, before shifting to more audio and video forms as the availability of radio and television became more widespread (Retallack, 1999: 12). Nowadays, removing body hair is seen as normative, and a majority of women in Western cultures regularly practice it in some form or another (Fernandez et al. 2013: 153; Herzig, 2015: 9, 16; Toerien et al., 2005: 399, 403). This could be due to the fact that contemporary Western perceptions of and attitudes towards body hair are predominantly negative. Terms such as “unfeminine,” “in excess,” “superfluous,” “unwanted,” “repulsive” and “dirty” are often used to describe it (Herzig, 2015: 4, 14; Lesnik, 2007: 1), and the topic of female body hair is mainly discussed in terms of its removal (Scuriatti, 2007: 146). Furthermore, minimal body hair is associated with ideas of ‘ideal’ gender presentation: “Indeed, the depiction of the female body as depilated, with ‘smooth, unwrinkled… skin’, is part of the current, dominant, mass media image of ideal femininity” (Toerien et al., 2005: 399-400). “Feminist critics of normative femininity” have condemned gender ideals, as these require women to alter their bodies as well as spend time and money in order to obtain them (ibid.: 405). One of Herzig’s explanations of “the pursuit of hairless skin” is that it is a form of “gendered social control” (2015: 14). The socially constructed idea that female body hair is “dirty” and needs to be removed is therefore an “effort to constrain women’s lives [because of their] rising economic and