Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this lively critical analysis, Diane Barthel reveals the previously overlooked and underestimated depth of cultural meaning behind contemporary American advertising. Focusing mainly on ads for beauty products directed at women, she demonstrates how stereotypical gender identities are emphasized and how advertising itself creates a gendered relationship with the consumer. She explores psychological, sociological, and cultural messages in advertising to show how "Putting on Appearances" is anything but a purely personal matter, and how the social realities in which we are forced to live are conditioned by the personal appearances we choose to create.

Most advertisements are not sexually obvious, but rely instead on sexual story-telling in which seduction, deception, and passion are portrayed as acceptable means for achieving selfhood. Advertisements that proclaim, Now is the time to paint your knees speak with one form of authority: those that present the voice of the all-knowing scientist or the nurturing mother rely on others. Celebrities figure as professional beauties and wise older sisters, sharing their secrets with the consumer. The Gentle Treatment Great Model Search Made Me a Star. Now itOCOs your turn.

Inseparable from the clothes we wear and the products we use are our ideas and fantasies about our bodies. Beauty products present beauty rituals as transcendent occasions, and diet products call up religious imagery of guilt and salvation. The body itself is to be anxiously manipulated and systematically worked over until the consumer turns her body into...an advertisement for herself, a complicated sign to be read and admired.
In the series "Women in the Political Economy," edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg."

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. ix)
• 1 Introduction (p. 1)
• 2 Madison Avenue: Method and Madness (p. 15)
• 3 the Voices of Authority (p. 39)
• 4 the Self Observed (p. 57)
• 5 Sex and Romance (p. 71)
• 6 Beauty Status / Social Status (p. 87)
• 7 the Geography of Beauty (p. 103)
• 8 Woman in a Man's World (p. 121)
• 9 the Accursed Portion (p. 139)
• 10 Beauty Rituals (p. 151)
• 11 a Gentleman and a Consumer (p. 169)
• 12 Conclusion (p. 185)
• Appendix (p. 193)
• Notes (p. 197)
• Index (p. 213)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Sociologist Barthel's work is a feminist analysis of recent advertisements appearing primarily in American magazines. About four fifths of the book describes ads aimed at women (beauty products, wristwatches, etc); the remaining fifth covers ads targeted at men (cars, shaving lotions, etc.). The work is relatively short (191 pages of text, plus an appendix, footnotes, and index) and treats some of the same general topics as Erving Goffman's Gender Advertisements (CH, Sep '79). Unlike the Goffman book, Barthel's work contains no pictures of the ads she describes, so the reader who has not seen them must try to visualize them based on the author's text, which, fortunately, is quite lucid. Her arguments are interesting and convincing. Undergraduate, community college, and general readers. -R. W. Smith, California State University, Northridge

Kirkus Book Review

A sociological analysis of advertising in the 70's and 80's, especially advertisements that link gender identity to products. Barthel, a sociologist (SUNY at Stony-brook), draws on sociology, feminist theory, semiology, anthropology, and psychology to examine how advertising reflects and shapes society. Barthel surveys the messages of advertising and demonstrates that essentially it promises to change and improve our lives and sexual images through the purchase of products. She shows how materialist and sexist values are rampant in advertising and points out numerous examples of sexist advertising--the ""Gentlemen prefer Hanes"" stockings ad, the Maidenform lingerie ad that shows a female doctor obliviously revealing her bright red underwear while going about her work. But the complaint is not against advertising per se. Advertising is a reflection of social values, according to Barthel, who does not blame the messenger for the message. What Barthel finds pernicious about advertising is that it cheapens communication and that there is no ""competing set of cultural messages and values."" She is disturbed by ""what advertising does not tell us to do"" because it is concerned only with increased sales. An intelligently written and well-researched work that ultimately offers little that is new or startling. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.