Empowering or Threatening?:A Representation of Women in Advertisements

Representation of the woman in advertisements is a signifying practice especially in the discourse like print media and billboard whereas advertisements are the main tools for the consumer world to launch or introduce a product to the consumer. It involves a certain system of representation to make the message persuasive and attractive. This paper identifies the regressive and progressive politics inherent in the representation of women. On the one hand, it shows how some print and billboard advertisements threaten the existence of woman as women are presented eroticized, domesticated, stereotyped, and thus vulnerable to male gaze as well as commodification. On the other hand, this representation may forward 'Female empowerment'. Celebration of femininity and re-conceptualizing femininity can be seen as a tacit resistance against patriarchal domination. However,this research aims at making them conscious about the fact of this kind of representation and focusing some advertisements which can be encouraging and at the same time empowering against their threatening politics of representation.