Starting
with the “This Girl Can” advert, we’ll go through 3 basic things. What we see,
who it’s for and why we see it. We open to a woman in a swimsuit walking from
some locker rooms towards a swimming pool. This opening shot establishes that
she just got changed to go swimming. This shot may not be for anybody in
particular but it lets us know immediately she’s about to do some physical
activity. We see this to establish the rest of the video which will include
females doing similar physical activity.
The next
shot I want to analyse is about 8 seconds in when a girl is putting a gum
shield in, presumably in a boxing ring but she also has pink, feminine nails on
and fake eye lashes and earrings. This is for girls who are worried that being
sporty and physical might make them come across as less sexy, which is mainly
14-30 year old woman. We see this because when we think of boxing, we don’t
usually associate it with make-up and cosmetics. The shot shows that just
because a woman does boxing, doesn’t mean she can’t still be girly or feminine
and doesn’t have to be manly. It’s encouraging to the target audience.
The final
shot I want to analyse is the shot that says “sweating like a pig” at about 34
seconds in. We see loads of women dancing and doing exercise but as it says,
they’re sweating profusely. However there’s a shot following this a couple of
seconds later saying “feeling like a fox”. This is for women 14-30 who are
again quite scared to seem like a “pig” because of how sweaty and unattractive
they’ll be while exercising. The following shot reassures them that they’ll
still be sexy and foxy despite sweating so much. We see this again, just to
encourage us to exercise and do sport.
Onto the “Victoria’s
Secret” advertisement. Rather than analysing a particular shot, I want to just
wrap it up in one, because many of the shots are just the same. They’re pretty
girls, all following the same body type, hair styles, features and expressions.
They’re all being very passive, posing for photos, not really doing much. This
is also for women 14-30 but not to encourage them to get active, just to buy
their products. We see all these shots to tell us, you aren’t beautiful unless
you look like these girls. They’re all beautiful and you don’t look like them
so you can’t be. But if you buy our products, you will look like them. That’s
pretty much the entire point of the advert so as you can see, despite being for
the same audience, there’s nearly no correlations between their messages, being
nearly completely opposite.
In
conclusion, the This Girl Can video shows all women as powerful, sexy and
independent, going out and being active. Meanwhile the Victoria’s Secret advert
shows all beautiful women as sexy, dependent and passive and implies any other
kind of women is not a woman at all and not beautiful.
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