Design Bridge: Week One

In the past week we have all individually been researching into gender stereotyping in the cosmetic industry to generate some initial ideas for our project.

Research: Products and Packaging

I went to have a look at what Boots had on their shelves, being the number one retailer for cosmetics in the UK they were bound to have a large variety. I set myself the task of finding very stereotypical mens/womens packaging, and packaging that was inviting for any gender to use.

Men's Products

 In the words of the brief, a lot of the products aimed at men 'looked like power tools'. The majority of their visual aesthetic is simple (not too much intricate detail) bold in design/typeface and using a selective colour palette, e.g. orange, blue, white, grey, green, silver. NOTHING PINK. From a pragmatic perspective of a customer, they might take the 'deodorant is deodorant' approach, meaning that they are not affected by the appearance of the product, but solely buy it for its purpose. But this is only a small majority, as the majority of women are driven by brand association, and will not be inclined to buy a product that does not represent their identity on paper.

Women's Products

There was a higher quantity of women's products on the shelves at Boots, simply because a large percentage of women pay more due care and attention to their physical appearance with products such as makeup etc. Most of the brands targeted at women included colour palettes that were bright and flamboyant, with a larger use of pattern and intricate packaging designs. The brand that stood out to me the most to be the epitome of femininity was Soap and Glory. With the pink/creme/lime green colour scheme and the sickeningly sweet fragrances, no product shouts WOMEN more than this. And to emphasise the point even more, their promotional strategy includes imagery of extremely glamorous women in a 'vintage' style, which is a current fashionable trend. Soap and Glory also pushes the boundaries by using euphemisms/playing on words to make their products come across as a little 'risky' and cheeky, which makes an automatic connection with all women.

Gender Neutral Products

This array of products didn't shout either MEN or WOMEN directly at me from a visual perspective. Without offensive/in-your-face stereotypical colours, these products immediately give the impression that their target market is not gender-specific. A good example of this is the Garnier brand designed to help improve the quality of skin. Common skin conditions such as oily skin, acne etc. affect people of all genders and races, and can occur at any age, especially in teenagers and people in their twenties. The customer would buy this product based on its purpose; to improve the condition of their skin, and would choose the product that will best serve that purpose. The importance of looking after skin is quite significant, and can have an impact on people's confidence and self esteem, therefore from a wider perspective is not considered as a luxurious product. 

Reading

I went to the library and took out these two books to help broaden my knowledge of gender and sexualisation.

Media, Gender and Identity- David Gauntlett

Why media influences are important:

• Media influences are important because on average, Americans and Europeans watch around 3-4 hours of television/spend on social media per day-which means lots of information is going into their heads
• Media shows us situations and relationships from other peoples points of view; 'how the world works in lives other than our own', which affects our own way of conducting ourselves 
• This can be in domestic/romantic drama, magazines aimed at women, movie heroes (male or female) and images of 'attractive people' 

Sexual identities today:

• Although the LGBTQ group continues to face prejudice and discrimination, Western societies, especially the younger generation are becoming more accepting of sexual diversity
• The legal status of gay and lesbian partnerships has become more accepted in some parts of the world, and was legalised in the UK in 2014
• Identities are complex constructions, and gender is only one part of an individual's sense of self. Ethnicity, class, age, cultural background etc are also important factors

Gender in contemporary advertising:

• In advertising today, the representation of women and men isn't usually obviously sexist
• If advertising is unapologetically sexist, it is presumably used because the message 'works' for the target audience, despite potentially surprising and offending others
• Advertisers have realised that it is not good business to offend their customers with sexist stereotypes

Selling beauty:

• There are more women in advertising than there are in TV programmes
• Make-up adverts remind us of concerns that are uniquely applicable to advertising-that is produced by capitalists who want to cultivate insecurities which they can sell 'solutions' to
• "Every woman knows that, regardless of her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful... The UK beauty industry takes £8.9 billion a year out of women's pockets. Magazines financed by the beauty industry teach little girls that they need make-up and train them to use it, so establishing their lifelong reliance on beauty products"
• The beauty ideal is often a substantial pressure on women, but it doesn't just affect women 

Summary:

• Representations of gender today are more complex, and less stereotyped than in the past
• Women and men are generally equals in the worlds of today's TV and movies, although male characters are still often to the fore
• Women are seen as self-reliant heroes quite often today, whilst the depiction of masculinity has become less straight forwarded more troubled
• Advertising in the broader world of stars and celebrities, promotes images of well-toed and conventionally attractive women and men which may bean that everyone is under pressure to look good, although women are additionally coerced about makeup and subjected to even greater paranoia about looking thin
• Meanwhile gay and lesbian characters have started to gain a certain amount of acceptance within the TV mainstream, but remain relatively uncommon in movies
• The modern media has a more complex view of gender and sexuality than ever before
• Images of women and men which it propagates today may be equally valued, but remain different and diverse

Sex and Gender- John Archer, Barbara Lloyd

Commonsense beliefs:

• Everyone has ideas about the nature of men and women and knows in a common-sense way what they are like
• Beliefs handed down through the generations provided a way of understanding first-hand experience so that the nature of men and women, and their place in wider society, became matters that were taken for granted
• Today, those of us who live in liberal Western nations have become used to traditional traditional beliefs about the notes of men and women being contested
• No longer is there an unquestioned consensus about what is the natural order regarding women and men

Stereotypes, attitudes and personal attributes:

• Stereotypes are the shared beliefs that people hold about a particular group of people e.g. ethnic group
• In everyday conversations, people make all sorts of generalisations about men and women, e.g. 'all men are the same', 'all women do is talk'
• Stereotypes minimise individual differences. In the examples given above, the characteristics are not exactly desirable, and can therefore form the basis of prejudice and discrimination against the group concerned
• "Gender roles and stereotypes held in a society at any one point in time are rooted, not primarily in the society's cultural tradition, but more importantly in society's contemporaneous division of labour between the sexes. Women are viewed as suited for the specific and social roles that women typically occupy, and the same applies to men" (Eagly, 1987:21-2)
• This view of gender stereotypic traits is known as the social role theory,because it links the traits to the societal roles of men and women. It predicts that if the roles change, then the stereotypes will also change
• There is no evidence that gender-stereotypical traits have changed during the time when women's occupational roles have changed
• Most of the existing research on gender stereotypes, and in individual differences, has focused on personality traits. However, both gender stereotypes and gender-related personal attributes involve other components such as behaviour, occupations and physical behaviour
• Deaux and Lewis (1984) suggested that people link the different components of gender stereotypes together in their minds. E.g. if someone likes cooking, we may think that they will also like sewing (both feminine activities)

Summary:

• Stereotypical traits associated with men and women follow from their traditional roles, and could be manipulated by qualifying the general category 'man' or 'woman' to indicate a different role
• One influential view of stereotypes is that they are derived from simplified versions of reality
• An alternative view would be that stereotypes provide rationalisms for the roles in which people are placed, irrespective of their real individual characteristics

Group Meeting

We have agreed to try and meet weekly as a group, and set tasks to complete in between. In todays first meeting, we brainstormed our ideas to try and establish what we want to produce and communicate.

We thought of many gender neutral names, but thought 'taboo' was the most suited as it represented the stigma attached to the LBGTQ community. We aim to eradicate this stigma in a trendy yet upmarket and sophisticated way.

We also tried to think of ways that we can make the packaging more exciting, for example adding an element of surprise of unexpectedness.

Between now and the next time we meet, we have agreed to come up with some rough designs and any general concepts and imagery for the product and explore potential options individually in more detail, so that we can share ideas together. 

We have also agreed to research in

Productivity Plan:

• Record any initial thoughts and ideas in sketchbook
• Research in depth one cosmetic brand e.g. the body shop
• Do lots of thinking and experimenting!