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Official and unofficial propaganda: old sexism (and, racism and classism) in new guises
JOANNE NEFF VAN AERTSELAER
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Abstract
This article traces the connection between propaganda, understood as promoted by the state or institutions, and commercial advertising. Both types of messages use similar techniques –establish authority, exploit existing beliefs, create fear, imply that everyone agrees, be selective about the truth, establish a leadership cult, etc. From a gender point of view, it can be shown that when the messages are directed towards women, they are principally concerned with instructing women as to their proper place in society, and/or they are meant to support men’s self-image, as masculine. The article also includes a brief comparison of propaganda used by the Francoist government and the UK and US government during WWI and WWII.
Keywords: Sexist political propaganda, sexist advertising, power, propaganda.
1 Introduction
This article analyzes various types of propaganda (promoted by the State or institutions), and its “cousin”, commercial advertising, both in official and unofficial campaigns, with the purpose of showing that both types of advertising are/have been targeted more at women than at men and that the messages used by both types of campaigns actually coincide in the techniques they use, which are essentially the same. But, more importantly, from a gender point of view, these two types of advertising converge in that they consider women in light of the two polar social functions, neither of them essential to society: 1) women must be “instructed” as to how they are to carry out their lives –good mothers, efficient wives, beautiful and stylish, etc.; and, 2) women are objects that men use in order to enhance their reputation with other men (Beneke 1997). If the woman is a girlfriend or wife, she may be expected to be very proper, but in any case, she must be beautiful and at least covertly sexy.
It may not be immediately apparent that the term “propaganda” is much related to “advertising”, but the understanding of this term is a matter of perspective. Throughout history, many types of propaganda have been directed at social groups, or entire nations. Propaganda has particularly been associated with governmental actions, especially in the wartime efforts of the diverse contenders. This type of propaganda is officially publicized by governmental departments or agencies. Another type of propaganda is unofficial and much more subtle. It is, therefore, sometimes difficult to detect as “propaganda” and is often limited to “women’s worlds”, i.e., women’s magazines and television programs, fashion media campaigns, etc., or “men’s worlds”, i.e., hunting, cars, sports and “lads” magazines (i.e., soft pornography, or, actually, perhaps not so “soft”).
The article considers both official and unofficial propaganda (the latter being commercial advertising) as part of the techniques of persuasion. The techniques analyzed focus mostly on the media messages directed towards women though not exclusively these messages. Although not exclusively directed to women (e.g. government messages to the general populace), many media messages use the same techniques: establish authority, exploit existing beliefs, create fear, imply that everyone agrees, be selective about the truth, establish a leadership cult, etc. At some points, in order to understand the symbolic nature of those messages targeted toward female audiences, the construction of men’s roles in official and unofficial campaigns must also be pointed out. Thus, messages using the same techniques but intended for the public in general are considered in comparison to those that have a specifically gender-targeted public.
The outline of the present article is as follows. In section 2, the article will present some motifs and methods used in official propaganda so that its relation to advertising (unofficial propaganda) can clearly be identified. In section 3, the study will focus on official propaganda (sponsored by the State, religious institutions or political parties) and section 4 will examine unofficial propaganda (considered as commercial advertising) – less clearly discernible but equality effective ideologically, and possibly much more harmful.
As will be seen, in the historically specific articulations of official and unofficial propaganda, whether targeted towards individuals or demographic groups (including appeals to nationalistic attitudes), there almost always appears an underpinning of sex/gender, race, and economic/educational power. In this way, the present article wishes to contribute to the broader debate on the use of propaganda/advertising in supporting or challenging stereotypical conceptions of women (and men), but also of such concepts as applied to nationalities.
2 Motifs and Methods used in propaganda and advertising
In the Propaganda. Power and Persuasion exhibition, held at the British Library (London), from May 17th to September 17th, 2013, the library offered a succinct summary of the various ways of classifying propaganda: by using such general topics as origins, nation, enemy, war, health and the present-day social media, or by attending to methods or techniques that have been used, mostly by governments, political parties or other institutions, in order to convince the public to follow certain persuasions of ‘official’ thought (Welch 2013).
The most common motifs displayed in these posters, films, pamphlets, etc., are, first and foremost, war (with the corresponding sub-messages on public effort to “support the cause”), messages concerning the Great Depression, leader cult, public health (e.g., anti-drinking or anti-smoking campaigns), good homemaking features (e.g., How to save money by mending clothes), and semi-public messages as chronographed through a series of twitter postings. While the motif, for instance, may be the war effort, the sexes are often treated very differently in the types of messages that are directed towards them, and the same motif may be treated differently according to the State that is responsible for the message. British posters most frequently show wartime women at home, caring for the children, mending, repairing and canning (“Grow your own vegetables”), or carrying out poorly paid jobs, such as chimney sweep, as pictured in Figure 1. In this case, according to the account given in the British National Archives, this women was taking over the job of her husband, who had gone off to fight in WWI.
As the British National Archives documents note, although the government and the press tended to exaggerate the degree to which women had taken over men’s jobs during WWI, in reality most male-dominated professions were still closed to women (doctors, dentists, architects), and in those areas in which women were more frequently employed, they were considered as substitutes and their wages were inferior to those of male workers.
Wartime men, both in the UK and the US, are most often shown in the workplace, mostly the factory, as in Figure 2 (“America Needs”, 1942), a poster from WWII. Notably they are all blue collar workers and are portrayed as heroic, muscular giants, as a way of suggesting that their superior skills and strength will be able to maximize industrial production in order to defeat the enemy.
Because of the lack of reference to them (they do not appear in posters), it is not clear how white-collar males were supposed to have contributed to the war effort, either in the UK or the US. As mentioned in the introduction to this article, in the analysis of this propaganda material, there always seem to have been various subclassifications according to race and social class (as well as to gender).
Regarding the techniques, among the very oldest modi operandi is the establishment of authority by using symbolism to resonate with deep psychological human needs, for instance, by placing the emperor’s or dictator’s image on coins or by erecting statues of the national figure to be revered. The establishment of a leadership cult will encourage the public to believe that their personal fate depends on the characteristics and actions of this public figure. This technique exploits existing convictions which build on attitudes and beliefs that the public already holds.
The connection of the latter technique of cult worship with the workings of present-day commercial advertising is evident in the modern-day extension of the commercial use of popular actors or sports figures in the promotion of brand-name goods. As will be seen below, even though very similar commercial goods are being suggested to the public, the manner of presenting these depends on whether the product is considered for “masculine” consumption, and therefore accompanied by a picture of a man, or “feminine” consumption and thus publicized by using a well-known female figure. What could previously be seen as “authority association” is today used in advertising through a marketing technique called “branding”. “Brand identity” is understood as an advertising strategy employed to suggest and promote life-style changes through the use of trademarks, logos and icons, etc., in order to create a dialogue with the consumer on an instinctive and rather unconscious level.
Another technique frequently used by dictators or political parties is the stimulation of feelings of fear, for example, through extremely repressive measures, or constant fear-mongering messages. This technique blends in with the previously-discussed “authority figure” methods, except that the fear is translated into anxiety, about how one is perceived and about one’s perception of individual identity.
It might be thought that anxiety-creating tactics are infrequent in the present world. However, their use both in unofficial commercial advertising and in official propaganda can still be witnessed today. Fear, or at least anxiety, plays a part in the selling of cosmetics, weight-reduction products, and fashion of all kinds, even for men – a less evident effect of gender construction created by branding.
Men are aware –now more than ever– that appearance can satisfy more than just vanity; it can convey an array of social messages, including status, class, profession, and sexual confidence. In much the same way that clothes and makeup allow a woman to transform herself, men have come to discover the silent language of appearance and the power it can wield in the workplace, with women, and even with each other. While still wary of appearing dandyish or effeminate, the evolving man realizes the “style” that can propel him into higher spheres, both professionally and personally (Pellegrin 2009: 1-2).
Many men may feel that they must adopt a particular form of masculinity in order to be “in control of” their identity as masculine beings or, as Beneke (1997: 39) has termed it, to prove their manhood.
On a governmental level, scare campaigns, such as the G.W. Bush administration’s use of fear, have convinced at least part of the American public of the need for homeland security measures, with the corresponding indiscriminant searching of private messages. These violations have been tolerated since 9/11, as Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German lawmaker and rapporteur on data protection in the European Parliament has recently stated: “It became normal not only to accept but to defend this kind of surveillance as a normal reaction to terrorism” (World.Time 2013).
Other more recent examples can be observed in the use of antiimmigration campaigns (some clearly racist, as in the expulsion of the Romanian Roma from France) by some political parties and diverse media in various European countries. Even before the summer of 2013, the English print media published provocative articles, such as “The true scale of European immigration”, in which it was claimed that there are 600,000 migrants in the UK without jobs and that the National Health Service has been left with an annual bill of £1.5 billion (Mendick and Duffin 2013). But when one reads the literature more carefully, one can see that there are clear differences between the acceptance of some immigrant women as compared to some immigrant men, mostly because the former will not be occupying jobs sought by UK residents (Dustmann, Fabbri, Preston, and Wadsworth 2003: 25), with the exception of West Indian women, who have attained high levels of education in the UK and can, therefore, occupy jobs that UK citizens might apply for.
Anti-immigration (i.e., racist) propaganda has also been spread by diverse political parties in Europe. In his election victory speech, Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherland Party for Freedom, declared that: “The Netherlands is waking up from a long leftist nightmare. A nightmare of crazy high taxes, crime, lousy care, headscarves and burkas, of pauperizing, of mass immigration and Islamization . . .” (Seidman 2009). Very notable in this quoted text is the mention of female dress as an obvious sign of the supposed “islamization” of Europe. All of these latter examples of “scare tactics” rely on existing human anxieties that might lead to a group’s or nation’s searching for a scapegoat, existing outside the nation, or within it.
Fundamental to success in convincing the public, in either official or unofficial advertising campaigns, is the selective use of the truth in order to solely support one’s point of view, i.e., not offering various points of view concerning an issue, a technique known as “framing”. This is the case, in some media, of the ideological discussion of the issue of private ownership vs public ownership, for example, those whose liberal political inclinations lead them to believe that only private enterprise can be efficient enough to come up with new inventions or applications and actually make them work for society. For instance, Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as Nick Clegg, coalition leader, frequently offers only examples of cases in which a public service entity has been or should be open to bidding by private companies, supposedly making these services more efficient, as reported in Stratton (2011) regarding Cameron’s ideological suppositions as to the efficiency of private enterprise. Liberal ideological sources cite mostly private company successes, a view that has been set forth in many publications and broadcasts through different media as if these views had been proven by a number of successful cases of private businesses. Yet more recent publications (Mazzucato 2013) indicate that these accounts reveal only half truths, as they almost never offer readers a balanced account of the advantages and disadvantages of private or public ownership. For instance, proponents of private ownership often suggest that state-owned enterprises cannot efficiently open up ground-breaking innovations for society, but this viewpoint does not take into account that many societal benefits have accrued from governmental agencies’ expansion of global satellite systems to cover such societal needs as GPS tracking and from internet communication systems, whose development originally came from the US Air Force systems, later transferred to the ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency –all projects initially funded by the US government, not by private enterprise, which would not have had the funds for projects of such long-term development.
In commercial advertising, half-truths are rampant as in Johnson & Johnson’s advertising practices for their antipsychotic drug, Risperdal, promoting it for older adults, children and people with developmental disabilities. In a recent ruling of Federal Drug Administration of the U.S., Johnson & Johnson (Thomas 2013) was fined $2.2 billion for promoting unapproved uses (especially among the elderly in nursing homes), and of misrepresenting the safety and relative effectiveness of the drug. In this case, the FDA found that Johnson & Johnson had told its sales representatives to boost sales, by visiting child psychologists and mental health facilities that mainly focused on children, in order to promote the drug as a safe treatment for disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, when in reality, this drug was only effective as an antipsychotic aid, and was not meant for children or the elderly.
The final technique used in official propaganda or unofficial advertising is to imply that everyone agrees, thus focusing on people’s need to “fit in” (positive face needs). In official propaganda, this technique almost always takes the form of appealing to the citizen’s patriotism. In the Propaganda. Power and Persuasion exhibition, one of the video sites featured Tessa Jowell, Olympics Minister, speaking on the power of the 2012 Olympic Games to enhance Britain’s prestige. Nevertheless, in her very words, there is a presupposition which is not advantageous for Britain: “Britain has been seen in terms of her traditional heritage rather than the creative, iconoclastic nation that we are.” In this quote, it can be seen that Britain wishes to be considered among the innovative and modern economies, but the presupposition is that she has not been thus considered.
In unofficial, commercial, advertising, the “get on the bandwagon” tactic is quite convincing as well, targeted towards both men and women. The success of today’s marketing depends not only on celebrity endorsement of the product but rather on the creation of a store, shop or café which expresses a lifestyle as a way of contributing to the organization’s brand identity. A good example of this type of lifestyle marketing is the store as the presentation of a lifestyle, for example, in the American shops Crate & Barrel, which sell furniture, home decor, gifts, and house wares, mostly appealing to women as homemakers. They advertise themselves in the following fashion: “Crate & Barrel is making the world more at home… What an easy way to surprise a friend across the pond. Or bring your own corner of the world to life”. “Making the world more at home” implies that any consumer can find his/her “lifestyle” at Crate & Barrel, while “across the pond” refers to the Atlantic Ocean and evokes the thought that, in reality, the world is really very small and corresponding lifestyles can be found on both sides of the ocean. These statements accompany Crate & Barrel’s new campaign, which advertises the possibility of sending gifts from the U.S. to European countries.
That lifestyle identity branding is essential to successful marketing can be seen in the marketing error committed by Starbucks, who sought to expand the number of cafés but in doing so began to lose their role of providing a place where one can go to work, relax or meet friends as a part of a “Starbucks community”. In the early years of 2000, Starbucks began to buy out competitors’ coffee shops in an attempt to create a monopoly that would squeeze out their competitors. With sales falling, in 2008, Starbucks realized their mistake and began to scale back on the number of cafés. More coffee shops did not necessarily mean more profits (Pellegrin 2009: 114). Thus, branding –using any social classification, such as sex, economic power, or ethnic group– is considered an absolute “must” in today’s advertising campaigns.
The disturbing insistence of the portrayal of women, and more recently of men, as sex objects in commercial advertising has been well documented in many western countries. In particular –and at least since the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s in the Anglo world – the emphasis on “the liberated woman” has not actually brought about a liberated woman (as in Joan Didion’s description of the youth culture of the 1960s in San Francisco, Slouching towards Bethlehem, 1968) but rather has contributed to the present-day increase in the “objectification” of women (Banyard 2011), which has been linked to trends toward misogyny (Jeffreys 2005). There is, as well, research that shows that some even women “objectify” themselves (Walter 2010) to their own ultimate detriment. Walter (2010: 102-118) has documented how the present ubiquity of pornography has convinced even some younger feminists that pornography can be “liberating”. These cultural attitudes are formed at a very young age. Banyard (2011: 26) reports on a UK poll carried out by YoungPoll.com that found that a quarter of the 3,000 teen girls questioned considered that it was more important to be beautiful than clever. These aspects are further discussed in section 4 and useful web sites are listed at the end of the bibliography.
3 Official propaganda campaigns. Targeting the group
The term ‘propaganda’ often carries a negative connotation, as in this definition from the 1930s by Lumley (1933: 44): “Propaganda is promotion which is veiled in one way or another as to (1) its origins or sources, (2) the interests involved, (3) the methods employed, (4) the content spread, and (5) the results accruing to the victims –any one, and two, any three, any four, or all five.” However, as many investigators have noted, it is probably not possible for propaganda to be successful with the public if there are no motivational elements whatsoever to be relied on. Long ago Huxley (1936: 174) pointed out that “Propaganda gives force and direction to the successive movements of popular feeling and desire; but it does not do much to create these movements. The propagandist is a man who analyses an already existing stream.”
In this regard, such official advertising and its connection to social change advertising has frequently been directed towards women, although not exclusively, as has been observed in Figure 2 above. In war times in the Anglo world, men were also focused on, but to a lesser extent than women. The fact that such official campaigns, for instance, for homemaking, occurred not only during the early period of the Franco regime, but also in other countries, such as the UK and the US, seems to indicate that these campaign tendencies have much more to do with people’s conception of women’s roles (and, men’s roles) than with the type of political ideology underlying the state apparatus. In other words, they respond to a sexist ideology, rather than a national one.
In Spain, some important research has been published on governmental advertising campaigns carried out by the Sección Femenina (the women’s Falangist organization, 1934-1977) during the pre- and post-civil war period. This Falangist organization’s educational plans and leaflets distributed to the public at large has been considered elitist, classist and extremely gender-biased. Graham (1995: 184) has pointed out the connection between state propaganda and Spanish Catholic ideals of the post-war period: “The regime promoted an ideal image of womanhood as eternal, passive, pious, pure, submissive woman-as-mother for whom self-denial was the only road to real fulfilment.” As studied by many Spanish historians (Molinero (1998), Valiente Fernandez (1998)), the role of women during the Civil War, and after, was one of support for men, who were the “real protagonists” of history. In their role as wives, daughters, and mothers, women’s main duties were those of ensuring the educational and cultural transmission of the Falangist traditional values. For instance, regarding training for marriage, the Falange and JONS, a combination of two fascist organizations, advised Spanish women as late as 1958 to observe the following “principles” (Asociación Cultural Nueva Luna 2010):
1. Have a delicious meal prepared for when he comes home [Ten preparada una comida deliciosa para cuando él regrese del trabajo.]
2. Offer to take off his shoes. [Ofrécete a quitarle los zapatos.]
3. Speak in a low, relaxed tone [Habla en tono bajo, relajado y placentero.]
4. Prepare yourself: re-do your make-up, place a bow in your hair. His hard day at work will perhaps require a bit of cheer and one of your duties is to provide it for him. [Prepárate: retoca tu maquillaje, coloca una cinta en tu cabello. Su duro día de trabajo quizá necesite de un poco de ánimo y uno de tus deberes es proporcionárselo.]
5. During the coldest days you should prepare a fire in the fireplace so that he can relax while watching it [Durante los días más fríos debéis preparar un fuego en la chimenea para que se relaje frente a él.]
6. Taking care of his comfort will give you great personal pleasure [Preocuparte por su comodidad te proporcionará una satisfacción personal inmensa.]
7. Lessen any noises that might be present [Minimiza cualquier ruido.]
8. Greet him with a warm smile and show him your wish to meet his needs [Salúdale con una cálida sonrisa y demuéstrale tu deseo por complacerle.]
9. Listen to him, allowing him to speak first; remember that his topics of conversation are more important than yours [Escúchale, déjale hablar primero; recuerda que sus temas de conversación son más importantes que los tuyos.]
10. Never complain to him if he arrives late, or he goes to dinner or to other pastimes without you. [Nunca te quejes si llega tarde, o si sale a cenar o a otros lugares de diversión sin ti.]
11. Make him feel comfortable; have him relax in a comfortable armchair [Haz que se sienta a gusto, que repose en un sillón cómodo.]
12. Have a cool or hot drink prepared for him [Ten preparada una bebida fría o caliente para él.]
13. Do not ask for explanations regarding his actions or question his judgments or personal integrity [No le pidas explicaciones acerca de sus acciones o cuestiones su juicio o integridad.]
14. Remember that he is the Master of the house [ Recuerda que es el amo de la casa.]
15. Encourage your husband to practice his hobbies and be helpful to him without being overly insistent. [Anima a tu marido a poner en práctica sus aficiones e intereses y sírvele de apoyo sin ser excesivamente insistente.]
16. If you have a hobby, try not to bore him by talking about it, since what interests women are really trivial affairs compared with those of men [Si tú tienes alguna afición, intenta no aburrirle hablándole de ésta, ya que los intereses de las mujeres son triviales comparados con los de los hombres.]
17. At the end of the day, tidy up the house so that it is in order the next morning [Al final de la tarde, limpia la casa para que esté limpia de nuevo en la mañana.]
18. When you retire to the bedroom, prepare the bed as soon as possible, taking into account that, although female hygene is crucially important, your husband will not want to wait in order to use the bathroom [Cuando os retiréis a la habitación, prepárate para la cama lo antes posible, teniendo en cuenta que, aunque la higiene femenina es de máxima importancia, tu marido no quiere esperar para ir al baño.]
19. Remember that you must have a splendid appearance when you go to bed . . . If it is necessary to apply facial creme or hair curlers, wait until he is asleep, since all that might be surprising to a man at that hour of the evening [Recuerda que debes tener un aspecto inmejorable a la hora de ir a la cama…; si debes aplicarte crema facial o rulos para el cabello, espera hasta que él esté dormido, ya que eso podría resultarle chocante a un hombre a última hora de la noche.
20. As far as marital relations, it is important to remember your obligations: [En cuanto respecta a la posibilidad de relaciones íntimas con tu marido, es importante recordar tus obligaciones matrimoniales:]
•If he needs to sleep, let him; do not pressure him or stimulate his intimate desires [Si él siente la necesidad de dormir, que sea así, no le presiones o estimules la intimidad.]
•If your husband suggests intimate relations, accede with humility, always keeping in mind that his satisfaction is more important than that of the wife [Si tu marido sugiere la unión, entonces accede humildemente, teniendo siempre en cuenta que su satisfacción es más importante que la de una mujer.]
•When the maximum point is reached during relations, a discrete moan on your part will be suficiente to indicate any enjoyment you may have felt [Cuando alcance el momento culminante, un pequeño gemido por tu parte es suficiente para indicar cualquier goce que hayas podido experimentar.]
•If your husband should ask for unusual sexual practices, be obedient and do not complain [Si tu marido te pidiera prácticas sexuales inusuales, sé obediente y no te quejes.]
•When your husband enters into a profound sleep, re-arrange the bed clothing, refresh yourself and apply your night creme and hair products. Then you can re-adjust the alarm clock in order to get up a little before your husband. This will allow you to have his cup of tea ready when he gets up. [Cuando tu marido caiga en un sueño profundo, acomódate la ropa, refréscate y aplícate crema facial para la noche y tus productos para el cabello. Puedes entonces ajustar el despertador para levantarte un poco antes que él por la mañana. Esto te permitirá tener lista una taza de té para cuando despierte.]
The important fact is not to analyze what is happening in every moment regarding putting these principles into practice (or at least not only), but rather to analyze what it means to have an ideal of a society that lasts for thirty years [Lo importante no es analizar qué ocurre con estos principios en la práctica (o no sólo) sino analizar qué significa que sean el ideal de una sociedad durante más de treinta años.]
It is common in Spain to link this official propaganda to clear manifestations of fascist ideology, but, in reality, this type of official advertising “advice” has much more to do with the perception of “women’s place” in the world than with ideological stances of states based on either leftist or rightist political ideologies.
During WWI, the Depression (1929-early 1940s) and WWII, many state propaganda campaigns in Anglo countries focused on women’s roles in supporting “men’s efforts” – as if the global “efforts” were made only by men, while the local efforts were to be the work of women. In the UK, for instance, part of the wartime propaganda focused on the role of women as thrifty home-makers, as depicted in Figures 3 (Public Record Office, UK) and 4 (Office of War Information, US). It is significant that in Figure 4, with the subtitle “Our labour and our goods are fighting” show a woman and a man, each dedicated to a stereotypically sexist “job”; the woman is mending clothes while the man is bending down over a manual lawn-mower in order to fix it. Equally significant is the source for this poster, the Office of War Information.
Posters such as these could have been part of an advertising campaign in any country during WWII. However, what is quite different from the Spanish state (Sección femenina) propaganda is that in the UK as well as in the US, there also appeared, both in WWI and WWII, posters and pictures in the press which showed women fulfilling traditionally male jobs, as in the well-known “Rosie the Riveter” portrayals (Figure 5, Westinghouse War Production Coordinating Committee, 1942).
In the UK, although women’s position was not as strong as the official propaganda may have made it out to be, UK women did work in industries during WWI, making a clear difference from the events occurring in Spain. UK women actually increased their inclusion in UK industries from the beginning to the end of WWI: some one million women became part of the UK work force (British National Archives). The same is essentially true for women in the US and also true for WWII.
However, it is what happened after the wars that should be noted. The British National Archives (WWI) document the following regarding what happened to women’s jobs, both after WWI and WWII:
The Representation of the People Act (February 1918) was widely portrayed as a ‘reward’ for the contribution of female labour to the war effort. However, while the Act granted the vote to all men over 21 (subject to sex month’s residency qualification), only women over the age of 30 were given the same privilege.
Further proof of the limits of the wartime march towards sexual equality was provided by the post-war blacklash against women’s employment –in particular, against the continued employment of married women. As soon as the conflict ended, the number of women working in munitions factories and transport fell away rapidly. Ex-service men reclaimed the jobs that had been performed by women during the previous four years. Moreover, even in long-standing bastions of female employment such as the laundry industry, women now found themselves in competition with disabled ex-servicemen.
As in France, the idea of women returning to the ‘rightful’ domestic place was a prominent theme in post-war Britain. Many of their undoubted advances between 1914 and 1918 were thus only partial or temporary.
In view of these UK/US documents, it appears that the Spanish state propaganda differed little from that of other states, in that women are, sooner or later, relegated to “their sphere”. However, the comparison does throw up the fact that women in the UK/US propaganda were called upon to go out of the home to occupy jobs previously held by men. This suggestion was nowhere to be found in the Spanish propaganda campaigns, perhaps because Spain was not attacked by foreign states. In some ways, the situation of the UK/US women seems more cruel, in the sense that women were used in industries by the State and then told to go back home. The consequent lack of earning power would, of course, ensure that women could not become economically independent of their husbands. In the Spanish propaganda, as in the UK/US propaganda, the role of women is clearly one of support for men’s roles. In the case of the UK/US propaganda and subsequent government legislation, women are used almost as pawns in the war effort: “now we need you; now we do not”.
These historical accounts in diverse countries are useful in order to maintain a global perspective on women’s rights movements, which until recently have not been considered as part of “human rights”. In books and videos, Charlotte Bunch (1990) has addressed the question of human rights from a feminist perspective. So far, women have taken leading roles in redefining social concepts, but a territory to be conquered yet is the redefinition of global policy issues, for which women should have at least a 51% right to address.
4 Unofficial propaganda. Targeting individuals’ life-styles
As Klein (1999: 15-28) has pointed out in No Logo, marketing, consumerism and especially branding go hand in hand in targeting certain groups of individuals for marketing campaigns. Klein charts the transition from advertising a product to advertising a brand, thus blending consumerism and marketing. She discusses the lifestyle image in relation to brand names of such companies as Nike, Apple, the Body Shop, Calvin Klein, Disney, Levi’s and Starbucks. A case in point, broadcast on Spanish television advertising, is the brand marketing of Ikea –“Bienvenido a la república independiente de tu casa” [Welcome to the independent republic of your home.]– advertising which combines the idea of home and family, as the most important aspects of Spanish life. That is, the brand becomes an experience, a lifestyle.
One of the most disturbing tendencies in recent marketing-branding campaigns is the linking of femininity to sexiness. This type of commercial targeting for young girls begins at a very early age. To understand how marketing tendencies for young girls have changed, one can compare the differences between marketing strategies for Barbie dolls in the 1970s to strategies for the present-day marketing of the Bratz dolls. As Walters (2010: 4), has noticed, although Barbie dolls had unusually large breasts and impossibly tiny waists, the dolls were marketed with diverse professional careers, such as an astronaut, a pilot or a doctor. In contrast, the Bratz dolls are marketed with a wardrobe for clubbing and shopping. Their attire includes fishnet stockings, miniskirts, see-through blouses, and crop tops (showing midriff). That is to say, Barbies were marketed as sexually attractive AND intelligent. Now, in the Bratz dolls, intelligence has been dismissed as an attractive attribute for girls to acquire in favor of sexual allure as the outstanding must-have attribute.
Given that all this hyper-sexuality marketing can be seen as a kind of “grooming” of young girls for future careers as models, starlets or even as pole dancers, instead of preparing them for professional careers, it seems to support the return of a more traditional conception of women’s sexual attributes as biologically rather than socially constructed. Unfortunately, these marketing trends tend to be supported by national press, both in the U.S. and in the UK. Every so often, the popular press print stories, based on supposed experiments that show, for example, that girls prefer the colour pink, while boys prefer blue, as written up in a serious newspaper, The Guardian (Wainwright 2007), in an article “Pink for a girl and blue for a boy –it’s all down to evolution” (as cited in Walter 2010: 11). A recent article in the UK Daily Mirror (4th of Dec., 2013: 8), entitled “Women wired for success… but men best at throwing”, comments on men and women are divided into categorizations such as “intelligence”, “throwing”, “driving”, “sleeping”, “doctors”, “boozing”, “being boss” and “multi-tasking”. Apart from listing no author, the article cites only one study (“Canadian research published in October”, no authors or publications listed), as far as how Canadian doctors follow guidelines; the rest seems to be all conjecture. There is no mention of whether these “traits” are prevalent only in Western societies, and of course, there is no mention of the fact that these characteristics may be socially learned, and, therefore have nothing to do with “biological” differences. The tale tell evidence for the levity of the information reported is that accompanying the article is a large picture of a pink bikini-clad woman whose backside shows her apparently trying to throw a beach ball.
Many of these types of reports come from “experiments” carried out by researchers involved in sociobiology, following the founder of this academic field, Edward O. Wilson. In his book (1979: 129), On Human Nature, he states that “the evidence for a genetic difference in behaviour is varied and substantial. In general, girls are predisposed to be more intimately sociable and less physically venturesome.”
As can be noted, theories of genetically conditioned personal attributes have been with us since the early 1970s and, over the decades, such theories have come and gone. But what we have been witnessing recently is that the lifestyle branding is increasingly becoming connected with a biological determinism. That is, the idea of real sex differences is becoming more and more entrenched in marketing tendencies. According to Walter (2010: 79), this means that there has arisen a confusion between sexual liberation and the sexual objectification of young girls. We know that young girls are subject to a certain kind of bullying through internet avenues, but the connection with marketing tendencies should also be pointed out. Walters documents the disproportionate impact that sexy female heroines display in many video games, in the Bratz dolls or in the W.I.T.C.H. girls for marketing to young females. Marketing also capitalizes on providing adult styles for very young girls – fashions which adult women wear: bikinis, crop tops, tangas, etc.
It seems that female lifestyles are increasingly becoming more limited to a narrow characterization of the female as “sexual”. To be noted also is the increase in clubs, especially in the UK, dedicated to lap-dancing, pole-dancing, etc., so much so that entire neighbourhoods have protested against their locating within neighbourhood districts. The marketing of the sexiness of women (also of men) points to a narrowing of “lifestyles” for both women and men.
It is necessary to realize that marketing and branding are artificial constructs, in no way related to real life, or even to be sought after. By moving away from this biological determinism, we can allow more freedom to people as people, whatever their sexual inclination.
5 Conclusion
Through official and unofficial propaganda, this article has demonstrated the various ways in which entire populations and specific social groups, notably women, have been targeted as the focus of public messages. If a more modern conception of propaganda is taken to mean an enhancement of the public’s perception of the institution(s) so as to persuade the public to behave in the appropriate manner, then propaganda begins to look very much like commercial advertising, or even social change advertising, based, as they all are, on perception of the public’s feelings and desires. When propaganda and advertising are studied in depth, the use of the same techniques becomes more readily discernible. Fear seems to be the predominant factor in convincing groups and individuals that they should “go with the flow”, or follow the lead of others.
The combination of branding and sexist advertising has brought to the fore types of dress, dancing and attitudes in girls and young women that have changed their orientations towards the lifestyles to be emulated. Such hypersexual advertising also affects what young men learn to expect in young women. These orientations clearly do not represent more freedom for women to choose but rather a narrowing of what being a “real woman” means. Regarding this restriction of social perspectives, more research should be carried out on the effect of pornography on youngsters’ concepts of sexuality and sharing in a sexual relationship. As well, the connection between propaganda/advertising and sexual, racial or socioeconomic targeting of specific groups merits more attention.
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