BEYOND BEAUTY: EXAMINING THE WOMEN'S REPRESENTATION IN COSMETIC LUXURY BRANDS

BEYOND BEAUTY: EXAMINING THE WOMEN'S REPRESENTATION IN COSMETIC LUXURY BRANDS This research examines women's representation in cosmetic luxury advertisements of Chanel, Dior, and Lancôme. The focus of the research will be on gender biases, diversity, beauty standards, and empowerment. The media have been criticized in such a way that the media is stereotyping the female gender with the portrayal of women to be more passive and sexualized compared to males and therefore, underrepresenting the women. These stereotypes that occur in the media have an impact on how society views the female gender. The research question that will be answered in this research is: How are women represented in terms of gender biases, beauty standards, and diversity on Instagram advertisements from Chanel, Lancôme, and Dior? Through thematic analysis, including the collection of 150 Instagram posts, this research sheds light on the current women’s representation in the Instagram advertisements of Chanel, Lancôme, and Dior. One of the main findings is that traditional women’s representation still occurs in the current advertising industry. The models that were represented in the advertisements all had clear skin without any imperfections, youthful appearance and were categorized to be thin. However, there seems to be a focus on ethnic diversity in which the black community and the Asian community were sometimes represented in the advertisements. In terms of sexualization, women are more covered. Nudity in the advertisement was not found often and those that were labeled as nudity mainly were advertisements from Dior. However, licensed withdrawal still occurs in the findings of the analysis in which the mouth of the models in the advertisement was slightly open, head can’t pose was conducted often and the hand gestures were lightly touching themselves or holding a product gently in their hands. Currently, women in the advertisements of Chanel, Dior, and Lancôme were represented with most often the Western beauty standards. Light skin, thinness, youthfulness, and clear skin were the characteristics that repeated among the data. However, Lancôme shifted this idea of the perfect woman by starting to work together with middle-aged and aged women to promote their products. These models were seen as not having clear skin, rather they were showing their wrinkles proudly. Among all three brands, diversity is what the brands are trying to shift more by collaborating with black, Asian, and other minority groups in the advertisements. Lastly, empowerment is something that can still be improved as brands are communicating feminism and femvertising in their company goals. This, however, was not often found in the data analysis.