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“Beauty Is Growing Up”: A Critical Case Study of Femvertising in Contemporary South Korea

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The Cultural Politics of Femvertising

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender ((PSRG))

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Abstract

In contemporary advertising worldwide, the practice known as “femvertising” has been recognized for some time as a highly effective strategy to leverage feminist values by appearing to challenge traditional female stereotypes. Following the success of the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, launched in 2004, many advertisers in the West adopted messages of female empowerment in their product campaigns. In South Korea (hereafter Korea), advertisers were slow to grasp the potential of femvertising, but recently advertising strategies that appear to critique or overturn traditional female beauty standards, for example, around ageing and body image, have become popular. I argue that the limitations of the femvertising strategies prevent them from posing a truly radical challenge to traditional patriarchal values in Korea. By textually deconstructing one notable case of recent femvertising in Korea, the Sulwhasoo “Beauty Is Growing Up” (아름다움은 자란다) campaign, I will show that apparent messages of female empowerment can still have the effect of promoting traditional female beauty standards and heteronormative feminine values.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Nina Åkestam, Sara Rosengren, and Michael Dahlen, “Advertising ‘Like a Girl’: Toward a Better Understanding of ‘Femvertising’ and Its Effects,” Psychology & Marketing 34, no. 8 (2017): 795–806, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21023; Duan, Xu, “‘The Big Women’: A Textual Analysis of Chinese Viewers’ Perception Toward Femvertising Vlogs,” Global Media and China 5, no. 3 (2020): 228–46, https://doi.org/10.1177/2059436420934194

  2. 2.

    Richard Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising,” Journal of Marketing 50, no. 2 (1986): 18–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298605000202. See also Katy Snell and Wan-Hsiu Sunny Tsai, “Beauty for Asian American Women in Advertising: Negotiating Exoticization and Americanization to Construct a Bicultural Identity,” Advertising & Society Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1353/asr.2017.0022; Wan-Hsiu Sunny Tsai, Aya Shata, and Shiyun Tian, “En-Gendering Power and Empowerment in Advertising: A Content Analysis,” Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising 42, no. 1 (2021): 19, https://doi.org/10.1080/10641734.2019.1687057

  3. 3.

    Yuri Cha and Sun Young Choi, “Exploring the Active and Influential Groups in South Korean Digital Femvertising Based on Approach to Motivation of Self-Identity: Between ‘the Faux’ and ‘the Real’ Focused on the Perspective of Social Identity Theory,” Korean Journal of Journalism and Communication Studies 65, no. 1 (2020): 190–235, https://doi.org/10.20879/kjjcs.2021.65.1.190

  4. 4.

    Eve Shapiro, Gender Circuits: Bodies and Circuits in a Technological Age, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015).

  5. 5.

    Fengshu Liu, “From Degendering to (Re)Gendering the Self: Chinese Youth Negotiating Modern Womanhood,” Gender and Education 26, no. 1 (2014): 18–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2013.860432

  6. 6.

    Liu, “From Degendering to (Re)Gendering the Self,” 30.

  7. 7.

    Kineta H. Hung, Stella Yiyan Li, and Russell W. Belk, “Glocal Understandings: Female Readers’ Perceptions of the New Woman in Chinese Advertising,” Journal of International Business Studies 38, no. 6 (2007): 1034–51, https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400303

  8. 8.

    Shapiro, Gender Circuits, 22.

  9. 9.

    Jennifer Millard, “Performing Beauty: Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign.” Symbolic Interaction 32, no. 2 (2009): 146–68.

  10. 10.

    Marsha L Richins, “Social Comparison and the Idealized Images of Advertising,” Journal of Consumer Research 18 (1991): 71–82, https://doi.org/10.1086/209242

  11. 11.

    Millard, “Performing Beauty,” 147; Lisa M. Groesz, Michael P. Levine, and Sarah K. Murnen, “The Effect of Experimental Presentation of Thin Media Images on Body Satisfaction: A Meta-Analytic Review,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 31, no. 1 (2001): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.10005; Emma Halliwell and Helga Dittmar, “Does Size Matter? The Impact of Model’s Body Size on Women’s Body-Focused Anxiety and Advertising Effectiveness,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23 (2004): 104–22; Eaaron Henderson-King and Donna Henderson-King, “Media Effects on Women’s Body Esteem: Social and Individual Difference Factors,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 27, no. 5 (1997): 339–418, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb00638.x

  12. 12.

    Justine Coupland, “Gendered Discourses on the ‘Problem’ of Ageing: Consumerized Solutions,” Discourse & Communication 1, no. 1 (2007): 43–54, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481307071984; Ann Brown and Tess Knight, “Shifts in Media Images of Women Appearance and Social Status from 1960 to 2010: A Content Analysis of Beauty Advertisements in Two Australian Magazines,” Journal of Aging Studies 35 (2015): 74–83, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2015.08.003

  13. 13.

    Sarah Banet-Weiser and Laura Portwood-Stacer, “The Traffic in Feminism: An Introduction to the Commentary and Criticism on Popular Feminism.” Feminist Media Studies 17, no. 5 (2017): 884–88, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1350517. See also Angela McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries (London: Polity, 2016).

  14. 14.

    Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer, “The Traffic in Feminism,” 886; Andi Zeisler, “Empowertise me!” Bitch Magazine 71, May 4, 2016, https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/empowertise-me; Alan Abitbol and Sternadori, Miglena. “Championing Women’s Empowerment as a Catalyst for Purchase Intentions,” International Journal of Strategic Communication 13, no. 1 (2018): 22–41, https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2018.1552963; Namhyun Um, “Case Analysis Study of Global Femvertising Campaign for Female Empowerment,” Journal of Digital Convergence 18, no. 7 (2020): 389–95.

  15. 15.

    Davida E. Arnold, “SheKnowsMedia,” MediaVillage, https://www.mediavillage.com/channel/sheknows-media/?type=latest&page=1

  16. 16.

    Audre Lorde, Burst of Light: Essays (Ann Arbor, MI: Firebrand Books, 1988); Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer, “The Traffic in Feminism,” 885–86.

  17. 17.

    Dakyung Jung, “아름다움은 자란다; 안티-에이징에서 프로-에이징으로 [Opinion: Beauty Is Growing Up: From Anti-Ageing to Pro-Ageing],” Art Insight, September 12, 2020, para. 2, https://www.artinsight.co.kr/news/view.php?no=49808

  18. 18.

    Joongangilbo. “요즘 뜨는 광고 키워드 #우먼웰니스 [Popular Keywords in Advertising, Woman Wellness],” Joongangilbo, May 20, 2021, para.1, https://news.joins.com/article/24062613

  19. 19.

    Theresa Howard,“Ad Campaign Tells Women to Celebrate Who They Are,” USA Today, July 8, 2005, www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/press.asp?section=news&id=3073; Susanna Schrobsdorff, “Summer of Dove,” Newsweek, Aug. 2, 2005, accessed June 30, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/summer-dove-117775

  20. 20.

    Millard, “Performing Beauty,” 151.

  21. 21.

    Catherine Rottenberg, “The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism,” Cultural Studies 28, no. 3 (2014): 418–37.

  22. 22.

    Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially (London: Routledge, 1992).

  23. 23.

    Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, 130.

  24. 24.

    Sigal, Barak-Brande and Einat Lachover, “Branding Relations: Mother–Daughter Discourse on Beauty and Body in an Israeli Campaign by Dove,” Communication, Culture & Critique 9, no. 3 (2016): 380, https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12111

  25. 25.

    Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, 130–153.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    Robert Goldman, Deborah Heath, and Sharon Smith, “Commodity Feminism,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8, no. 3 (1991): 335–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039109366801

  28. 28.

    Dara Persis Murray, “Branding ‘Real’ Social Change in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 1 (2013): 87, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.647963

  29. 29.

    Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, 130–153.

  30. 30.

    Ibid. Reading Ads  Socially.

  31. 31.

    Suman Mishra, “Globalizing Male Attractiveness: Advertising in Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in India,” International Communication Gazette 83, no. 3 (2021): 280–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048521992498

  32. 32.

    Alan McKee, Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide (London: SAGE, 2003).

  33. 33.

    McKee, Textual Analysis: A Beginner’s Guide, 8–31.

  34. 34.

    Elfriede Fürsich, “In Defense of Textual Analysis,” Journalism Studies 10, no. 2 (2009): 238–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700802374050

  35. 35.

    Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication (New York, NY: Routledge, 1982); Mishra, “Globalizing Male Attractiveness.”

  36. 36.

    Fürsich, “In Defense of Textual Analysis,” 241.

  37. 37.

    Andrew Wernick, Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology, and Symbolic Expression (London: SAGE, 1991); Richard Elliott, Susan Eccles, and Michelle Hodgson. “Re-Coding Gender Representations: Women, Cleaning Products, and Advertising’s ‘New Man’,” International Journal of Research in Marketing 10, no. 3 (1993): 311–24, https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8116(93)90013-O.

  38. 38.

    Elliot et al., “Re-Coding Gender Representations: Women, Cleaning Products, and Advertising’s ‘New Man,’” 314. See also Wernick, Promotional Culture, 260–79.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Barbara B. Stern, “Textual Analysis in Advertising Research: Construction and Deconstruction of Meanings,” Journal of Advertising 25, no. 3 (1996): 61–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673507; Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text: Essays Selected and Translated by Stephen Heath (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1977).

  41. 41.

    Teri Del Rosso, “There’s a Cream for That: A Textual Analysis of Beauty and Body-Related Advertisements Aimed at Middle-aged Women,” Journal of Women & Aging 29, no. 2 (July, 201): 185–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2015.1125698

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  1. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Hyejin Jo

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  1. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Joel Gwynne

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Jo, H. (2022). “Beauty Is Growing Up”: A Critical Case Study of Femvertising in Contemporary South Korea. In: Gwynne, J. (eds) The Cultural Politics of Femvertising. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99154-8_3

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