Gillette Compete Skin Care for Men

AD #1 Gillette Compete Skin Care for Men

This advertisement is for Gillette men’s skin care products. The ad targets young adult couples, and women will buy skin care products for the men in their lives. It can be found in Allure, November 2005. Allure is targeted towards young adult women interested in beauty, fashion and relationships. This advertisement is promoting a simple 3 step skin care regime for men. The ad focuses on a man’s back profile with a women’s hands placed provocatively around him. It has bold print stating “Get a Better Looking Man in 3 Simple Steps” and smaller print that promotes the simplicity of the products and targets women to purchase the skin care products for men. The ad is implying that men in society can now take care of their skin, yet still targets women to prompt them to use it. The text “now that you’ve got his face covered, you can start working on his clothes, hair, his friends…” implies that a woman can create a better man by manipulating him, beginning with using these products.

Sociologists wound find this advertisement particularly interesting because it is promoting heterosexual relationships, health and beauty standards in our society, men and women’s roles as consumers and the bold graphics and image the ad focuses on. It is promoting men’s skin care products, which have previously been viewed as women’s products and it influences women to buy these products on men’s behalf. This influence perpetuates the sociological role of women in society as caretakers, as well as encouraging the role of men being inactive in caring about their appearance and their need to use health and beauty products. This ad clearly promotes heterosexual relationships. It shows a women’s hand wrapped around him and the left hand has no wedding ring, implying they are in some kind of relationship but not married yet. This is reinforcing the roles men and women play in these relationships. The ad appeals to the ever-more popularized men’s appearance and their desire to look good. It also promotes the changing ideal type of man in society, leaning more towards a “metro sexual” man. Health and beauty products are being targeted more and more to males and this has had an effect on how males are viewed in society. It is less likely for a man to be considered homosexual if seen buying or using face wash, hair colour and other appearance related products, than ever before. This reflects the changes being made in society for men as consumers. Furthermore this ad still targets women to be the primary health and beauty consumers by prompting them to buy these products. The clear bold statement the picture is making with the man’s well built back, clear hairless skin and the women’s hand placed provocatively around his head and back symbolize the social roles men and women have, men as strong and well built and women as manipulative and seductive.

The sociological perspective I will be analyzing this advertisement from is structural functionalist. Functionalists focus on society being stable and well-integrated. Everyone has clear social roles and focuses on an individual’s ability to perform societal functions. It is a macro level of analysis. Some key concepts are manifest functions which are open-stated and conscious functions and latent functions which are unconscious or unintended functions. A functionalists approach believes that

“ if an aspect of social life does not contribute to a society’s stability or survival- if it does not serve some identifiably useful function or promote value consensus among members of society- it will not be passed on from one generation to the next” (Schaefer, Richard T. Richard Floyd, Bonnie Haaland pg.13) .

Functionalists view social