Brancas, magras, sensuais, passivas e profissionais: mulheres objetificadas nos outdoors em Natal/RN

Abstract

The media performs a conforming role through images socialized among individuals, overestimating certain aesthetic standards and contributing to a massive diffusion of body models to be reach. The female body does not escape those logics of consumption, advertised as a product appendix, attracting looks from the observers. The imagery representation of the female gender in the urban publicity at Natal, RN, is inserted in this perspective through billboards. Billboards published in six of the city’s main avenues were observed, using as fundamental interlocutors experts who discuss media phenomenons in its semiotics, historical and cultural dimensions - e.g. Baitello Junior (2014), Guimarães (2004) and Flusser (2008); the analytical resources of semiotic and image - e.g. Dondis (1997), Perez (2016) and Joly (1996); gender issues and feminine construction - e.g. Beauvoir (2016), Butler (2017), Scott (1995) and Bourdieu (2017); the body as media, as a language that uses the body as signs - e.g. Santaella (2004), Sant’Ana (2001), Campello (1995) and Rector (1990); the publicity as diffuser of ideological representations and social stereotypes, studies about the consumer society - e.g. Lessa (2005), Mota-Ribeiro (2005), Januário (2016), Bauman (2008), Baudrillard (2010), Lipovetsky (2000), Berger (1972), Goffman (1987) e Carvalho (2000). As the result of the research, the conclusion is that publicity in Natal on billboards creates a stereotyped pattern of how women and the female body should be represented. This pattern is manifested in seven categories: i) subordinated body; ii) observer and observed body; iii) body in movement; iv) professional body; v) hierarchical body; vi) bodies in contact; vii) beautiful and erotic body. In conclusion, the image of woman continues to be more explored than the male image by outdoor publicity in Natal; the maintained standards are of slim bodies with unachievable measures for most women which are not contemplated by those standards; the representation of minority groups (black and elderly people) were minimum and women with physical disability had no representation; the main market sector that uses women in its advertisements is the education sector; the larger part of the proposed categories represents independent women associated to the public life, but also assuming roles that are culturally aimed to them, like marriage; the women are usually presented smiling, looking at the observer in a passive and well dressed form, but inviting the observer to read their bodies as an object of desire; the female body is hegemonically featured in the public view according to the aesthetic patterns of subalternity and objectification.