Advertising and female representation in women’s magazines: An approximation to the case of eva magazine

Abstract

This article studies the evolution of women representation throughout advertising in women’s magazines, taking as a reference the case of the Chilean magazine Eva that circulated in the country between 1943 and 1974, reaching a significative leadership among editorial publications. With the analysis we seek to understand two central dimensions of the graphic heritage and the relationship it has with the imaginary of feminine consumption: the formal and the symbolic. In conceptual terms, two areas can be described to understand how advertising develops in these publications. In the first place, the editorial space given to woman, as consequence to cultural changes experienced since the end of the 19th century, and in second place, the crescent influence of advertising agencies on promotion and circulation of American a esthetic-cultural values, and the existence of a consumption society at international level. From a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus of graphic selected pieces, the main advertised products were identified, which are circumscribed into two thematic dimensions: woman’s physical appearance and her role as a housewife. However, these two dimensions acquire distinctive characteristics over time which translates in how woman’s representation evolves in three different levels: the woman who consumes to be seen and admired for her beauty; the woman that consumes with an objective; and finally, the woman that consumes for her own self.