The portrayal of women's images in magazine advertisements: Goffman's gender analysis revisited.

Advertising occupies a special position within the economic organization of a modern society, and it is not just an economic entity. Advertising deals with ideas, attitudes, and values, giving them "cultural form through its signifying practices" (Sinclair, 1987). Advertising as "signifying practices" gives meaning to words and images. Through this process, advertising diffuses its meanings into the belief systems of the society. As Schudson (1984) puts, the promotional culture of advertising has worked its way into "what we read, what we care about, the ways we raise our children, our ideas of right and wrong conduct, our attribution of significance to 'image' in both public and private life" (p. 13).

Advertising is a social practice, and it does not operate in a vacuum. According to Jhally (1987), the social role of advertising involves a number of interconnected relationships - "those between person and object, use and symbol, symbolism and power, and communication and satisfaction" (p. 22). Thus, advertising must be considered in light of cultural expectations. Rotzoll and Haefner (1996) argue that because of its cultural boundness, its complexity of forms and functions, and the difficulty in ascertaining its outcome, advertising is highly prone to disparate interpretations. As Hall (1997) illustrates, the concept of "shared meanings" places its emphasis on cultural practices. It is participants in a culture who give meaning to people, objects and events. Since things in themselves rarely have any single and fixed meaning, they need to be given meanings by participants of the culture. Hall (1997) suggests that members of the same culture must share sets of concepts, images and ideas which enable them to think and feel about the world, and thus to interpret the world in roughly similar ways. Advertising needs to be constructed and produced with this "shared meanings" as a part of it.

In studying advertising, special emphasis needs to be put on visual images as nonverbal symbols. As a socializing agent, the visual imagery provided by the media can have a powerful impact on our attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors, since it can contribute meanings and associations entirely apart and of much greater significance. The images conveyed by advertising have become so sophisticated and persuasive that they now organize our experiences and understanding in a significant way.

Modern advertising depends on images, and images are symbols which can convey meanings as efficiently as verbal symbols can. Like words, visual images also function as symbols that create multi-leveled meanings that have to be decoded to be understood. Visual images in advertising is especially important since, according to Bovee and Arens (1986), "most readers of advertisements (1) look at the illustration, (2) read the headline, and (3) read the body copy, in that order." (p. 47) Visual images, therefore, carry a great deal of responsibility for the message decoding in an advertisement.

A significant cultural and structural analysis of advertising is provided in Decoding Advertisements (1978) by Judith Williamson. She explains the ideological processes in advertising by which goods are given meaning. According to Williamson, advertising transforms the practical "use value" of projects into the symbolic "exchange value" of commodities. She calls this the "metastructure," "where meaning is not just 'decoded' within one structure, but transferred to create another" (p. 43). Her central point is that meaning is created through the audience, rather than meaning being directed at audiences. The exchange of meaning in the advertisement may depend upon the reader's cultural knowledge. Thus, Williamson emphasizes that it is the structure of the advertisement itself which "positions" the reader in a certain knowledge context.

According to Jhally (1987), there are stages to the constitution of meanings. One of the most important stages is that of "transferring" (p.130) the meaning of one sign to another. The transferrence requires the active participation of the viewer of the advertisement. Audiences do not just receive meaning from advertising, they constantly re-create it. Thus, Jhally (1987) argues that mass media advertising plays the role of a mediator. For the audience properly to 'decode' the message (transfer meaning", advertisers have to draw their materials from the social knowledge of the audience, then ransform this material into messages ('encode'), developing appropriate formats and shaping the content in order that the process of communication from audience to audience bo completed (Hall 1980).

Since advertising reaches millions of individuals daily, it has become targets for heavy scrutiny by researchers interested in the effects of the woman's movement on the media. Advertising has been accused of stereotyping images of women, and they have been targets of various studies. It has been established in previous research that advertising messages about women are often stereotypical (e.g., a woman's place is in the home, women do not make important decisions or do important things, women are dependent and need men's protection, and men regard women primarily as sexual objects). Advertisements have consistently confined women to traditional mother-, home-, or beauty/sex-oriented roles that are not representative of women's diversity.

Studies have shown that the image of women that has predominated in magazine advertisements is of weak, childish, dependent, domestic, irrational, subordinate creatures, the producers of children and little else compared with men. Lucy Komisar (1971) suggests the audience of advertising could never know the reality of women's lives by looking at advertising, since "A woman's place is not only in the home, according to most advertising copywriters and art directors; it is in the kitchen or the laundry room" (p.301). Komisar also refers to the image created by advertisers in 1960 as a combination sex object, wife, and mother who achieves fulfillment by looking beautiful for men. A woman is not depicted as intelligent, but submissive and subservient to men. If a woman has a job, it is as a secretary or an airline hostess.

Courtney and Lockeretz (1979) examined images of women in magazine advertisements. They reported the following findings:

- Women were rarely shown in out-of-home working roles.

- Not many women were shown as a professional or high-level business person.

- Women rarely ventured far from home by themselves or with other women.

- Women were shown as dependent on men's protection.

- Men were shown regarding women as sex objects or as domestic adjuncts.

- Females were most often shown in ads for cleaning products, food products, beauty products, drugs, clothing, and home appliances.

- Males were most often shown in ads for cars, travel, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, banks, industrial products, entertainment media, and industrial companies (p. 92-95).

Among the stereotypes typically employed in advertising by the media are the ideas that women do unimportant things and a woman's place is in the home. The nature and development of these role stereotypes appears to be a function of cultural norms and socialization. Sullivan & O'Connor (1988) found that there has been a 60% increase in advertisements in which women are portrayed in purely decorative roles. They also claimed that the woman's role in advertising is sexy and alluring. Kilbourne (1986) found that exposure to advertisements employing stereotypical sex roles for women resulted in significantly lower perceptions of women's managerial abilities than exposure to advertisements depicting women in professional type roles requiring such abilities.

A prominent researcher who believed that gender relations are socially define and constructed is Erring Goffman. He believed that advertisements are in fact very strange creations, particularly as regards their portrayals of gender relations, and illustrated that the best way to understand the male-fe~ male relation is to compare it to the parent-child relation in which men take on the roles of parents while women behave as children normally would be expected to. In 1979, Goffman conducted a provocative analysis of visual images in print advertisements, and he contends that carefully posed models and carefully selected settings of advertisements create "a pseudo-reality that is better than real" (p. 23). He illuminated how advertising functions to display our notions of gender roles, making use of visual meanings. Goffman's analysis of nearly 400 advertisements makes it clear that gender differences in function and status not only carry over from the real world to the advertisement world but may find their purest expression there.

Goffman's model for decoding behavior concentrates on hands, eyes, knees, facial expressions, head postures, relative sizes, positioning and placing, head-eye aversion and finger biting and sucking. He felt the most simple gesture, familiar rituals or taken-for-granted forms of address were sources for understanding relations between the sexes and the social forces at work behind those relations.

In his book, Goffman concludes that women are weakened by advertising portrayals via five categories: relative size(women shown smaller or lower, relative to men), feminine touch(women constantly touching themselves), function ranking(occupational), ritualization of subordination (proclivity for lying down at inappropriate times, etc.), and licensed withdrawal(women never quite a part of the scene, possibly via far-off gazes).

Since his book was published, Goffman's methodology, especially his sampling technique, has created some controversy. Instead of randomly selecting advertisements, he drew a purposive sample. That is, he chose ads from newspapers and magazines that were judged to be representative of his preconception. His sampling strategy was not chosen so generalization to a population of visual images could be made; instead he deliberately selected advertisements that mirrored gender differences, sometimes ones that captured the nuances of social relationships.

Thus, it was the objective of this study to study the specific behaviors mentioned above and to determine what gender behavior patterns have been most prevalent in magazine advertisements in 1979 and 1991. In this research, comparisons were made to examine gender displays between the years of 1979 and 1991 with random samples of print advertisements. The basic and essential starting question of this research project is: What messages about women have been given to society through magazine advertisements?

This study focuses on gender behavior pictured in commercial print advertisements, and it was intended to be a conceptual replication of Erving Goffman's study of Gender Advertisementsto see how gender images in print advertisements have changed since Goffman's study. For this research, the researcher analyzed the gender behavior portrayed in advertisements, utilizing Goffman's model of decoding behavior to observe changes in women's images since 1979.

There has been a revolutionary change in the workplace and in society since women began to come into the workforce. Women nowadays not only are gaining ground in workforce participation, but also are filling positions once held primarily by men. If women have changed and if society has therefore been altered, then it would seem that portrayals of women in advertising have surely also changed to reflect both the new social status and the new image of the American women. Thus, it was hypothesized that the portrayals of women in magazine advertisements must have been changed greatly since 1979. The hypothesis of this study is as follows:

The print advertisements in 1991 samples will show less frequent gender displays in terms of function ranking, ritualization of subordination, relative size, feminine touch, licensed withdrawal, body display, and independence (self-assertiveness) than those of 1979. The independent variable "time" (e.g. the years of 1979 and 1991) will affect the dependent variable, frequencies of gender displays.

METHOD

Conceptual Definitions

For the purpose of this study, genderis defined as culturally established categories of sex, such as female or male. The term gender displayis defined as conventionalized portrayals of these correlates. The term gender displayrefers to seven subconcepts: relative size, feminine touch, function ranking, ritualization of subordination, licensed withdrawal, body display, and independence (self-assertiveness). The term gender advertisement in this paper refers to commercial still photograph ads featuring gender displays that are designed to sell a product for an advertiser. It does not refer to ads that only feature words and/or objects, cartoons or drawings, and service-oriented ads.

The following theoretical definitions in Goffman's Gender Advertisements are utilized in this study:

(1) Relative Size. One way in which social weight (e.g., power, authority, rank, office, renown) is echoed expressively in social situations is through relative size, especially height. The male's usual superiority of status over the female will be expressible in his greater girth and height. It is assumed that differences in size will correlate with differences in social weight.

(2) Feminine Touch. Women, more than men, are pictured using their fingers and hands to trace the outlines of an object or to cradle it or to caress its surface or to effect a "just barely touching." This ritualistic touching is to be distinguished from the utilitarian kind that grasps, manipulates, or holds.

(3) Function Ranking. When a man and a woman collaborate face-to-face in an undertaking, the man is likely to perform the executive role. This hierarchy of functions is pictured either within an occupational frame or outside of occupational specializations.

(4) Ritualization of Subordination. A classic stereotype of deference is that of lowering oneself physically in some form or other of prostration. Correspondingly, holding the body erect and the head high is stereotypically a mark of unashamedness, superiority, and disdain. The configurations of canting postures can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of ingratiation, submissiveness, and appeasement.

(5) Licensed Withdrawa. Women more than men are pictured engaged in involvements which remove them psychologically from the social situation at large, leaving them unoriented in it and to it, and dependent on the protectiveness of others who are present. Turning one's gaze away from another's can be seen as having the consequence of withdrawing from the current thrust of communication (p. 62). The individual also can withdraw his/her gaze from the scene at large, and be psychologically "away" from the scene. Maintaining a telephone conversation is another sign of licensed withdrawal.

These are Goffman's five categories used in his study. In addition to those five categories, the researcher introduced two more categories to analyze the gender displays in magazine advertisements. These categories are body display and independence (self-assertiveness).

(6) Body Display. Sometimes magazine advertisements show little stereotyping of women in terms of relative size, feminine touch, function ranking, ritualization of subordination, and licensed withdrawal, while the female models show high degree of nudity which is another important way of stereotyping. This category was introduced to compare the level of female models' body display (i.e., body-revealing clothes or nudity) between the two years. The dress of the models in the 1979 and 1991 advertisements are analyzed to see whether the female wears body-revealing clothes or shows nudity. Body-revealing clothes include mini-skirts, tight skirts or evening gowns which expose cleavage, "short"-shorts, "see-through" clothes, halter dress, or bathing suits. Nudity is defined as unclothed models, including models translucent under apparel and lingerie, models clothed in nothing except a towel, or models depicted with no clothing. "Close-up" shots where the shoulders of the models are bare are considered as nudity.

(7) Independence and Self-Assertiveness. The analysis of stereotyping in print advertisements can be approached from a different perspective here. Instead of focusing on the more manifest content of an advertisement, the focal point here is the more subtle representation of an ad that provide important clues to gender relations. In addition to centering attention on such details as the use of the hands, facial expressions, body positioning, and relative sizes of men and women in print advertisements, one should look at the "big picture" to obtain overall message of an ad. This category was added to evaluate female model's overall images in terms of independence and self-assertiveness.

Sampling

The magazine advertisement was the unit of analysis for this study. Advertisements that featured human subjects were collected from 1979 and 1991 women's popular magazines. Randomly sample of advertisements from the 1979 and 1991 issues of Vogue, Mademoiselle, and McCall's. These sources were selected to represent women's magazines. These three magazines were on the list of 100 bestselling U.S. magazines provided by the World Almanac 1991 and had high index numbers on female readers provided by the Simmons Market Research Bureau 1989.

Seven advertisements are randomly selected from each month's issue of three magazines from January to December in 1979 and 1991. Advertisements containing a picture of human being and covering at least one magazine page were selected randomly from each issue of the three magazines published in 1979 and 1991. To get a probability sample, the "random number table" provided by Earl Babbie (1992) was used. Using the random number table, seven numbers were picked which were smaller than the last page number of each issue of a specific magazine. Since magazine advertisements were not usually counted in the page number, the closest advertisement to the page number was selected in the random sample table. The sample for this study was random sample without replacement. Repeated ads were not selected for the sample because the range of the advertisements was important for this study. For example, more than one Revlon ad using the same visuals was not selected. This resulted in 252 samples in 1979 magazine advertisements and 252 samples in 1991 counterparts. Thus, a total of 504 magazine advertisements were selected for the sample of this research.

Measurement of Variables

Table I summarizes the operationalization and coding categories of the seven dimensions used in this research. Seven forms of gender displays were measured: relative size, the feminine touch, function ranking, the ritualization of subordination, licensed withdrawal, body display, and independence (self-assertiveness). The first five categories are the behavior groupings that Goffman (1979) found to exist as a result of his study. The last two categories are added by the researcher. The dependent variable is the frequency of gender displays in the print advertisements.

For each coding categories, different scores were assigned; the score of 1 if it is a stereotypical behavior (e.g., male taller, male instructing female, etc.) and the score of 0 if it is nonstereotypical (e.g., male not taller, male not instructing female, etc.). By adding up the scores, the overall "stereotyping score" for each advertisement was measured. A big score indicates more stereotyping and a little score indicates less stereotyping. When the "yes = 1, no = 0" measurement scheme was summed into an index, it creates a ratio-level scale. By adding up all of the scores for an advertisement, a "stereotyping score" was obtained ranging from a minimum score of 0 (meaning no stereotyping) to a maximum score of 15 (meaning high level of stereotyping).

Then the mean stereotyping scores of 1979 and 1991 based on the seven categories were compared. For the hypothesis testing, the mean stereotyping scores of 1979 and 1991 were compared. Since other categories except the "Relative Size," "Body Display," and "Independence," have more than two operationalizations, this resulted in the weighing problem. In order not to give more weight to concepts with more operationalizations, we used the sum of the mean stereotyping scores of each categories and divided the sum by the number of variables in each category, then added these new variables to obtain the weighted stereotyping index for 1979 and 1991. The hypothesis was tested with an independent t-test, with year as the independent variable and various stereotyping scores as the dependent variables.

Inter-Coder Reliability

The coding instrument was pretested to work out any coding problems. A composite reliability coefficient was computed using Holsti's formula. Inter-coder agreement was computed by dividing the number of agreements by the number of ads attempted (ex. 45 agreements/50 ads = .90). For this research, the average inter-coder agreement was 0.86 (43/50 = .86), and the composite reliability was 0.92.

RESULTS

Overall, the extent of sexism in magazine ads remained approximately the same from 1979 to 1991. The hypothesis is unsupported, although there are some significant differences between the two years on some variables. Some of these actually run counter to the hypothesis. Still, the portrayal of women in ads has not been changed much since 1979. Twelve years after the Goffman study, magazine advertisements are still showing the same stereotyped images of women. The findings by 17 variables are reported in Table II.

Findings by 17 Variables

(1) Height Relationship. The variable "height relationship" appeared infrequently in magazine advertisements in 1979 and 1991. However, when the behavior arrangements were applicable, males were featured frequently in the taller positions. Although men were frequently portrayed as taller, this size difference was not very large. Many of the portrayals were nearly equal in height, but to maintain coding consistency, it was necessary to note when the male was even slightly taller.

In the 1979 sample, 68 ads showed males and females together, and 51.5 percent of the ads showed males taller than females. In the 1991 sample, only 43 ads showed male and female together, and 46.5 percent of the ads showed male taller than female. The cross-year comparison shows that the height relationship between advertisements models has not been changed much between the two years, but the change observed was in the direction of the hypothesis.

(2) Using Fingers and Hands to Cradle or Caress Objects. It was notable that this gender behavior was frequently shown in both era (105 ads in 1979 and 103 ads in 1991). Among 251 ads in 1979, 41.8 percent showed hands cradling or caressing objects. Among 249 ads in 1991, 41.4 percent showed hands cradling or caressing objects. The cross-year comparison shows that there is no significant change in terms of this variable.

(3) Self-Touching. Goffman said this ritualistic self-touching conveys a sense of one's body being delicate and precious and can be distinguished from the more utilitarian use of hands, and fingers as in grasping, manipulating, or holding. 251 advertisements in 1979 were analyzed, and 38.2 percent showed self-touching behavior. In 1991, 40.2 percent of 251 advertisements show this gender display. There was no significant difference between years.

(4) Instructing Role. Not many advertisements showed male and female together (68 ads for 1979 and 43 ads for 1991). In 1979, 19.1 percent of 68 ads depicted male instructing female. In 1991, only 4.8 percent of 43 ads showed this gender behavior. The cross-year comparison shows that there is significant decrease in this gender display, thus supporting the hypothesis for this one measure.

(5) Serving Other Person. 32.4 percent of 68 ads showed females serving another person in 1979, while 19.0 percent of 43 ads showed the same gender display. The cross-year comparison shows that there is no significant difference between the two years, although the change is in the direction of the hypothesis.

(6) Conducting Superior Role. 35.3 percent of 68 ads depicted males in superior role in 1979, while 38.1 percent of 42 ads depicted males in the same way. There was no significant difference between the two years.

(7) Lowering Oneself Physically. Not many advertisements showed female's lowering oneself physically (22.2 percent in 1979 and 19.3 percent in 1991). There was no significant difference between the two years.

(8) Bashful Knee Bend. Bashful knee bend was one of the most frequent gender displays found in this study. 31.7 percent of 252 ads in 1979 and 37.5 percent of 251 ads in 1991 showed this behavior. However, this gender display has not been increased or decreased over twelve years.

(9) Body Cant or Head Cant. 31.7 percent of 252 ads and 37.5 percent of 251 ads in 1991 showed body cant or head cant. This behavior appeared in advertisements consistently in both years.

(10) Lying or Sitting on Bed or Floor. Lying or sitting on bed or floor was relatively infrequent gender behavior in both years. 14.7 percent of 251 ads in 1979 and 12.0 percent of 250 ads in 1991 showed this behavior. There was no significant change between the two years.

(11) Expansive smile. Expansive smile appeared in 32.9 percent of the 1979 ads and 28.5 percent of ads in 1991. The cross-year analysis shows no significant difference between the two years.

(12) Hand Covering Mouth or Face. This gender behavior was surprisingly infrequent in both years. Of the 252 ads in the 1979 sample, only 16 (6.3 percent) depicted hand covering mouth or face. Of the 252 ads in the 1991 sample, 22 ads (8.7 percent) showed this gender behavior. The frequency of the presence of this behavior did not differ by year.

(13) Head or Eye Gaze Aversion. As Table II shows, there was a significant difference in head or eye gaze aversion. Surprisingly, and counter to the hypothesis, the 1991 sample showed head or eye gaze aversion more frequently than the 1979 sample. More female models in 1991 than in 1979 averted their heads or eyes from other person or avoided looking at the camera directly.

(14) Maintaining Telephone Conversation. Maintaining telephone conversation was an extremely infrequent gender behavior in the magazine advertisements. Only 2 ads out of 252 samples in 1979 showed this behavior. In 1991, only 1 ad out of 252 samples showed this behavior. Not surprisingly, two of the advertisers showing females talking on the telephone were telephone companies.

(15) Withdrawal Gaze from Scene at Large. The cross-year analysis shows that there is more stereotyping in 1991 advertisements in terms of withdrawal gaze from scene at large, counter to the hypothesis. This is a surprising and disappointing result. Of the 251 ads in the 1979 sample, 57 (22.7 percent) showed withdrawal gaze from the scene at large whereas 80 ads (33.2 percent) out of 241 samples in 1991 showed the same behavior.

(16) Body-Revealing Clothes or Nudity. Magazine advertisements from 1991 contained more nudity and body-revealing clothes than magazine advertisements from 1979. 24.6 percent of the 248 ads in 1979 showed the female model wearing body-revealing clothes or showing nudity. In 1991, 31.9 percent of the 248 ads showed the body display. Some advertisements showed female models wearing tailored clothing similar to a man's, with a bold stare at the camera. Such aggressive features, however, were often combined with signals of appeal and allure, such as a reduction in body height or size through kneeling or sitting, an appeasing smile or head tilt to one side, a position of instability.

(17) Independence and Self-Assertiveness. The result shows that 40.9 percent of the 252 ads in 1979 and 35.3 percent of the 249 ads in 1991 showed women as not having independence and self-assertiveness. There was no significant difference by year, although the change was opposite the direction predicted by the hypothesis.

Findings by 7 Categories

Coding of the advertisements for Goffman categories revealed that some traits are appearing infrequently in contemporary ads. Two categories-relative size and function ranking - were found so seldom, the categories could be considered to no longer apply.

In the procedures to obtain the mean stereotyping scores of each category, a weighing problem was considered. In order not to give more weight to the categories which have more than one variable, the sum of mean stereotyping scores of each categories is divided by the number of variables in each category. Then the new variables are summed to produce the weighted index. For example, the mean stereotyping scores for the ritualization of subordination was computed as follows: (1) adding up the scores obtained from five variables, (2) dividing the sum of mean stereotyping scores by 5. (There are five variables in the ritualization of subordination.)

The independent t-test conducted (Table III) shows that there are some significant differences between the mean stereotyping scores by year in the categories of the licensed withdrawal and body display, but that they are counter to the hypothesized direction - they show more stereotyped behavior in 1991 than in 1979. The findings by 7 categories are presented in Table III.

(1) Relative Size. Height relationships between males and females in magazine advertisements has not changed since 1979. The mean stereotyping score for 1979 was .51 and the score for 1991 was .46. There was no significant difference by year.

(2) Feminine Touch. The feminine touch category shows no difference in the mean stereotyping scores between 1979 and 1991.

(3) Function Ranking. Function ranking has seemed to cease in most modern business advertising, since not many advertisements showed men and women in a social hierarchy. However, the mean stereotyping scores by year were not significantly different.

(4) Ritualization of Subordination. Goffman catalogued actions that made women subordinate such as lowering of a female body part as in deference, females lying down, the bashful knee bend, canting postures, and expansive smile. Magazine advertisements in 1979 and 1991 showed very close mean stereotyping scores.

(5) Licensed Withdrawal. Licensed withdrawal relates to women often not being fully within the action or the scene, but instead gazing off or self-absorbed, or, more importantly, seemingly "lost" or "mentally drifting." Surprisingly, magazine advertisements in 1991 showed more stereotyping than those in 1979 in this category.

(6) Body Display. The question of whether magazine advertising contains more suggestive and provocative sexual content in 1991 than in 1979 was answered. The finding that women in 1991 were more often depicted in "sexy" dress or nude than in 1979 implies that the advertising industry has become interested in more sexually explicit and provocative portrayals of women in magazine advertising. (7) Independence (self-assertiveness). The mean stereotyping scores between 1979 and 1991 were not significantly different in this category.

DISCUSSION

This research showed that few changes have been made in the images of women in magazine advertisements since Goffman's 1979 study. The findings indicate that the images of women in 1991 advertisements did not significantly change from the images found in 1979 advertisements. However, distribution or dispersion of stereotypical portrayal of women did change. In the categories of licensed withdrawal and body display, the magazine advertisements from 1991 showed more stereotyping of women than those from 1979.

Two of Goffman's categories - Relative Size and Function Ranking - were not prevalent depictions in magazine advertisements. Overall, many advertisements showed only females or males rather than the two genders together or a family scene. This might mean that advertisements are frequently targeting more specific audiences. Advertisements for cosmetics-typically the products associated with the sexiest female images - have begun to feature more powerful and independent female gender displays.

As shown in this research, the process of change in advertising images is a slow one. Print media advertisements analyzed in this study appear to be slow in changing the traditional demeaning roles of women. Investigations of women's magazines corroborated this assertion. At first, only superficial cultural alterations are transferred to advertisements, while "the underlying ideological foundation remains untouched" (Umiker-Sebeok, 1981, p. 210). Advertisements are conservative and tied to the prevailing ideology of the culture. There has not been much change in the portrayal of women in advertising, perhaps because advertising has this powerful role: to depict women not necessarily how they actually behave, but rather, how we think women behave. Furthermore, according to Goffman, this depiction serves the social purpose of convincing us that this is how women are, or want to be, or should be. It seems that only superficial cultural alterations are transferred to advertisements, while the underlying ideological foundation remains untouched.

The results of this study are not very surprising, since magazine advertisements are not meant to serve as social primers enumerating the cultural rules of correct and proper behavior. They are merely designed to naturalize people and things in such a way as to maximize demand by defining social relations in terms of the consumption of goods and services.

Using women in a sexist tone in advertisements has more profound social implications. If the media do mold expectations, opinions, and attitudes, then the audience of these ads may accept the way women are depicted as reality. What may be needed is the portrayal of women in roles that actually reflect their perceived attributes and their individuality.

One important goal of this study has been to investigate the changes of stereotyped images of women in women's magazines between 1979 and 1991 by using the Goffman's gender behaviors as a conceptual basis. Comparing advertisements from Goffman's era to more modern dates is a way to expose changes in the meaning system about gender. This study shows that some gender behaviors reported by Goffman - such as the "height relationship," "conducting the instructing role," and "maintaining telephone conversation" - are no longer prevalent in modern magazine advertisements. Two categories - relative size and function ranking - were found so seldom, the categories could be considered to no longer apply.

Therefore, one may suggest that the overall findings of this study were consistent with Goffman's 1979 findings except in two categories mentioned above. This study indicates that gender behaviors displayed in magazine advertisements have not changed much since Goffman's 1979 findings.

A few additional studies logically follow from this study. The first would use the magazine advertisements and would examine the way men are depicted in them. A comparison between the results of the two studies would reveal the differences in the representation of men and women in advertising. The second would be a cross-cultural comparison between cultures (e.g., the United States of America and Korea, Japan, or Taiwan).

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