Kasey Windels, University of Florida Sara Champlin, University of North Texas Summer Shelton, University of Florida Yvette Sterbenk, Ithaca College
Femvertising messages are advertisements that aim to empower women through pro-female messages, and the category has grown tremendously since the success of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The industry has celebrated the new category with several new awards, and consumers share the messages of empowerment through social media. However, some research has shown that these messages use post-feminist discourses, which draw on feminist signifiers, strip them of their political meaning, and use those messages in the service of selling. Using a feminist critical standpoint and textual analysis, this study analyzes the 26 campaigns that have won #Femvertising Awards since 2015, seeking to determine whether and which elements of post-feminist discourse were used in these award-winning femvertising campaigns. A deep understanding of the potential flaws in these otherwise powerful emotional messages is necessary if advertising wishes truly to empower women with femvertising messages.
Saturday March 30, 2019 8:30am - 10:00am MDT
Normandy B
