In Fashion and Beauty Ads, Less Skin and More Empowerment
By Ray A. Smith
Makers of clothes and cosmetics are starting to keep highly sexualized or unrealistic images of women from their advertising in response to pressure from millennial women and their younger counterparts in Generation Z.
An ad campaign by New York-based designer Alexander Wang debuting March 5 will show no women’s faces or bodies. Instead, it will display the clothes and what Mr. Wang calls “the spirit” of the women who wear them. “To do another fashion picture wasn’t exciting to me,” Mr. Wang said. Just last fall, his label’s ads included an image of a scantily clad model sprawled atop theater seats with an Alexander Wang handbag between her legs.
Even before the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment, many of the millennial and Generation Z women these brands are courting had been protesting the stereotypical, highly sexualized or unrealistic depictions of women in ads.
“Part of it is the modern push for gender equality, but also because a super sexualized ad is going to make [the brand] seem uncreative and outdated to them,” said Rachel Saunders, insights and strategy director at Cassandra, a research firm that focuses on young consumers. “For young women, buying beauty and fashion products today has less to do with attracting a partner than it did with previous generations. They see it as self-care or being my best self.”
Before, women opposed to such depictions didn’t have the megaphone of social media, she added. They also had fewer alternatives if they decided to give up a particular brand. However, the internet has shifted the balance in the shopper’s favor, giving her more clothing choices and a voice to influence brands. “Power players have to respond now because consumers have so many ways of accessing alternatives,” Ms. Saunders said. “That wasn’t true for previous generations. For women who wanted to look chic, there were fewer options.”
Last year, Banana Republic posted a video ad on Twitter that was labeled sexist by some of the brand’s followers, for describing its pants as “slimming” on a woman while playing up the trousers’ performance attributes when on a man. The label’s Spring 2018 campaign video, released this year, stars a real-life couple, the Olympic fencers Ysaora Thibus and Race Imboden, fencing in Banana Republic garb. This time the ad plays up the clothes’ quality and fit for both sexes.
CVS Pharmacy, which carries big cosmetics lines including L’Oréal and Maybelline, said in January it will ban excessive retouching and other altering of all its beauty images, to promote female empowerment and combat the unhealthy pursuit of physical perfection. The company is working with the brands it carries to develop specific guidelines. “Our customers are predominantly women and this issue relates to the health and well-being of women and girls,” said Erin Pensa, a CVS spokeswoman.
In future ad campaigns, CVS says it won’t use materially altered images such as the one on the left in favor of photos like the one on the right, which is retouched but not materially altered. CVS defines materially altered as ‘changing or enhancing a person’s shape, size, proportion, skin or eye color, wrinkles or any other individual characteristics.’
Luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo late last year ran a promotional video that some fashion followers assailed on social media as sexist and tone-deaf in the #MeToo climate. In the ad, a model in a slinky red minidress is ogled by men as she strides along in high-heeled boots. The video is still on the Jimmy Choo Facebook page, YouTube account and Instagram feed, though the comment feature apparently was disabled on Instagram. The company didn’t comment on the uproar and declined to comment for this article.