Feminist Literary Criticism and the

Deconstruction of Ads: A Postmodern View

of Advertising and Consumer Responses
BARBARA B. STERN*

This article examines text and consumer responses from the perspective of post-
modern feminist literary criticism. It uses a feminist framework to incorporate the
issues of advertising as gendered text and consumer responses as gendered read-
ings into consumer research. The article begins with a brief background discussion
of feminist literary theory to introduce the concept of gendered text and to set forth
the "reading" methodology developed to identify it. Next, this method is demon-
strated in a feminist reading of two advertising figures-the Marlboro Man and the
Dakota Woman. Then, the article presents a feminist perspective on gendered read-

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ing-different male and female reading styles relevant to consumers and ads. Last,
ideas about gendered texts and readers are integrated into ongoing consumer re-
search on attitude toward the ad, inferencing, and empathy.

. In all fields, the impetus for the examina-
tion of the ways in which gender shapes
experience and behavior has come primar-
ily from the feminist movement. [PATRO-
CINIO P. SCHWEICKART AND ELIZABETH A.
FLYNN 1988, p. xiii]
reader-response and postmodern feminist criticism co-
alesce to frame Holland's question about literature-
"Who reads what how?" (1975, p. 12)-in a consumer
research context. In this context, the question breaks
into subquestions about advertising text ("what"),

M
uch consumer research focuses on better ways
of understanding consumer responses to the
language used in ads. For the most part, this research
makes several assumptions: first, that language is a neu-
tral medium for transmitting information to be pro-
cessed by recipients (Scott 1990); second, that its mean-
ing is the same for all recipients; and third, that this
singular meaning can be comprehended in a "correct"
way (as opposed to being miscomprehended in a way
that the source did not intend). These assumptions un-
derlie the premise of a stable advertising text as a stim-
ulus to evoke a set of "proper" consumer responses.
However, recent scholarship from a field not ordinarily
consulted by consumer behavior researchers-post-
modern feminist literary criticism-suggests that the
premise ought to be reexamined to ascertain whether
the triad of assumptions on which it rests holds true.
The purpose of this article is to begin the reexami-
nation by drawing on the body ofliterary theory where
'Barbara B. Stern is associate professor of Marketing at Rutgers-
The State University of New Jersey, Bradley Hall, Newark, New Jersey
07102. She thanks the four reviewers and Kent Monroe for their
supportive and helpful comments. She also thanks Marcia Flicker
for her advice and assistance. This research was supported in part by
a Rutgers Graduate School Research Award, 1990-1991.
556
about the consumer ("who"), and about the response
process ("how"). To examine them, a framework from
feminist criticism is adapted using gender as the seg-
menting variable (Fig. 1) to recast the query for com-
mercial text.
This article begins by briefly discussing the back-
ground of post modern feminist literary theory to intro-
duce the concept of gendered text and the deconstruc-
tive "reading" methodology developed to analyze it.
This method is then demonstrated in a reading of two
advertising figures-the Marlboro Man and the Dakota
Woman. Next, ideas about gendered reading-different
male and female reading styles-relevant to consumers
and to ads are summarized. Last, feminist theory is in-
tegrated into ongoing consumer research on attitude
toward the ad, inferencing, and empathy. This article
thus proposes the postmodern feminist perspective as
an addition to consumer research on gender, which to
date has not drawn on feminist or deconstructionist
theory. The purpose of taking a postmodern approach
is to illuminate the gender assumptions in advertising
when it is read as one form of discourse characteristic
of the patriarchal society.
To integrate this approach, it is first necessary to pro-
vide some background information about postmodern
feminism. The current movement stems not only from
the earlier feminism of the 1960s and 1970s but also
© 1993 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc.• Vol. 19. March 1993
All rights reserved. 0093-5301/93/1904-0005$2.00
FEMINIST CRITICISM OF ADVERTISING
FIGURE 1
FEMINIST FRAMEWORK FOR "READING" TEXT
Gendered Text and Gendered Readers
/ \
A A
Advertisements Consumers
Androcentric Gynocentric Men Women
from the postmodern revolution in literary theory that
took place at the same time. The revolution challenged
the traditional assumptions that a singular meaning-
what a text is about-was produced by the author (see
Hirsch 1967), resided in the text, and was received by
the reader. Beginning in the 1960s (see Bleich 1978),
"reader-response criticism" (see Holland 1975) ex-
pressed a new view of a dynamic and transactional re-
lationship between readers and texts (Schweickart
1988). By the 1970s, Derrida's (1976, 1978) decon-
struction theory became the most widely used "ensem-
ble of rules" (Montefiore in Crowley 1989, p. 1) for
textual analysis. Most postmodern critics now view
meaning as a continuum, in which the act of making
sense is anchored by the text at one endpoint and by
the reader at the other.
When specifically feminist postmodern critics (Stern
1989) examined the reader-text relationship (Abrams
1988), they drew from deconstruction theory as well as
from earlier feminist criticism to emphasize the binary
nature of gender as a fundamental determinant of
meaning (Smith 1971). The postmoderns built on the
first wave of feminist writings that revealed male dom-
inance and subordination of women in "sexist" liter-
ature. Their mission was to raise society's consciousness
by bringing out the previously hidden androcentric bias
in cultural texts. This bias informed the patriarchal view
of maleness as the human norm and femaleness as the
"other" -that which is defined as nonmale (de Beauvoir
1952). These early feminists challenged the patriarchal
view of culture as universal by pointing out that it only
appeared that way because the male point of view sup-
pressed the female one (Russ 1972). Thus, the precur-
sors of postmodern feminism exposed the hidden male-
dominant power structure in texts in which women were
marginalized, subjugated, or altogether absent (Kra-
merae 1981).
Contemporary feminists turned to deconstruction
theory to challenge the neutrality of text. They identify
language as a vehicle for conveying male power-Der-
rida's "phallogocentricism" (Abrams 1988)-and in-
voke Derrida's concept of di./ferance (Culler 1982) to
explore the "difference" between male-oriented (an-
drocentric) and female-oriented (gynocentric) text and
557
the "deference" offemaleness to maleness in discourse.
Their aim is twofold: first, to illuminate the socially
constructed meaning of "male" and "female" as binary
opposites, with one term taking on meaning only in
relation to the other, and second, to expose the privi-
leging of maleness. Postmodern feminist criticism thus
sets out to document male dominance and female sub-
ordination in discourse newly perceived as gendered
rather than as sex-neutral (Ruthven 1990). To this end,
reader responses are segmented by gender to account
for masculine and feminine texts and for male and fe-
male readers. This article extends postmodern feminist
criticism (see Staton 1987) to consumer research by
treating advertising as a form of discourse with literary
dimensions and by adapting literary theory to present
gender as a core category in the experience of text.
FEMINIST METHODOLOGY
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AND GENDERED TEXT
We begin by adapting a methodology originally de-
veloped by feminist critics for identifying gendered lit-
erary text-"sexing" a text (Fetterley 1978; Russ
1972)-to unearth underlying gender suppositions in
ads. The method is the simple one of sex reversal-an
imaginary reversal of the sex of a character to that of
the opposite sex. The purpose is to uncover traits and
values so habitually defined as "masculine" or "femi-
nine" that they are unimaginable in the other sex. For
example, try to imagine the sex reversal of a hero such
as Melville's Captain Ahab-who is then read as a
woman obsessed by a white whale and leading an ex-
pedition to hunt it down. Such a reversal is ludicrous,
for the sex-changed character's values, fantasies, and
daily life are not part of the reality offemale experience.
The sex-reversal method permits both dismantling
of male/female differences under the surface of text and
exposure of male-dominant ideas about masculinity and
femininity. Patriarchal culture empowers an ideology
in which femininity is conceived of from the male point
of view, and women occupy but "a small corner of what
we think of officially as possible human experience"
(Russ 1972, p. 4). By imaginatively transforming a hero/
heroine into a member of the opposite sex, the behavior
evaluated as appropriate to and desirable for each sex
is exposed not only as a set of expectations determined
by cultural conditioning but also as one that confines
women more than it does men. The method demon-
strates that literature and language, far from being sex
neutral, are instead vehicles for conveying different
value systems for men and women (Allen 1987), often
to the detriment of women.
Androcentric Advertising Text: "Reading"
the Marlboro Man
The method can be transplanted from literary criti-
cism to analysis of advertising text by reversing the sex
558
of an advertising character just as feminist critics re-
versed that of a literary character. Androcentric values
are at the heart of advertising conventions adapted from
male-oriented fiction that subordinate, dominate, or
ignore women. In androcentric literature, the protag-
onist is male; the cast of characters may also be all male;
and the hero's identity is centered on autonomous
achievement in the external world (Cawelti 1976). In
ads, as in literature, androcentricity operates by de-
picting femininity in stereotypes that disempower
women by portraying them as subservient to men (see
Goffman 1979), in need of completion by men, or sim-
ply not present at all. Androcentrism can be revealed
by asking Barber's (1977, p. 223) question-"What if
[Melville's] Bartleby were a woman?" -about an ad-
vertising hero-"What if the Marlboro Man were a
woman?" The feminist question reveals frontier life as
a male American Wild West fantasy whose most evident
trait is the complete absence of women (Fiedler 1960).
A rereading of the Marlboro Man as a symbol of the
"universal in man" (Vacker 1992) brings out the fem-
inist issue (Camargo 1987; Lohof 1971) of women's ex-
clusion from universality. This author's rereading first
describes the androcentric characteristics of the Marl-
boro Man and then uses sex reversal to see whether he
possesses verisimilitude as an imagined Marlboro
Woman.
The Marlboro Man is shown nearly full face in a 1990
ad featuring a head and upper-body shot that dominates
the right side of a full-page ad. The figure takes up ap-
proximately half of the space and is set against a red
and white background, with only a portion of the brand
name visible. He is wearing a shearling jacket with traces
of snow in the folds, a dark shirt whose collar is visible,
brown gloves, and a white cowboy hat. His hands are
folded on top of each other, and he is facing left, gazing
away from the camera. The hair that can be seen is dark
and neatly trimmed, and his brow is furrowed, with a
deep crease between his eyes. He is suntanned, with
deep wrinkles in his eye area and a five o'clock shadow.
His cigarette is held firmly in his lips, pointing toward
the letters "Marl" in the brand name-the only letters
that can be seen, for he is standing in front of the others.
Since the 1960s, this figure of "a silent cowboy" has
been an acknowledged symbol of masculinity (Camargo
1987, p. 469), typical of what Fiedler (1960) defined as
the archetypal American hero. He is a lone man on the
frontier bent on taming the wilderness (see Kolodny
1980), a modern reworking of a cultural icon descended
both from the cowboy in frontier lore (Daniel Boone,
Paul Bunyan, and Buffalo Bill Cody) and from the
"man's man" hero found in the works of Melville,
Hemingway, and Mailer. He embodies the macho val-
ues of the Wild West: an outdoorsy cowhand, usually
smoking, who frequents wild and lonely places. Even
when there are other people around, he stands or rides
alone in the crowd, relating to no one. It is most salient
here that he is never shown in the presence of women-
JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
their absence from the ads signifies their unimportance
in the macho world.
If we reverse the sex of the Marlboro Man without
making any other changes in his appearance or behav-
ior-and thereby turn him into the "Marlboro
Woman"-the text reveals someone who neither looks
nor behaves like a typical advertising heroine. A sex-
reversed transformation requires that the character's
looks, deeds, and values be held constant in order to
see how they fit someone of the opposite sex. The imag-
inary Marlboro Woman runs counter to what society
deems a positive image of femininity-she is wrinkled,
has a cigarette dangling from her lips, favors geograph-
ical isolation, avoids emotional interaction with others,
herds cattle either alone or with other women, and never
appears in the company of men. While the Marlboro
Man evidences qualities suitable for an American sym-
bol of masculinity, the same traits and values would be
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inappropriate in an advertising campaign designed to
position smoking as a desirable feminine activity.
Gynocentric Advertising Text: "Reading"
The Dakota Woman
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company has developed just
such a campaign for Dakota cigarettes, in which the
Dakota Woman is the Marlboro Man's female analogue.
She is shown in a 1990 ad as one of six people-four
women and two men. Like the Marlboro Man, the Da-
kota Woman is on the right side of the picture and is
the largest female figure. However, she is depicted lean-
ing on a taller male companion, whose arm is around
her neck. Her left hand covers his hand, and her right
arm is around his waist. She is wearing a suede coat, a
paisley vest, white jeans and a T-shirt, and a hip belt
decorated with a number of dangling keys. Her hair is
long and wavy, and she wears sunglasses that are slightly
slipping off her nose, probably because her head is in-
clined downward. Her male companion is long-haired,
wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, jeans, and
fingerless gloves. He looks straight ahead and is holding
a cigarette in his right hand. The other women in the
background have long hair and are either holding cig-
arettes or smoking. They wear denim and leather, as
does the second man, who is dressed all in black.
The Dakota Woman is the Marlboro Man's virtual
opposite, a composite of conventional feminine traits
borrowed from gynocentric text (Allen 1987). This type
of text features a woman as heroine, a central love re-
lationship, and domestic and nurturant values (Stern
1991 a, 1991 b). Even though women are the main char-
acters, they gain identity only through association with
men, for their values center on love, marriage, family,
and social life. The "Dakota Woman" (Dagnoli 1990)
depicts a feminized version of frontier values; her looks,
life-style, and behavior embody the feminine rather than
the masculine American dream. In this way, she resem-
bles Annie Oakley, who, throughout her long career as
FEMINIST CRITICISM OF ADVERTISING
a sharpshooter, never lost her feminine appeal (Sayers
1981).
Examination of the Dakota Woman's appeal from a
feminist perspective permits a close look at the way
that the details and setting act as semiotic signifiers of
gender (Scott 1990). These signifiers show the limita-
tions on female autonomy, for they commoditize fem-
ininity by depicting women as interchangeable and sex-
ually available and circumscribe women's sphere of
activity by showing them as passive dependents. Note
that, in contrast to the Marlboro Man, there is no single
Dakota Woman-instead, there are four. Further, the
one largest in size neither stands upright nor alone.
Rather, she leans toward the man shown next to her,
physically so close that they appear fused from hip to
shoulder. The intertwining indicates a sexual relation-
ship, reinforced by product symbols. The keys on her
belt are an especially significant sexual symbol (de Vries
1976) whose directionality and location above her gen-
itals announces sexual availability. This allusive refer-
ence to invisible pubic hair is concretized by the role
of the heroine's visible hair-another conventional
sexual symbol-in commingling her body with that of
her male companion. Additionally, the social setting
reinforces the Dakota Woman's dependence, in contrast
to the Marlboro Man's self-reliance in an isolated mi-
lieu.
A Resisting Reading: The Dakota Man?
To postmodern feminists, identification of gynocen-
tric text leads to discovery of the limits that circumscribe
women characters (Fetterley 1978). A "resisting read-
ing" of the Dakota ad questions the gender asymmetry
that delimits the role of women as frontier heroines by
showing them as incapable of standing alone. The fem-
inist question-what can a heroine do?-exposes the
limitations of women's roles, for "of all possible actions
people can do in fiction, very few can be done by
women" (Russ 1972, p. 5). If we reverse the Dakota
Woman's sex by asking "What if she were the Dakota
Man?" the first thing we notice is that there would only
be one of her. The absence of a single dominant heroine
in the original indicates that women are not accorded
the mythic status that men are, for women are not seen
as unique individuals. The implications of secondary
status become even more explicit if we try to imagine
a "Dakota Man" who has no identity except what he
derives from a relationship of dependency. Additional
limitations become evident when the Dakota Woman's
sexual and product symbolism are transferred to the
imaginary "Dakota Man": he is tied to civilization to
satisfy needs for clothing, jewelry, and grooming aids
and cannot walk upright on his own. These nonmas-
culine traits point up the unacceptibility of passivity
and dependence as appropriate values for male adver-
tising heroes.
In sum, the feminist mission of identifying the an-
drocentric literary text, differentiating it from the gyn-
559
ocentric text, and exposing the hidden gender assump-
tions in both also seems applicable to advertising text.
Neither the sex-reversed "Marlboro Woman" nor the
"Dakota Man" is a plausible advertising image, for nei-
ther conforms to what society deems attractive for a
member of that sex. The sex-reversal methodology
makes the gendered text vivid by uncovering the ex-
pectations true to the experiences of men that differ
from those of women and that subordinate women by
denying their autonomy.
GENDERED CONSUMERS: MALE
AND FEMALE READING STYLES
Once gendered text is identified, the next feminist
step entails examining the gendered reader-the who
of reading. Feminist studies of different male and female
strategies of reading (Crawford and Chaffin 1988) rep-
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resent a source of insight into gender-based consumer
responses to advertising text. However, it should be
noted that when literary critics analyze different reading
styles, their interest lies more in the direction of dis-
covering new aspects of texts and readers than in the
direction of providing social science "proofs." Although
this article turns to critics who have conducted small-
group open-ended surveys-notably Bleich (1988),
Flynn (1988), Holland (1975), and Rosenblatt (1978)-
their studies' limitations are evident. The subjects are
few in number (five for Holland, eight for Bleich, in-
cluding himself, and 52 for Flynn) and are students in
a classroom, instructed to write responses to literary
masterworks. Despite these caveats, it is important to
point out that these studies aim at bridging the gap be-
tween behavioral research in the psychology of reading
(see Downing and Leong 1982) and critical studies of
literature, and as such represent an empirically oriented
branch of literary criticism with the i)otential for con-
tributing to empirical consumer research.
Rosenblatt (1978) was one of the first to recast ped-
agogical research on male-female attitudes toward
learning to read in feminist terms by formulating a di-
chotomous schema of reading styles based on cultural
theories of male and female value differences found in
psychology, sociology, and communication (Chodorow
1978; Coates 1988). Her theory was tested by Bleich
(1988) and by Flynn (1988), both of whom sought to
bring an empirical orientation to feminist criticism by
conducting research using literary stimuli to elicit stu-
dent responses. Both found differences in studies of
men's and women's responses to narrative texts such
as Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and James Joyce's
"Araby." Their findings show patterns of readers' re-
sponses to stories along gender lines that may contribute
to the study of consumers' responses to ads.
In brief, Bleich (1988) found men to be detached
readers in that they tended to see (judge, evaluate, or
think about) a story from the outside. Conversely, Flynn
(1988) found the female response to be participatory,
560
in that women tended to see (experience, feel, or em-
pathize with) a story from the inside. These differences
echo gender differences found in consumer research
(Hirschman 1991; Meyers-Levy 1989), often expressed
in Bakan's (1967) terms as male ("agentic") versus fe-
male ("communal"). When the concept of agentic and
communal roles was studied in reference to gender dif-
ferences in susceptibility to persuasion by advertising
messages (Meyers-Levy 1988; O'Keefe 1990), evidence
of different male/female sex-role orientations was found
to affect the bases on which appeals were judged and
the favorableness of the judgments. Later consumer re-
search on male/female processing styles (Meyers-Levy
1989) based on differences in hemispheric lateralization
(Philips 1989) has supported the concept of gender dif-
ferences in processing verbal/visual text.
The study of sex differences in processing text may
be enriched by breaking down the complex entity of
"text" into simpler component parts, as Bleich (1988)
does. His domains of male and female response differ-
ences-determination of authorial intent, information
seeking versus experience seeking, inferencing, and
empathetic versus evaluative reactions-will be treated
in detail, for they are relevant to similar areas of interest
in consumer research to be discussed in this article's
last section.
Authorial Voice: The Tale and the Teller
The most salient difference in the way men and
women read prose fiction was found to be the way each
sex perceives the intention of the teller, often called the
"authorial voice" (see Booth 1983). In Bleich's (1988)
study, men perceived the presence ofa strong authorial
voice and construed a story's meaning and logic in terms
of consequences flowing from the teller's intent. Anal-
ysis of the respondents' statements showed that the male
reader's point of orientation began with an attempt to
figure out the author's purpose-that is, to find the
"reason why" the story was being told. In this sense,
male readers were considered to be more distant from
a text because they stepped outside the story (detached
from it) to see what the author was trying to do and to
decide whether or not the task was accomplished.
Flynn's (1988) study found that women readers dif-
fered, for they construed a story as a world unto itself
where authorial intent was less important than the sto-
ry's existence in its own right. That is, when the subjects
were directed to summarize the story in their own
words, the women's responses placed more emphasis
on the tale than on the teller. Analysis of respondents'
statements showed that the female reader's orientation
centered on her personal growth and that her response
to fiction was based on her sense of participation in the
characters' lives. The female reader's response to fiction,
then, was grounded more on a sense of engagement
with the story than on an analysis of the author's means
and ends.
JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
Reading Things into Text:
The Inferencing Reader
In addition to gender differences in attitudes toward
the author (extrinsic to text), differences in attitudes
toward the plot and characters (intrinsic to text) were
also found (Bleich 1988; Flynn 1988). When the story
retellings were analyzed to determine the extent to
which the subjects made inferences about the characters
and the extent to which they interpolated their personal
concerns into a story, male and female readers were
found to differ. Male readers were likely to include in
their retellings only "facts" literally stated in the story's
text and to produce plot summaries devoid of inferences
or personal comments. They retold the story as if its
main purpose were to deliver a clear chain of infor-
mation about something. This accords with the finding
that the male view of fiction is teleological, for the men's
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retellings primarily concern getting the facts "straight."
Women's retellings, in contrast, contained inferences
about the characters and events that went beyond a
strictly literal interpretation of the plot. Women readers
interspersed their own views with plot summaries and
were likely to discuss parallel situations in their own
lives that the stories brought to mind. Women respon-
dents' retellings drew on SUbjective interpretations to
fill in textual gaps-the deconstructionists' "aporia"
(Derrida 1978)-for they assigned motives to the char-
acters, made statements about the applicability of the
story's plot to life experiences, and reported ways in
which the story was personally relevant. The women
readers' inferences often revealed more about personal
reactions to the events than about the characters' re-
actions, for they interpreted the meaning of the text as
its meaning to them.
Getting Things out of Text:
The Judgmental Reader
Just as male retellings tended to summarize plot
events rather than to offer personal interpolations, so
too did these retellings tend to show more evaluation
of characters than empathy with them (Bleich 1988).
Men's retellings were more judgmental, often expressing
approval/disapproval of the author's presentation. This
suggests that men perceive a story as an object to be
understood rather than as a world to be experienced.
Perhaps as a result of the cognitive goal, men expressed
more frustration-opinions such as "the story stank"
(Flynn 1988, p. 276)-when they failed to understand
a plot. A failure of comprehension apparently leaves
the information-seeking reader adrift, for time and effort
is wasted if cognitive closure is not achieved.
Female readers, on the other hand, were less likely
to evaluate a story negatively if they failed to compre-
hend it (Bleich 1988; Flynn 1988). Their retellings in-
dicated more concern with vicariously experiencing the
characters' interpersonal relationships and less with
FEMINIST CRITICISM OF ADVERTISING
evaluation of the authors' or of the characters' inten-
tions. Perhaps as a consequence of more affective goals,
the women respondents showed less anger at lack of
comprehension of difficult tales. They revealed enjoy-
ment of one or another aspect of a story (an interesting
character, a vivid event, a detailed description) even
when they did not fully understand the entire work.
Empathy with the characters was expressed in the
women respondents' tendency to view a story as satis-
fying on the basis of its ability to yield emotional rather
than intellectual satisfaction.
In sum, men tended to read for authorial intent, were
motivated to acquire information from a story, were
less likely to draw inferences, and were more likely to
make evaluative judgments. Women, in contrast,
tended not to search for authorial intent, were moti-
vated to experience a story's personal relationships
rather than to get its "point," were more likely to draw
inferences, and were more likely to empathize than to
judge the characters.
FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM
AND CONSUMER RESEARCH
It is proposed that the preceding feminist findings of
gender influences on readers of noncommercial text be
incorporated into consumer research to enrich the
evaluation of gender images in ads (Gilly 1988) and to
ascertain how these portrayals affect processing. Al-
though advertisers aim at developing effective com-
munication strategies for male and female audiences,
content analysis of advertising (Gilly 1988) has found
it to be "stereotyped and limited in its portrayal of the
sexes" (Courtney and Whipple 1983, p. 191), conveying
gender images that have not kept pace with societal
change (Gilly 1988). The feminist sex-reversal method
can contribute to analysis of sex-role portrayal in ad-
vertising by exposing the binariness of gender, its im-
portance as a core category for organizing experience,
and its underlying power structure. Further, the feminist
perspective can contribute to the information-process-
ing literature by providing additional ways of thinking
about "attitude toward the ad" (MacKenzie and Lutz
1989) and its antecedents, the inferencing process, and
empathetic responses.
Attitude toward the Ad:
Gender and the Sponsor's "Voice"
Since the construct of "attitude toward the ad"
(MacKenzie and Lutz 1989) has been found to influence
measures of advertising effectiveness such as attitude
toward the brand, it seems useful to reexamine its an-
tecedents from a feminist vantage point. Findings of
gender differences in attitudes toward literary text may
be relevant to attitudes toward ads as well, for these
differences are likely to influence the development of
different attitudes toward both the source (the sponsor)
561
and the content (the message) of commercial text (Lutz,
MacKenzie, and Belch 1983). In this regard, the femi-
nist perspective can add to knowledge about an indi-
vidual's attitude as a function of salient beliefs by
pointing out that different beliefs may be salient in
men's and women's systems.
The gender implications in attitude toward the ad
can be traced by beginning with the antecedent vari-
ables-ad credibility, ad perceptions, attitude toward
advertiser, attitude toward advertising, and mood.
When feminist ideas are incorporated into the discus-
sion, the role of gender in perceptions of credibility,
executional factors, and mood/emotion comes into
view. To consider gender influences on credibility, it is
important to layout the credibility subsystem (Lutz et
al. 1983), for the attitude toward a particular adver-
tisement (the stimulus in question) includes antecedent
attitudes toward the advertiser (the sponsor of the par-
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ticular message) and toward advertising in general (the
institution that comprehends a universe of commercial
messages). Insofar as people experience a drive toward
logical consistency (Lutz et al. 1983), they are likely to
experience a direct relationship between the credibility
of all advertising, that of the sponsor of a particular
ad, and that of the ad itself.
Credibility of the authorial voice in commercial text
relates to the sponsor-the firm, institution, or orga-
nization that is the source of the message-for re-
searchers do not distinguish between "the ad, the pre-
senter, or the company" (Batra and Ray 1986, p. 240).
Most research on source credibility (see O'Keefe [1990]
for review) assumes that a generic "recipient" judges
credibility on the dimensions of source competence,
trustworthiness, and likability. However, the feminist
perspective suggests that research on source credibility
should be enlarged to include potentially different male
and female propensities to find a source credible, for
differences in attitudes toward textual authority in gen-
eral may affect predispositions to believe in sponsorial
authority in particular. Rather than assume a sex-neu-
tral message recipient, feminist studies of attitudes to-
ward the authorial voice (see above) point out that men
and women differ in tendencies to believe a source, with
men more likely to impute knowledge or reporting bias
to sources (Eagly, Wood, and Chaiken 1978) and to
express dislike of an author.
Insofar as male and female readers differ in their per-
ceptions of the believability of an author ofliterary text
and in their evaluations of authorial goals, these atti-
tudes probably spill over into attitudes toward com-
mercial text. In this sense, perceived credibility of all
advertising and of a particular advertiser may be part
of a larger system of consumer attitudes toward cultural
texts, toward textual authority, and toward the presence
of an authorial voice. The idea that men and women
may have different perceptions of the credibility of ad-
vertising and of advertisers is worth incorporating into
the concept of credibility, for there may be gender-re-
562
lated influences on this construct that have escaped ob-
servation to date.
Just as the reader's gender may affect perceptions of
the source as credible, so too may gender affect percep-
tions of the message-the variable "ad perceptions"-
as enjoyable, personally relevant, and entertaining (Fa-
zio and Zanna 1981; Lutz et al. 1983). The feminist
idea of gendered text can contribute to a fuller under-
standing of the executional characteristics that cause
an ad to be evaluated as enjoyable (Mitchell and Olson
1981). Male and female readers respond differently to
text perceived as androcentric/gynocentric (see Holland
and Sherman 1988), with women finding gynocentric
text more enjoyable and men strongly disliking it. The
role of gender as a crucial determinant in the con-
sumption ofliterary discourse (Ruthven 1990) requires
further investigation in an advertising context, es-
pecially in view of the intensity of positive reactions by
women and negative reactions by men to characters,
themes, and values in gynocentric text (see Holland and
Sherman 1988).
In addition to the role of gender in responses to ex-
ogenous executional characteristics, gender also seems
to playa part in the not yet fully understood "mood"
variable (Gardner 1985). Researchers have found that
attitude toward an ad is influenced by the moods and
feelings it evokes (ARs or "affective responses," in Batra
and Ray's (1986) terminology. Many researchers suggest
that the influence of ARs on attitude toward the ad is
likely to be greater in a peripheral processing situation
(Petty and Cacioppo 1983), the less effortful mode
(Chaiken 1980) associated with many ads. In this sit-
uation, evocation of mood is based on how the ad pre-
sents the product (see MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch
1986; Stern 1988) rather than on what it says about the
product. Moods and feelings are evoked in affective ads
by means of executional cues such as "music, humor,
affectionate vignettes, story elements, role portrayals,
and the like" (Batra and Ray 1986, p. 234).
Feminist criticism suggests a relationship between
gender and differentiated responses to such executional
cues. A predispositional tendency to respond positively
or negatively to affective cues in ads (Batra and Ray
1986; Moore and Hutchinson 1983) may have its source
in tendencies of men and women to experience different
emotional responses-happiness, sadness, fear, anger,
and so forth-to textual stimuli. Since text is no longer
presumed to elicit a collective or universal emotional
response, feminist research isolates gender as the major
source of different male and female responses. For ex-
ample, literary studies have found that gothic romances
elicit negative mood states in men readers and positive
mood states in women readers (Holland and Sherman
1988). Similarly, executional cues in ads may also evoke
different moods depending on the consumer's gender.
Interestingly, Batra and Ray's (1986) study used only
women as respondents and for this reason should be
replicated using men and women to ascertain whether
JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
the women's ARs are identical in nature or degree to
those of the men. The mood variable, then, requires
additional research in relation to the gender of the con-
sumer, the nature of the text, and interaction effects not
yet considered.
Feminist criticism thus suggests additional questions
for future research on attitude toward the ad. Some
questions about source credibility are: Does the con-
sumer's gender influence his/her perception of the entity
termed the source? Is a bipolar predispositional contin-
uum to find a source credible/not credible correlated
with the sex of the consumer? Do consumers differ by
gender in terms of more versus less likelihood of finding
advertising text credible? Other questions about male
and female affective responses are, Do men and women
tend to respond differently to affective stimuli versus
nonaffective ones (such as informational advertise-
ments)? Do different affective stimuli evoke different
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moods in men and women consumers? Do men and
women express the same degree and range of emotional
responses? Fuller understanding of cognitive and affec-
tive responses to ads may be enhanced by incorporating
feminist ideas into the research stream.
Reading and Inferencing
Feminist criticism also yields new insights about
gender differences in drawing inferences from text. The
role of inferencing in persuasion presumes reader-re-
sponse theory (Clark 1977), for readers are said to par-
ticipate actively in the process by "filling in" or inter-
polating unstated things to arrive at a text's meaning
(Crowder 1982). Recent studies indicate that consumer
inferencing is as important in the processing of adver-
tising messages (Batra and Ray 1986; Hoch and Loew-
enstein 1989; Kardes 1988, 1993; Sawyer 1988) as it is
in the processing of other forms of text. In consumer
research, inference formation has been studied in terms
of the effectiveness of explicit conclusions (those stated
in the ad) versus implicit conclusions (those the con-
sumers must infer on their own) (Kardes 1988). Ads
with implicit conclusions are considered more likely to
stimulate consumers to generate inferences, for the
omitted material requires more effortful processing.
The relationship of consumer heuristics to the gender
of the consumer and that of the text requires additional
investigation to determine the kinds of messages most
likely to break through advertising clutter and reach
the designated target market most effectively (Meyers-
Levy and Maheswaran 1991). In light of Kardes's (1988)
suggestion that spontaneous inference generation may
be induced more readily for some individuals than for
others, feminist interest in male/female inferencing
tendencies holds promise for future consumer behavior
research. The suggestion that the amount of effort ex-
pended in information processing is likely to vary across
individuals (Kardes 1988) ties in with the feminist em-
phasis on gender as a source of variance in three areas:
FEMINIST CRITICISM OF ADVERTISING
global differences in male/female inferencing tenden-
cies, temporal differences in male/female inferencing
patterns, and stimulus differences (gendered text) in the
generation of male/female inference formation.
The feminist attribution of greater overall inference-
making tendencies on the part of female readers suggests
that global differences may be associated with the sex
of the consumer. Women readers are more likely to
draw inferences in general (see above), for they more
readily fill in textual gaps than do men readers. Further,
the feminist finding that female readers tend to make
(and to change) inferences as they read rather than to
wait until the last page suggests that different temporal
patterns-processual versus outcome inference making
(see Rosenblatt 1978)-may also be associated with the
consumer's sex. The process of inferencing seems to be
more iterative for women readers of fiction, for they
develop and revise interpretations as they go along, in
contrast to men readers, who suspend judgment about
the meaning of a story until they have reached the end.
In this regard, the current research focus on implicit
versus explicit conclusions may not capture gender-
based differences in processing styles.
Last and perhaps most important, findings in social
science research (Eagly and Carli 1981) corroborate lit-
erary research on male/female differences in familiarity
with gendered text. The finding that women are familiar
with both androcentric and gynocentric text but that
men are less familiar with and less knowledgeable about
women's fiction (Radford 1986) suggests differences in
inferencing capabilities when each sex is faced with each
type of text. Insofar as readers rely on prior knowledge
of speech-act conventions, social/cultural conventions,
and literary conventions (Rumelhart 1975) to make in-
ferences about texts (Beach and Brown 1987), sex dif-
ferences in familiarity with gendered text are likely to
affect these inferencing capabilities. Men seem less likely
to be able to draw inferences from gynocentric ads
(Stern 1991 a) because of lack of interest in and famil-
iarity with similar texts in other media (television soap
operas, romance novels, and movie "weepies").
W omen, on the other hand, seem more likely to be able
to draw inferences from both types of text. Thus, dif-
ferent levels of familiarity with gendered text on the
part of men and of women (Kruglanski and Freund
1983) suggest that the gender of the consumer may in-
teract with that of the stimulus text to influence the
inferencing process.
Research on inferencing that incorporates feminist
reader-response theory raises several questions. What
is the nature of inferencing with respect to advertising
text (as distinguished from literary, editorial, or other
kinds of text)? Do men and women differ in tendencies
to generate inferences from text? Do men and women
show different temporal inferencing patterns (waiting
until the end of a text as opposed to making inferences
throughout)? Does the gender of the text interact with
that of the consumer such that gendered text either en-
563
courages or inhibits inference making depending on the
"eye of the beholder"? The connection between infer-
encing and gender differences in reading may enhance
understanding of the way that consumers respond to
advertising by pointing to relationships between stimuli
and inference formation that are not yet well under-
stood.
Empathy as a Consumer Response
Like inference formation, empathetic responses can
also influence attitude toward the ad and toward the
brand (Boller and Olson 1990). Consumer research has
adopted a definition of empathy common to psychol-
ogy, child development, and literary criticism: "an
emotional response that stems from the apprehension
of another's emotional state or condition and is con-
gruent with the other's emotional state or condition"
Downloaded from http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on May 31, 2016
(Eisenberg et al. 1989, p. 108). The concept grows out
of the nineteenth-century German notion of Einfuhlung
("feeling into") (Abrams 1988, p. 49), closely associated
with Romantic literature aimed at evoking a reader's
feeling of participation in the physical sensations of the
object described.
Feminist reader-response studies have found greater
expression of empathetic responsivity by females to the
vicarious experience of someone else's emotional plight.
The feminist idea of more pronounced tendencies of
women readers to empathize with story characters is
supported by a limited but provocative body of empir-
ical literature in psychology on gender differences in
the tendency to respond vicariously to emotional stim-
uli (Eisenberg et al. 1989). These differences rest on the
observation that women tend to be more oriented to
others (Hoffman 1977) and more expressive of emotion
toward others (Buck 1984) than are men. Psychological
studies have found females to be better "decoders" of
overt visual cues indicative of another's emotional state
(Hall 1978), more ready to report experiencing emo-
tions in self-report statements (Hoffman 1977), and
more socialized to take note of and react to others'
emotions than are men (Eisenberg et al. 1989).
When empathy is translated into consumer terms, it
can be viewed as a similar dynamic psychological re-
sponse in which potential buyers "feel into" or imagi-
natively project themselves into the consumption ex-
periences portrayed in an ad (Boller and Olson 1990).
Further study of consumer empathy might be enriched
by considering possible gender differences in reference
to a consumer's tendency to participate vicariously in
the thoughts and deeds of characters in ads. The issue
of gender-related empathetic tendencies may contribute
a needed variable to the model of empathetic advertising
processing that has been proposed (Boller and Olson
1989). The feminist distinction between cognitive versus
affective reading styles (Rosenblatt 1978) suggests that
male and female readers may differ in their capacities
for empathy with advertising situations and characters.
564
Just as male readers of short stories are likely to be less
empathetic and female readers are likely to be more
empathetic, so too may these responses characterize
readings of ads. Female consumers may be more in-
clined to identify with characters in action and to par-
ticipate imaginatively in their lives, and male consumers
may be more inclined to do the reverse. It seems im-
portant at this early stage of empathy research to begin
asking additional questions, among which are the fol-
lowing: Do differences occur in men's and women's
empathetic reactions to ads? If differences do occur, are
they correlated with different types of advertising text?
Do the sexes differ in terms of positive (or negative)
responses to emotional versus informational appeals?
In conclusion, the feminist impulse to cross discipli-
nary lines encourages further study of these and other
consumer behavior questions. The prognosis for
knowledge transfer is promising, for in its brief history,
feminist criticism has shown itself to be an integrative
interdisciplinary force, ranging widely to seek out gen-
eral principles where formerly only isolated phenomena
were perceived. Since mass media artifacts such as tele-
vision, cinema, and music video have already been
taken as texts for postmodern examination (Allen 1987),
consideration of advertising's appeal to consumers
within this canon seems worthwhile. However, this ar-
ticle ends by emphasizing that incorporating feminist
theory into the consumer research stream is viewed not
as the subtraction of a masculine perspective but as the
addition ofa feminine one. The most positive argument
for the acceptance of feminist criticism is that, far from
crystallizing differences, it instead leads to the embrace
of a common humanity.
[Received February 1991. Revised March 1992.]
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