Claiming space: understanding female agency in contemporary advertising

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine how consumers understand and discuss female agency portrayed in contemporary advertising in relation to the body. It employs a Poststructuralist Feminist framework, drawing on the ideas of discourse, language and subjectivity in order to understand the power structures that dominate and hinder women. The empirical material, consisting of interviews (individual and focus groups) with a total of 38 women, was analysed using a discourse analysis [Willig, Carla. 2013. Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology. Maidenhead, Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education]. The construction of agency and power as bound up with different perceptions of claiming space was found throughout the interviews. It also seemed as if the space-claiming ability of the model allowed for a subjective sexuality; when the models exuded agency by claiming space in different ways, then the sexuality was deemed more on their terms, as if they were more in control than when their body positions were crouched or perceived as smaller.