Social Practice and Portrayal of Women in the Choice of Cosmetic Products in Lagos Nigeria

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of socio-cultural practice features and portrayal of women in the choice of cosmetic products in Lagos Nigeria. Materials and Methods: The study examined social practice features and portrayal of women in choice of cosmetic products in Lagos Nigeria using a mixed method design. The study adopted purposive sampling because this study was only to investigate cosmetic product advertisements and involved only women. The data were collected from seven advertisements of popularly used cosmetic products from company websites and transcribed to ease the process of analysis. They were then analyzed based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. Data for the quantitative aspect data was collected using a questionnaire based on Likert-type scale questions ranging from 1-5 to capture the variables and analysed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics as correlation analysis and regression analysis through SPSS and presented in tables. Findings: The findings indicate that socio-cultural practice features significantly predicted portrayal of women in the choice of cosmetic products as the result shows direct positive of social-cultural practice. Most of the portrayal of women tend to persuade the women on a certain form of beauty despite the Nigerian culture. As a result, many people believe what the advertisement says and choose to see themselves in the light of these advertisements. This is part of the effect on social change created by advertisements in the society. Thus, advertisers tend to change the way society views beauty by creating a new beauty ideology and a new standard of beauty derived from what their advertisement says. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study was guided by CDA and the Magic of Meaning theory. Results show that there is a statistically significant relationship between the influence of socio-cultural practice features and the portrayal of women in the choice of cosmetic products. Using CDA, this indicates some social wrongs in the advertisements including the issue of self- esteem in women thereby eroding confidence of the consumers; the demand for women to continually look attractive through these products and compulsive impulse to buy these products. Issues of self-esteem in women are raised thus, cosmetic companies should learn to advertise their products with less manipulative words that will be more societally acceptable. Also, further research is recommended since advertising has an essential role in society.