ABSTRACT

Of course ‘Leslie’ is also the name of a National plane, but how secondary that knowledge is when a smiling woman’s face beams down on the reader. An ad. selling National flights? An ad. selling woman’s sexuality as if she were a prostitute for sale. An ad. which demands from us a more complex understanding than this. An ad. from which we can move in order to begin to talk about images of women in the media. And in this paper we do no more than suggest such a beginning. It points to the way in which images are produced images: adverts are so contrived we can see vividly that they are not representing reality but re-presenting it (giving us it again) in a transformed way. It points to a hidden history. Why has woman’s sexuality come to be used in this way? Could it not be a man’s? It hints at the contradiction that images of women always betray. They are rarely there as active, living individuals, but yet it is one woman who is standing for what women are, whether it is sexual objects, mothers or housewives. It suggests the connotative value of women’s images: one simple image, a smiling, pretty face and we are already into the realm of sex or fantasy, happiness or sunshine (She’ll fly you to Miami), excitement or power – for men. It persuades us too of equality between men and women: ‘I’m going to fly you . . .’ balanced by ‘you . . . fly my widebodied . . .’