ABSTRACT
This essay will use the experience of selling cars to women to illustrate the tensions between the reality and the rhetoric of women's lives. It argues that in reality women's lives have changed; their increasing economic and social independence have been accompanied by greater car ownership but the rhetoric is to confine them to the small car market. This is significant because of the symbolic power with which cars are imbued and which is differentially distributed by gendered advertising discourse. Contemporary advertising, like many cultural forms today, draws upon post-modernist practices of decentring and fragmenting positions of authority and power and thus could offer female car consumers, a marginalised group, access to more positive images. However, although campaigns appear to be adjusting their strategies to incorporate new dynamic images for women, to suggest that this represents a shift in recognising real power is an illusion as they continue to incorporate stereotypical female views when marketing small cars.
