Designed for Men to Seduce Women

Nowadays, advertising has become part and parcel of popular culture so that the advertisement has been recognized as a type of coded language. We would rather say that advertising is a mirror that can reflect and reveal the trends of the society than a lamp helping us look into the society. Through advertisements, people can see what the dominant ideology of a culture is: what is all right or taboo in a culture; what is in fashion or out; what people desire or refuse. Advertisements work by appealing to our subconscious desires rather than to our conscious intellects. When we watch the various advertisements, we can always find images associated with sex, affiliation, nurture, power, freedom, escape, success and so on, which are all for our needs and desires. Various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about people’s hopes and desires, for example, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards. This is the working principle of advertisements, which is always more obviously seen in the advertisements for men.

Let’s take a look at this magazine advertisement for a car. Appearing as a relatively smaller object in a sharp contrast to the larger “decorations” that are a charming bride and a senior with a deeply lined face, the car does not seem to be the subject of the advertisement. However, people will not misunderstand the advertisement as one for the wedding gown or something else, because a lined senior can not be the chief actor of such advertisements. Rather than being printed as a full-page advertisement for itself, the car just takes up less than one quarters of the picture. The advertiser apparently wants the audience to be attracted by the fantastic couple in the picture. The leading role of the advertisement the senior with a deeply lined and grave face holding a young beautiful bride in arms seems to say “though I am an old man, I am an extraordinary one with my young bride, as a result of my luxurious open car which is also extraordinary”. The implied message here is that an extraordinary open car deserves an extraordinary advertisement, so does an extraordinary and successful old man like you. If you decide to be one of the extraordinary consumers of the car, you will at once appear extraordinary compared with your more ordinary fellows.

This advertisement works by associating the product with what is most desired and coveted by the consumers to whom it is addressed. The advertisement is trying to claim that the open car here is not a mere car but a potent status symbol you can associate with the other prominent status symbols in the society. Status symbols are signs which can identify their possessor’s rank and prestige in a social hierarchy. Nowadays, there are many objects that can be called “status symbols”, such as an luxurious open car in the advertisement, a grand villa, and even a young sexy wife