Cesare Paciotti Advertisements: Diverging Conceptions of
Male and Female Power
Mary Murphy
This collection of images from Cesare Paciotti advertising
campaigns illuminates recurring themes in the world of fashion advertising
regarding the treatment of women's bodies and relationships between male and
female bodies. Understanding bodies as the sites on which identities are formed
and negotiated, as well as the means by which individuals display clothing
and other indicators of who they are and the positions they occupy in the
world, these advertising campaigns systematically attribute physical, social,
and economic power to men, while denying women access to any means of authority
and identity other than their sexuality. A detailed examination of this collection
of images yields a multi-faceted statement regarding male and female identities,
alone and in relation to one another.
Each advertisement features a female model dressed in little to no clothing,
either alone or with a male model in full dress. Although each of these female
models is nearly nude, dressed in lingerie or a flimsy dress, the male models
present are dressed in businesslike clothing, even when we see only their
feet. This clothing (or unclothing) of bodies dictates specific messages about
male and female bodies in other contexts. While men are dressed in suits and
business shoes, implying power, prestige, and productivity, women are portrayed
only as sexual beings. Whereas men achieve worth in the workplace, women's
worth is achieved through a very limited and specific expression and exploitation
of sexuality. In conjunction with other cues regarding dynamics of physical
power and authority between women and men, the advertisements additionally
deploy messages regarding class and economic prestige. The models tend to
be situated in a context that implies wealth and economic success. These contexts
are most prominent, however, when they are linked to the male models, who
again, tend to be dressed in business clothes. These comfortable surroundings,
such as upper-class living rooms, implying the attainment of a coveted class
status, are thereby associated with men and men's work, as contrasted to women
and sexuality.
In the advertisements in
which men and women appear together, the positioning of their bodies relative
to one another also conveys an unequivocal message about male-female relations.
In one advertisement, a very thin woman reclines on a couch while her male
counterpart sits over her, his hand possessively on one thigh. Her pose exposes
her underwear, and the male is taking advantage by looking up her dress. In
another series of ads, a fully clad businessman sits with a female model on
his lap in varying stages of undress. Although in this campaign her body is
positioned physically "over" his, her nudity results in a display-like quality
to the female body, rather than an expression of female power. Her position
on a man's lap references the infantile or the childlike, and with each stage
of her progressive unclothing, the male model's expression becomes more direct,
commanding, and powerful. Once again the female form is unclothed in order
to objectify it. In the most egregious example, the female model lies at the
bottom of a staircase, a man's feet advancing towards her. This advertisement
makes no apologies for the absolute physical and social control of women at
the hands of men.
When there is no man in the image, the female model
is still demurring. Wearing only high-heeled boots, her highly sexualized
body simultaneously appears childlike and vulnerable. This impression is augmented
by her crouching posture, her slight covering with a pillow, and the ambiguous
position of her hands. Her hair is tousled and unkempt, and the darkening
of her facial expression, along with her apparent attempt to cover her naked
body, imputes vulnerability into the expression of her form. Even without
a male model in the image, the advertisement manages to situate the woman
in a compromised pose, both sexualizing her body and denying her power over
that sexuality.
Not only are the female models sexualized and denied
access to other means of identity and class identification, but their bodies
are also more explicitly used in the marketing of commodities than are male
bodies. In many of the images, the women wear little to no clothing except
for the shoes themselves â?" the product being sold. Men's shoes are also displayed
and marketed, but male bodies are not commodified in the process. Men are
able to retain non-sexual identities and remain fully clothed while selling
shoes. Women, on the other hand, are reduced to single-identity, highly sexualized
beings, as their bodies become the means to display shoes and associate sex
with commodities.
Taken as a group of images, Cesare Paciotti's advertising
campaigns project a set of highly specified messages regarding male and female
bodies, their relationships to one another, and the intersections of power,
prestige, and identity on gendered bodies. While female identities are reduced
to a limited conception of overt and explicit sexuality, male identities retain
greater complexity, and tend to be associated with business, power, and prestige.
This persona is captured via direct eye contact with the camera, the assertive
placement of a possessive hand on the female body, or the display of an unclothed
woman on a man's lap. Female bodies become objects of display, both in and
of themselves, and as a means for the display of products. Male bodies, for
the most part, manipulate their female counterparts, ranging from powerful
body positions, possessive and powerful touching, to clearly implied physical
violence. Finally, Cesare Paciotti is marketing footwear at upwards of $300.
The company's target advertising audience is therefore necessarily among the
economic elite. It is both ironic and tragic that women who do, in fact, occupy
the upper echelons of economic power and prestige, are induced into purchasing
products sold to them on a campaign organized around the devaluation of women
and their inability to achieve identities and authority through means other
than the exploitation of their sexuality.
That these images are apparently capable of successfully
marketing products to both male and female cosumers suggests a disturbing
complicity and social absorption of these statements regarding male-female
relations. It is not only male consumers who are aesthetically swayed by advertisements
that suggest at once power, economically gained prestige through business
skill and prowess, and a domination over their female counterparts that is
visually linked to this type of success. It is also female consumers, who,
in spite of likely attainting notable power and prestige in their own rights
(if they can afford to purchase these commodities), who are in some way appealed
to by images that situate women in graphically subjugated and degraded positions.
This reception on part of both genders illustrates the complexities inherent
in systems of subjugation and oppression â?" it is both oppressor and oppressed,
powerful and powerless who become complicit in accepting, reinforcing, and
recreating systems of social power.