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.