Fashion and power: The representation of gender in store window displays

Fashion and dress have a complex relationship to identity. The clothes we choose to wear can express our identities in terms of gender, race, class, and/or sexuality, among other things. This study examines how gender, race, and class are used to interpellate primarily female shoppers through store window advertising in the city of London, England. Using a feminist cultural and media studies approach, I analyze eight store window display advertisements as texts, and how their portrayals of women are presented to consumers. This study concludes that stereotypical, degrading, humiliating and violating representations of women and femininity abound in store window displays. Women are most likely to be portrayed as sex objects and signs of beauty. By representing store mannequins in sexual and fetishized poses, advertisers commodify female sexuality by associating it closely with beautiful, young bodies and the trappings of a glitzy lifestyle.