JEAN PAUL GAUTHIER AND ADVERTISING

 

1. The context

The male stereotype has known a real evolution years after years. For a very long time the man has represented the strenght, the virility, the authority. But nowadays, the star post themselves differently: more sensitive to appearance, more anxious by the image which they return to their public.

In our society, physical appearance became an essential point, because it is the first image which one gives of oneself. Indeed, it is so easy by the means of various criteria, as the charm, the style, or humour to be charming. The visual is impossible to circumvent, we have to make good figure, and often that is the reason we are ready to change our way of life, or of consumption.

The new icons which arrive with the sport, TV-reality, the cinema, or of advertising symbolize perfectly this new trend, now called “metrosexuality”

This term even shows a narcissistic man, in love with himself, and which attaches much importance to his appearance. The stereotype of the new male however is very targeted : young townsman with rather high incomes, who is open-minded to the new trend of consumption.

It is just a man, who grant so many importance to his physical appearance, and who want to be charming.

A new market is now opened, and the advertising executives and the media hastened to develop new range of products and new strategies, in order to target these kind of consumers perfectly.

 

2. Analysis of the advertising 

This advertising of Jean-Paul GAUTHIER for the perfume “the male”, dating from the year 2000, reflects this new trend perfectly. This advertising is a poster showing only one bust of man. The colors are very simple : the man wears clothes of sailor, in front of a background of blue sky.

In spite of the simplicity of the picture, this advertising shows perfectly the evolution of the man in our current society. The man on the image is charming, very aesthetic, while remaining virile. And this, in spite of the make-up. His glance shows a rather sure man of himself, with the almost arrogant glance.

The product is present on the picture, but it is not really proposed. Despite that, the colors and the clothing of the man are the “signature” of Jean-Paul Gauthier : clothes of sailor… The style of the man is rather complex, because it emanates from him a true virility. But in parallel, a strong share of femininity is present all the same.

How to qualify this new tendency? Everybody knows that generally, this kind of phenomenon do not stay more than a few years… But here, this phenomenon stay day after day, and already for several years and get bigger, more and more. We could compare this phenomenon to a turn, a “key” step of our society, where men and women are almost equal. In the Fifties, that were the women, who wanted to be like men, wearing jeans and smoking cigarettes. Nowadays, the trend is reversed, because that are men who try to leave the beaten paths, while deviating from the male stereotypes.