[Body hair and advertising in French magazines]

Sociological analysis of advertising reveals the currently operative body codes within a society, and more fundamentally, depicts the (ideal) relationships between men and women, between generations, and so on.

To demonstrate that sports advertising based largely on trichological stereotypes.

The idealised portrayal of human relations in advertisements (N=700) taken from French magazines was analysed by means of systematic coding and use of analytical software. This approach allowed characterisation of each advertisement in relation to the entire sample, with identification of significant elements (dominant colour, stature of models, setting, etc.), and determination of frequency of appearance and occurrence as well as testing of dependency relations.

There were significant differences in the portrayal of men and women in advertisements. In the 700 advertisements in the series we examined, male subjects very often had short hair (231 cases, 33%) or shaved heads (33 cases, 4.7%) while women were shown with long hair, either free (80 cases) or tied (73 cases). Women with short hair were rarely portrayed (4.3%), as were men with long hair (42 cases, 6%). Above all, with the exception of eyebrows and eyelashes, no other body hair was seen in male and female athletic figures in 238 advertisements, being visible in only 60 cases (8.6%). Facial stubble, and more particularly beards and moustaches, was fairly infrequent, despite the omnipresence of male models.

The majority of advertising situations involving sporting figures show clear stereotyping. Body hair is a pertinent pointer to understanding of contemporary sports models. A clear overall male/female distinction was present throughout. Men were presented in these adverts as active figures, leaders, etc. while women tended to be passive, spectators, and in some cases, admiring onlookers. A degree of confusion between genders was noticeable as a result of the shaving and depilation trends currently in vogue in the sporting world on aesthetic and practical grounds. The bodies portrayed were smooth and hairless, and somewhat removed from reality (i.e. the animal side of human beings).

The advertising domain tends to portray classical morphological and behavioural models rather than less conformist representations. Marketing communications depict ideal skins, with none of the commonly seen roughness, and more particularly none of the skin conditions (dermatoses, grazing, scars, etc.) so commonly seen in sports figures. The overall image conveyed is a far cry indeed from the actual epidemiological reality encountered by dermatologists!