Advertising Androgyny

Airport Ad Androgyny

Airport Ad Androgyny, originally submitted by A.

“I found this ad at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen. It feels very “Gibson”-esque to begin with, a large biotech-style company into relatively vague stuff, promoting themselves with the slogan “Science for a better life” and stock photos, but what caught my eye was the androgynous woman (?) with the child in the left frame of the ad. Is it intentional? Who made the ad, and what were they thinking when they chose the photo? Is the woman supposed to be an employee, or a benefactor of the company’s work? Did they discuss the ad at the company or the agency before it went out, because of this image? Or do others not see the androgyny? The ad intrigued me, and I also think the person in the photo is beautiful.”  -A.


Posted by on March 7th, 2009 at 04:00 pm

Category: faces 4 comments »

4 Responses to “Advertising Androgyny”

  1. Alaina

    Interesting post. My first thought was “of course, she’s German” before I remembered that Copenhagen is in Scandinavia. I know next to nothing about Denmark- but I wonder if the country shares not only a geographical proximity but a gender-norm as well.

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  2. Anja Flower

    It’s entirely possible that, from Bayer’s perspective, ey was supposed to represent a woman who’s gone through chemotherapy in the recent past. Just a thought.

    And yes, ey’s very beautiful.

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  3. Pieta

    Well, Bayer is a German company anyway.

    I’m so cynical, that I guess the company/agency picked up a “different-looking but pretty” woman, and not intentionally an androgynous person. And I think her(?) alleged parenthood give her a possibility to look not traditionally feminine, but nevertheless acceptable.

    [Reply]

  4. Rebecka

    In my experience, Denmark as a whole isn’t very open minded when it comes to gender transgression. I know some people from there and have heard their stories; the Danish gender-norm would have to be called very conservative in my opinion. Of course, there are exceptions, especially in Copenhagen, but this, as always, comes at a price.
    /RL

    [Reply]


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