Representation and ideology in advertising aimed at women: Chile, 1952, 1970 and 2010

This article analyzes the representation of women through advertising in women's magazines in Chile and their relationship with the ideological environment. Under a semiotic approach, we identified different dimensions present in forging women's consumption imaginary in three periods: 1952, 1970 and 2010. A corpus of six advertisements aimed at women in three different periods was selected and analyzed. Among the results, we noted that the representation of women was circumscribed to two main dimensions: physical beauty as something desirable and a social validation requirement, and self-fulfillment in the household setting, which is in tune with female stereotypes widely disseminated in the media. However, there are also features of such representations that implicitly question it, illustrating how more complex female portrayals in advertising might be.