Information Taxonomy: Images of Men in Contemporary Western Society
The brief for this assignment was to; ‘think about objects in the world, their hidden relationships with data and their visual representations’. The object I decided to examine was the images of men used in advertisement of men’s fragrances.
According to Strictly Men’s Business men’s grooming products grew 46% between 2001-2005. This huge growth made me wonder if it was reflecting upon a societal change in the image of masculinity.
To begin with I did some research about fragrances sales and what the trends were. According to the article Australian fashion law and industry trends, combined with the trends predicted on Smart Company men are entering the beauty/hygiene/perfume market and they; shop online and buy big name brands. For this reason I centred my object and characteristics around these trends.
The images I considered had to satisfy the following requirements:
1. Advertise a fragrance for men and only men, this excluded advertising for his/her fragrances such as this one:
2. Depict a man, this excluded advertising of men’s fragrance which used women to sell there product, such as this one:
3. Advertise a perfume that was popular enough to have been review on perfume connection by at least two people
4. Be a 'big brand name'
For example, one such instance of this object is this add for ‘boss bottled’ by hugo boss.
The characteristics of these images that I examined had to do with either the fragrance itself, or the grooming and styling of the subject.
The characteristics relating to the fragrance itself were:
1. Fragrance Name
2. Company
3. Three adjectives used by reviewers on perfume connection to describe the fragrance
4. Category of Fragrance (eg citrus, woods, water etc)
The characteristics I looked at in relation to the styling of the subject were:
5. Facial hair
6. Body Hair
7. Nudity
8. Hair length
9. Hairstyle
Originally I included characteristics about the advertisement itself, such as; colours, layout, and relationship between viewer and subject, stance and gaze of subject. Although I believe that these factors have a lot to contribute to how men are represented within these advertisements, and were interesting, I decided confine my data to just the styling of the subject to obtain a more detailed and refined set of data.
I also included ‘physique’ as one of my characteristics but found that all of the models had a similar build (muscular), so I consider this characteristic irrelevant to further investigation, because if it is a common element to all of the subjects I will not be able to find any realtionships with outher charcteristics.
All of the images I used to construct my data can be viewed here.
To begin with I examined the overall trends within the advertising.
The first element of styling I looked at was the amount of facial hair each of the subjects had. What I found was a trend for the subjects to be clean shaven, which was clearly the most popular (50%), or have slight to medium stubble. There were no instances of full beards or moustaches.
The second element of styling I examined was the amount of body hair shown on the subjects. I rated this on a scale from none to substantial (0-4), with none looking like this:
And substantial like so: 
I did this regardless of the clothing on the subject as I found that even when subjects had no clothing shown they would not have any body hair, while those that were fully dressed, for instance, may still have had arm hair showing.
What I found was that 75% of the images depicted no body hair. I found this intriguing, particularly in conjunction with my findings on facial hair. Why was there a trend to depict men as having a lack of body and facial hair, characteristics that identify a person as a mature male?
My original thought was that it a reflection with how youth obsessed our society is, and that this lack of hair is making them appear fashionably prepubescent. Weather that is the reason or not, it is obvious that this is a culture wide phenomenon as body hair is distinctly out of fashion, as seen on About.com,
and Ask Men.
The next characteristic I examined was nudity. It was immediately apparent after I collected all of the instances of this object that a large number of them were displaying implicitly naked or half naked men to sell there product. I experimented with a number of different ways to record the amount of nudity, including a percentage of the body shown and which parts of the body were shown but I found that the clearest way was to place each one into one of three categories: undressed, where absolutely no clothing is shown, partly dressed where some clothing is shown, or dressed where the subject is fully dressed with only there face and hands showing. The results can be seen bellow.
With a massive 70% of subjects being either undressed or only partitally dressed, its is apparent that the male body is being used to sell these fragrances. On adland, the commercial archive, all the way back in 2002, someone posed a question about nudity in perfume adds after there was an ad showing an entirely nude male including genitalia. You can read what people said about this here, but I think that anonymous person who said
“guys pulling down there undewear, for there entertainment , thats what they want”
may have had a point. Its not the actual depiction of a naked body, it the implication that there is something sexy going on which is why it is used so much. This also explains why there are so many partly dressed depictions.
The next characteristic I examined was the length of hair on each subject. To do this I classified each subject’s hair into; short, medium/short, medium, medium/long, or long. The percentage of each category can be seen here:
I thought it was quite interesting that there was such a range of hair length, particularly with not many having short hair. From my experience this does not reflect the trend of hair length in contemporary society. When I look around the streets, I see that most men have either short or medium short hair. Then there is still a few with medium length hair, and medium long and long hair is relatively uncommon. So why do the subject of these advertisements have longer hair than is common place in society?
There are a number of things that having long hair is said to signify. Even wikipedia has a lot to say on the matter . Personally I think the most likely reason for this context is that it is a symbol or virility, and also one a comfortable and non-conformist lifestyle.
The final individual characteristic I examined in this manner was the hair styles of each model.
It was clear that the two most popular styles were either the hair being slicked back, or having the hair forward on the face.
Of the remaining subjects, 15% had their hair ‘up’ because it was short enough to do so, while only 20% of the subjects depicted had their hair parted in some way. There was equal popularity between the side part and the centre part.
The overall image of men as depicted by advertising of men’s fragrances has have little to no facial or body hair, comparatively long hair, is naked or only partially dressed, and wears his hair either pushed forward or slicked back.
The lack of body and facial hair could be interpreted to make the subject appear prepubescent and thus reflect our society’s obsession with youth. However, I would like to suggest that these characteristic, (or the lack of characteristics) which signify of a person being an adult male human, in conjunction with the longer hair, which has long been a symbol in western (and many other) society of femininity that perhaps the image of men that is being depicted here is a more feminine image than in previous times.
Perhaps this is also a reason that the industry is booming so much - if men are expected to look and be groomed in a more feminine manner then it is more justifiable for them to spend the same amounts of money and time on grooming a swomen do.
In order to be satisfied with this idea I decided to investigate he relationship between the length of hair, and its relationship to facial hair. I wanted to see if those subjects who had longer hair were clean shaven or if they balanced this more feminine attribute with more masculine facial or body hair.
The scatter graph bellow depicts the number of instances in relation to hair length, and facial hair in mm.
Although there does not appear to be a direct correlation, I could see that those instances of long hair fell at the either little to no facial hair, or distinctive stubble. This influenced me when I came to create my taxonomy.
While I was experimenting with the data above, I also un expectantly found that there was also a relationship between the amount of facial hair the subject has and the amount of body hair.
This is shown on the scatter graph below, with the number of instances of each amount of body/facial hair being represented by the size of the circle.
If the subject has no body hair then he can have any range of facial hair. But there also appears to be a proportional relationship between body hair and facial hair. With only 20 instances it is hard to know if it just a coincidence in this data set, but is defiantly something I found interesting and would require further investigation.
Another interesting coloration I found was between the adjectives used to describe the fragrance by reviewers and the nudity level of the subject in the advertising.
It can be seen that most of the subjects in the advertising of fragrances which were described as ‘fresh’ had no clothing depicted in the advertisement, while those fragrances that were described as ‘sexy’, had advertisements depicting men being partially dressed. Those that were fully dressed were advertising fragrances that were described as ‘classy’.
Although one would expect to see a correlation like this between the language that advertisers and companies themselves would use to describe a product and the image they then put forward in a campaign, these adjectives were used by people on the perfume connection (http://perfumeconnection.com.au/?category=8) and it was in no way related to the images or advertising. I would conclude from this that advertisers are being successful at conveying an image that is socially recognisable and reflects people ideas about what that particular fragrance implies.
Below is a tree diagram I created which groups’ images firstly by the nudity of the subject, then by amount of facial hair (which is also represented by colour, with white being none, and the darkest being the strongest stubble). The adjectives used to describe each fragrance are then displayed.
After exploring the relationships between different characteristics I was able to create a taxonomy of the different images of men depicted by the advertising of men’s fragrances. Subjects are categorised primarily by their hair length, and then the amount of facial hair shown. Then I considered body hair and made some adjustments. This is why some characteristics are now considered in broader terms, for example the subject for Gucci does have very slight stubble, but because of the lack of body hair on the exposed chest and the style of his hair, he fits much better into the category ‘young men’, and thus the classification description read ‘relatively clean shaven’.
As you can see my taxonomy consist of six different categories of images of men.
There is the ‘clean man’ with short hair, who is clean shaven and has no body hair. The subjects in this category look very refined, and this category is the largest (probably due to the fact that they are subjects from an industry related to hygiene).
The next category I named the sexy man, as he has large amounts of body exposed and is depicted as have masculine features such as body and facial hair. His hair is short/medium which separates him form the rugged man.
The young man is another popular classification, subjects have medium length hair (usually pushed forward on their face) and are clean shaven and have no body hair.
Next is what I called the sophisticate man, because his hair is distinctly longer than the young man, yet he is still clean shaven and only has a little body hair. It is interesting when you look up close how the small different in length of hair really makes a big difference to how the subject is seen. They are all also wearing shirts. The fifth category is the ‘rugged man’ who has long hair and distinctive facial hair.
The final category is the feminine man; categorised by his long hair and lack of body and facial hair.
From this assignment I have learnt that by examining objects and the interrelationships between characteristics, a lot can be deduced about the nature of the object.
Although these relationships are often complex, by representing them clearly through visualisations it helps us to deduce and understand the information more quickly and intuitively.
By choosing an object with is reflectant upon society I feel that I was able to gain further understandings about the different current images of masculinity within our society, to the extent that I was able to create a taxonomy of the different images in men’s fragrance advertising.
For further reading on related subjects you can refer to my delicious links on the subject.
According to Strictly Men’s Business men’s grooming products grew 46% between 2001-2005. This huge growth made me wonder if it was reflecting upon a societal change in the image of masculinity.
To begin with I did some research about fragrances sales and what the trends were. According to the article Australian fashion law and industry trends, combined with the trends predicted on Smart Company men are entering the beauty/hygiene/perfume market and they; shop online and buy big name brands. For this reason I centred my object and characteristics around these trends.
Defining the Object
The images I considered had to satisfy the following requirements:
1. Advertise a fragrance for men and only men, this excluded advertising for his/her fragrances such as this one:
2. Depict a man, this excluded advertising of men’s fragrance which used women to sell there product, such as this one:
3. Advertise a perfume that was popular enough to have been review on perfume connection by at least two people
4. Be a 'big brand name'
For example, one such instance of this object is this add for ‘boss bottled’ by hugo boss.
Characteristics of the Object
The characteristics of these images that I examined had to do with either the fragrance itself, or the grooming and styling of the subject.
The characteristics relating to the fragrance itself were:
1. Fragrance Name
2. Company
3. Three adjectives used by reviewers on perfume connection to describe the fragrance
4. Category of Fragrance (eg citrus, woods, water etc)
The characteristics I looked at in relation to the styling of the subject were:
5. Facial hair
6. Body Hair
7. Nudity
8. Hair length
9. Hairstyle
Originally I included characteristics about the advertisement itself, such as; colours, layout, and relationship between viewer and subject, stance and gaze of subject. Although I believe that these factors have a lot to contribute to how men are represented within these advertisements, and were interesting, I decided confine my data to just the styling of the subject to obtain a more detailed and refined set of data.
I also included ‘physique’ as one of my characteristics but found that all of the models had a similar build (muscular), so I consider this characteristic irrelevant to further investigation, because if it is a common element to all of the subjects I will not be able to find any realtionships with outher charcteristics.
All of the images I used to construct my data can be viewed here.
Analysis
To begin with I examined the overall trends within the advertising.
Facial Hair
The first element of styling I looked at was the amount of facial hair each of the subjects had. What I found was a trend for the subjects to be clean shaven, which was clearly the most popular (50%), or have slight to medium stubble. There were no instances of full beards or moustaches.
Body Hair
The second element of styling I examined was the amount of body hair shown on the subjects. I rated this on a scale from none to substantial (0-4), with none looking like this:
And substantial like so: 
I did this regardless of the clothing on the subject as I found that even when subjects had no clothing shown they would not have any body hair, while those that were fully dressed, for instance, may still have had arm hair showing.
What I found was that 75% of the images depicted no body hair. I found this intriguing, particularly in conjunction with my findings on facial hair. Why was there a trend to depict men as having a lack of body and facial hair, characteristics that identify a person as a mature male?
My original thought was that it a reflection with how youth obsessed our society is, and that this lack of hair is making them appear fashionably prepubescent. Weather that is the reason or not, it is obvious that this is a culture wide phenomenon as body hair is distinctly out of fashion, as seen on About.com,
and Ask Men.
Nudity
The next characteristic I examined was nudity. It was immediately apparent after I collected all of the instances of this object that a large number of them were displaying implicitly naked or half naked men to sell there product. I experimented with a number of different ways to record the amount of nudity, including a percentage of the body shown and which parts of the body were shown but I found that the clearest way was to place each one into one of three categories: undressed, where absolutely no clothing is shown, partly dressed where some clothing is shown, or dressed where the subject is fully dressed with only there face and hands showing. The results can be seen bellow.
With a massive 70% of subjects being either undressed or only partitally dressed, its is apparent that the male body is being used to sell these fragrances. On adland, the commercial archive, all the way back in 2002, someone posed a question about nudity in perfume adds after there was an ad showing an entirely nude male including genitalia. You can read what people said about this here, but I think that anonymous person who said
“guys pulling down there undewear, for there entertainment , thats what they want”
may have had a point. Its not the actual depiction of a naked body, it the implication that there is something sexy going on which is why it is used so much. This also explains why there are so many partly dressed depictions.
Hair Length
The next characteristic I examined was the length of hair on each subject. To do this I classified each subject’s hair into; short, medium/short, medium, medium/long, or long. The percentage of each category can be seen here:
I thought it was quite interesting that there was such a range of hair length, particularly with not many having short hair. From my experience this does not reflect the trend of hair length in contemporary society. When I look around the streets, I see that most men have either short or medium short hair. Then there is still a few with medium length hair, and medium long and long hair is relatively uncommon. So why do the subject of these advertisements have longer hair than is common place in society?
There are a number of things that having long hair is said to signify. Even wikipedia has a lot to say on the matter . Personally I think the most likely reason for this context is that it is a symbol or virility, and also one a comfortable and non-conformist lifestyle.
Hair style
The final individual characteristic I examined in this manner was the hair styles of each model.
It was clear that the two most popular styles were either the hair being slicked back, or having the hair forward on the face.
Of the remaining subjects, 15% had their hair ‘up’ because it was short enough to do so, while only 20% of the subjects depicted had their hair parted in some way. There was equal popularity between the side part and the centre part.
Conclusion from Overall Trends
The overall image of men as depicted by advertising of men’s fragrances has have little to no facial or body hair, comparatively long hair, is naked or only partially dressed, and wears his hair either pushed forward or slicked back.
The lack of body and facial hair could be interpreted to make the subject appear prepubescent and thus reflect our society’s obsession with youth. However, I would like to suggest that these characteristic, (or the lack of characteristics) which signify of a person being an adult male human, in conjunction with the longer hair, which has long been a symbol in western (and many other) society of femininity that perhaps the image of men that is being depicted here is a more feminine image than in previous times.
Perhaps this is also a reason that the industry is booming so much - if men are expected to look and be groomed in a more feminine manner then it is more justifiable for them to spend the same amounts of money and time on grooming a swomen do.
Relationships between Data
Length of Hair and Relationship to Facial Hair
In order to be satisfied with this idea I decided to investigate he relationship between the length of hair, and its relationship to facial hair. I wanted to see if those subjects who had longer hair were clean shaven or if they balanced this more feminine attribute with more masculine facial or body hair.
The scatter graph bellow depicts the number of instances in relation to hair length, and facial hair in mm.
Although there does not appear to be a direct correlation, I could see that those instances of long hair fell at the either little to no facial hair, or distinctive stubble. This influenced me when I came to create my taxonomy.
Relationship between Amount of Facial Hair and Amount of Body Hair
While I was experimenting with the data above, I also un expectantly found that there was also a relationship between the amount of facial hair the subject has and the amount of body hair.
This is shown on the scatter graph below, with the number of instances of each amount of body/facial hair being represented by the size of the circle.
If the subject has no body hair then he can have any range of facial hair. But there also appears to be a proportional relationship between body hair and facial hair. With only 20 instances it is hard to know if it just a coincidence in this data set, but is defiantly something I found interesting and would require further investigation.
Adjectives Used to describe Fragrance & Amount of Nudity in Ad
Another interesting coloration I found was between the adjectives used to describe the fragrance by reviewers and the nudity level of the subject in the advertising.
It can be seen that most of the subjects in the advertising of fragrances which were described as ‘fresh’ had no clothing depicted in the advertisement, while those fragrances that were described as ‘sexy’, had advertisements depicting men being partially dressed. Those that were fully dressed were advertising fragrances that were described as ‘classy’.
Although one would expect to see a correlation like this between the language that advertisers and companies themselves would use to describe a product and the image they then put forward in a campaign, these adjectives were used by people on the perfume connection (http://perfumeconnection.com.au/?category=8) and it was in no way related to the images or advertising. I would conclude from this that advertisers are being successful at conveying an image that is socially recognisable and reflects people ideas about what that particular fragrance implies.
Nudity, Facial Hair and Adjectives Used to Describe A Fragrance
Below is a tree diagram I created which groups’ images firstly by the nudity of the subject, then by amount of facial hair (which is also represented by colour, with white being none, and the darkest being the strongest stubble). The adjectives used to describe each fragrance are then displayed.
Taxonomy
After exploring the relationships between different characteristics I was able to create a taxonomy of the different images of men depicted by the advertising of men’s fragrances. Subjects are categorised primarily by their hair length, and then the amount of facial hair shown. Then I considered body hair and made some adjustments. This is why some characteristics are now considered in broader terms, for example the subject for Gucci does have very slight stubble, but because of the lack of body hair on the exposed chest and the style of his hair, he fits much better into the category ‘young men’, and thus the classification description read ‘relatively clean shaven’.
As you can see my taxonomy consist of six different categories of images of men.
There is the ‘clean man’ with short hair, who is clean shaven and has no body hair. The subjects in this category look very refined, and this category is the largest (probably due to the fact that they are subjects from an industry related to hygiene).
The next category I named the sexy man, as he has large amounts of body exposed and is depicted as have masculine features such as body and facial hair. His hair is short/medium which separates him form the rugged man.
The young man is another popular classification, subjects have medium length hair (usually pushed forward on their face) and are clean shaven and have no body hair.
Next is what I called the sophisticate man, because his hair is distinctly longer than the young man, yet he is still clean shaven and only has a little body hair. It is interesting when you look up close how the small different in length of hair really makes a big difference to how the subject is seen. They are all also wearing shirts. The fifth category is the ‘rugged man’ who has long hair and distinctive facial hair.
The final category is the feminine man; categorised by his long hair and lack of body and facial hair.
Conclusion from Assignment
From this assignment I have learnt that by examining objects and the interrelationships between characteristics, a lot can be deduced about the nature of the object.
Although these relationships are often complex, by representing them clearly through visualisations it helps us to deduce and understand the information more quickly and intuitively.
By choosing an object with is reflectant upon society I feel that I was able to gain further understandings about the different current images of masculinity within our society, to the extent that I was able to create a taxonomy of the different images in men’s fragrance advertising.
For further reading on related subjects you can refer to my delicious links on the subject.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Jessie Heppell on April 9, 2008 at 9:09pm - sorry, (i didn't even know you could set it to private!) they should both be fixed now.
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Comment by Andrea on April 9, 2008 at 1:28am - oops! your photobucket link is private, could you make it public, please? we need to check everything's complete. and your delicious link at the bottom has an extra left parenthesis.
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Comment by Stephanie Patel on April 3, 2008 at 9:42pm - I really really liked your taxonomy, Jessie! Your choice of topic was so unique and I think that's the reason for its success and the succeeding insights that you gained from your data analysis. Awesome work!! (^-')b
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