In the early days of advertising, men like Mad Men’s Don Draper believed they were market pioneers, mavericks in suits who controlled a brand’s message in an era of seemingly unlimited possibility. With advertising campaigns creating icons like Leo Burnett’s Marlboro Man or NC&K’s Maidenform woman, ad agencies flirted with sex and gender, often playing on hitherto hidden desires for sex, social acceptance, style, and success.
Today, advertising is a multiplatform, many-headed hydra with ad agencies often following the tastes of consumers who have more power than ever. Yet despite this and significant legal changes affecting the lives of many LGBT consumers, we still haven’t managed to stem the endless flow of heteronormative advertising imagery.
There are no prizes for guessing why patriarchal orthodoxy still reigns – heterosexual men often head up the top jobs and still control what we are permitted to see. Their fear of female sexualities that don’t defer to men stymies the creation of imagery that challenges this orthodoxy.