Femvertising: feminism i syfte att sälja : en undersökning om konsumenters perspektiv på konceptet femvertising

Femvertising is a relatively new concept that describe the use of feminism in advertising. Femvertising aims to both strengthen the image of women and overrule stereotypical representations of women in advertising, whilst at the same time aims to sell products. This highlights a conflict within the concept, which is what makes femvertising an interesting subject to study. This study investigates the representation of women in contemporary fashion commercials withfemvertising messages. Further, it examines how young Swedish women create meaning in relation to these messages, and finally, how they interpret the conflict within the concept of femvertising.The main material consists of semi-structured interviews with ten young women, the secondary material consists of advertisements from three Swedish fashion brands; H&M, Gina Tricot and Monki. The theoretical framework consists of Stuart Hallsrepresentation theoryand encoding/decoding theory, as well as parts from the consumer cultural framework, a critical view on identity and fashionand finally, two critical theories on feminist messagesin advertisement. Through these theoretical perspectives the study has demonstrated that young female consumers care relatively little about feminist messages in advertising. Instead, consumers want companies to work with feminist values internally and throughout. Further, the results points to that young female consumers want a more including representation of female bodies in advertising and that consumers react in a positive way towards advertising that represents bodies which they can relate to. In conclusion the results suggests that it is not enough for companies to use feminist messages and values in their advertisement, if these messages are not reflected in the company itself