Mustang advertising and the impact of feminism: women’s representation in ads from 1964-1975

This thesis, Mustang Advertising and the Impact of Feminism: Women’s Representation in Ads from 1964-1975 examines the change of women’s representation in Mustang advertising from 1964-1975. Despite the Mustang’s overall success, Ford would fail to properly embrace Feminist theory and concepts during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The following research analyzes a variety of advertising to show that, by attempting to utilize feminism within advertisements, Ford’s use of a feminist inspired “independent woman” would still rely on gender roles. This thesis topic gives the opportunity to reflect on the history of women’s representation in advertising and how women are represented in advertising today. Utilizing a combination of primary documents collected from sources such as The Henry Ford Archive; and a variety of secondary sources covering the topics of advertising, automobile history, and feminist history, these topics combined support my analysis of 1964-1975 Mustang advertising. Mustang advertisements from 1965 would heavily rely on glamourized and gendered depictions of women to promote their products. This glamourization would soon give way to depictions of an “independent woman” inspired by second wave-feminists starting in 1966. This depiction however would ultimately fall flat, due to reliance on gender roles created in a post war era. Concluding the research by examining the impact of the rising environmental crisis in the 1970’s, Ford’s attempts of addressing rising social issues can be seen implemented in a similar fashion to it’s attempts at addressing feminist audiences. It’s success at addressing environmental concerns much like it’s attempts at acknowledging feminism would be unsuccessful. With the next generation of Mustang’s introduced to a unimpressed public, Ford would once again enter into a period of uncertainty where innovation was called upon once again. Using these findings to better understand the history of women’s representation in advertising, similar observations can be made about modern advertising and how it impacts women today.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference