The Representation of the Orient in Western Women Perfume Advertisements: A Semiotic Analysis

Advertisement, omnipresent in the media and daily life, is constitutive of a widespread cultural practice, circulating commodities as well as knowledge. While research studies have long challenged the ways in which advertising and marketing campaigns in western countries employ gendered imagery that objectify women and reinforce power differences between the sexes in order to sell their products, not much attention has been given to the images of the Orient that are adopted to create woman imagery in advertisements. This paper, by using a semiotic analysis, discusses the representation of the Orient in western women perfume advertisements—the one type of advertisement where woman images have been a focal point and most fully exploited. Through decoding the signs and discourses in the deployment of Oriental images in women perfume advertisements, the paper attempts to reveal how race and gender are combined to create and reinforce female roles and define femininity in western societies.