Self and Identity of Being an Ideal Woman: An Exploratory Qualitative Study

Abstract

Gender roles and their stereotyped behaviour is influenced by various factors, both external and internal, during the course of an individual’s life. But, the identity of being an ideal woman is allegedly triggered by marketing. It seems to create an identity benchmark in the society and a pressure in women to comply with these identity standards. These efforts to adhere to the ideal woman benchmark is reflected in women’s consumption. But, what does it mean to be an ideal woman? To explore this, we conducted 20 interviews. The study identified that being an ideal woman is being beautiful and feminine, and to have stereotyped perfect bodies and behaviour. These seem to be driven by the expectations from men, which bring transitions in a woman’s public and private self. The study also discusses the implications to marketing and advertising.

Keywords

Self identity ideal woman compliance pressure ideal consumption

Introduction

The transitions a woman undergoes through her entire life are tied to various consumption patterns and ideal consumption behaviours at every stage of her development as a woman (Bordo, 1993; Catterall, Maclaran, & Stevens, 2013; Kaplan, 1987). Women have been instructed about what they are supposed to be, how they should look, and the images, identity and ideal they should represent (Hirschman, 1993; Zukin & McGuire, 2004). The contradiction in rhetoric and reality has given way to much paradoxical propaganda about women. Women are said to have lived highly perplexing lives, confronted with paradoxical rhetoric and behaviours (Firat, Dholakia, & Venkatesh, 1995). Postmodernist claims of this paradox in modern life are easily supported by scrutinizing the conditions of women in the private domain. Rather the practices in and the products of public domain determined their lives and relationships in the private domain. Therefore, in reality, there does not exist a private domain at all. Neither were women’s lives private, because women were, in many respects, the private property of men. All ‘assets’ in the household belonged to its male head (Saffioti, 1978), and a woman could do little without the man’s permission (Chodorow, 1979). At the same time, public rhetoric contained much praise, flattering and idealization of women. For example, mothers, especially, were put on pedestals for raising stout sons and for looking after the needs of men. This have been very clearly depicted in most of the Indian daily soaps, movies and ads, which are one of the major sources of imitation and aspiration for a common consumer.

The feminist critique of consumption as an offshoot of the developments covers a wide range of concerns. Some of them question the epistemological inquiries of existing consumer research (Bristor & Fischer, 1993; Hirschman, 1993), while others incorporate feminist theory to decode consumer images generated through advertising (Artz & Venkatesh, 1991; Stern, 1993) and critique of the representation of the female body in contemporary consumer culture (Bordo, 1993). The transitions a woman undergoes in her entire life are tied to various consumption patterns and ideal consumption behaviours at every stage of her development as a woman. Thus, in this study, we attempt to throw some light on the identity of an ideal woman and its manifestations in her consumption behaviour. Extant research has looked at the perceptions from men on ideal woman (e.g., Stiles, Gibbons, & Schnellman, 1986). But what does it mean to be an ideal woman from the woman’s perspective and how it compares with the man’s perspective is the focus of the study. The study tries to analyse the influence of marketing in the construction of an ideal woman identity. We look at the creation of an identity benchmark by marketing and thereby a compliance pressure on women, her aspirations and efforts to adhere to the benchmark. We also look at the manifestations of the compliance pressure in women’s consumption behaviour.

Background of the Study

Gender, Marketing and Identity

Gender has become a central topic in marketing and consumer research over the last two decades (Bettany, Dobscha, O’Malley, & Prothero, 2010; Catterall, Maclaran, & Stevens, 2005; Schroeder, 2002). Gender in advertising was first explored to see how it depicts asymmetrical relations and cultural notions of femininity (Goffman, 1979, p. 9). Schroeder and Borgerson (1998) further detailed the representation of male and female bodies in advertising and the construction of gender differences through the images and messages of ads. Advertising, as such, is no longer just a means of communicating information about products but also a means of constructing, influencing and illustrating identity (Schroeder, 2002). It is not new and startling that gender has been a point of debate across the globe in multiple setups, personal and professional. Various movements, waves of renaissance and developments evolved over the years all over the world in different times and intensities. In spite of the liberatory postmodernism (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995), which swept the academic community, practitioners’ mind towards progressivism, which expected that there would not be any necessity to talk about it after, say, a few decades, left the feminists and progressive thinkers dumbstruck.

The influence of marketing in society is powerful and omnipresent as a ‘super-ideology’ (Elliott & Ritson, 1998). Marketing generates meaning by appropriating extant imagery in culture and associating it with suggestive consumption opportunities, thus investing brand symbols with cultural meaning (McCracken, 1986; Mick & Buhl, 1992; Sherry, 1987). As a source for acquiring cultural knowledge to promote the consumption of products, the effect of marketing is pervasive in that it ‘invades, shapes and reflects consumer consciousness’ (Hackley, 2002, p. 212). It is this gathered cultural knowledge that ‘mobilizes advertising’s potentiality as a vehicle of cultural meaning, and hence, in the aggregate, enables marketing as an ideological force’ (Hackley, 2002, p. 212). Consumers in everyday discourses use marketing for multiple purposes (O’Donohoe, 1994), such as in constructing symbolic selves by drawing on selective assemblages of communicated brands (Elliott & Wattanasuwan, 1998), or appropriating communicative discourses to produce a range of social perspectives to suit their social needs (Thompson, 2004; Thompson & Haytko, 1997). Consumption is used to construct and align notions of national identity (O’Donohoe, 1994). As for culture shaping marketing, ‘gender is probably the social resource that is most used by advertisers’ (Jhally, 1987, p. 135). Goffman (1979) further reveals the ideological prevalence of gender inequalities in advertising, such that men are typically portrayed in dominant positions relative to women in a variety of consumption situations. These discourses generally depict men as ‘idealized’ (Elliot & Elliott, 2005) and women as ‘vulnerable’ (Zayer & Coleman, 2015) and draw from an entrenched legacy of inaccurate gendered stereotypes in the marketplace (Dobscha, 2012), which essentialize dichotomies of maleness and femaleness in society as ‘natural’ (West & Zimmerman, 1987).

Methodology

The first author conducted 20 in depth interviews with 12 female and 8 male respondents. Because the self-concept is complex and highly sensitive to social and situational contexts (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Turner, 1987), this study required a research method with the ability to delve phenomenological into the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of respondents, and to capture and account for the social and situational contexts of those phenomena. It requires a deeper understanding of the mental facts and psyche (Jones & McEwen, 2000) and, theoretically, the nature of consumer psychology needs to be addressed and understood at a level that is both richer and more grounded in the lived experiences of consumers (Mick, Pettigrew, Pechmann, & Ozanne, 2011). Thus, the major reason for conducting the interviews was to get involved in conversation with respondents to elicit their experiences, narratives and perceptions of themselves and their understandings (Zeithaml, 1988) of identity development.

The interviews were recorded and a journal was maintained to record memos. The interviews were informal and the respondents had the freedom to express or abstain from sharing the experiences. Initially the study involved only female respondents as the exploration was focused on women, in the later stages of the interviews, however, we included men as a frame of reference to compare and contrast the responses. As the interviews attained saturation, the study stopped at 21 respondents. The profile of the respondents interviewed are presented in Table 1. We sourced our first respondents from among our acquaintances and colleagues, who in turn put us in touch with other consumers. As the study progressed, we diversified our sample with respect to marital status, gender, education, place of origin and physical attributes. Because initial analysis revealed that these dimensions are of importance in a woman’s identity construction. Interviews were conducted in English, but the respondents were given the freedom to use the common language Hindi, so that they can express better. Interviews lasted for one hour on average, with some going on for two to three hours. Interviews with key respondents began with ‘grand tour’ questions (McCracken, 1989; Spradley, 1979) pertaining to their life stories and their experiences before and after marriage. Interviews were kept as loosely structured as possible, allowing respondents the freedom to express in their own ways and at their own paces. We probed the women respondents to share their life transitions and thereby transformations in them psychologically, emotionally and physically as a woman. We asked the respondents about their expectations from a man/woman and different roles and network of relationships and we probed the male understanding of the transitions a woman undergoes. We also perused the respondents’ media consumption habits, purchase decisions and patterns in terms of influence of marketing on their development, transition and maintenance of self and identity.

The data analysis initially started with manual transcriptions of the interviews, but during the process, the study necessitated using a software to ensure validity and Nvivo Pro (Version 11) was used to that purpose. Nvivo facilitated many of the key characteristics of a grounded theory approach. First round of coding resulted in 210 statements which were further categorized under 38 categories. The next step involved identifying emergent themes based on the codes. Along with analysis in Nvivo, we used R-language to analyse the text and form the word cloud which aided in interpreting the themes from Nvivo.

Table 1.

Profile of the Interview Respondents

Sr. No.	Pseudonym	Age	Gender	Marital Status	State of Domicile	Education
1	Deeb	26	Female	Unmarried	Chhattisgarh	PhD
2	Kat	28	Female	Married	Kerala	PhD
3	Ann	25	Female	Unmarried	West Bengal	PhD
4	Bob	34	Male	Unmarried	Andhra Pradesh	PhD
5	Prada	35	Male	Married	Orissa	PhD
6	Laji	33	Male	Married	Tami Nadu	PhD
7	Prax	31	Male	Married	Kerala	PhD
8	Sham	24	Female	Unmarried	Uttar Pradesh	PhD
9	Sandy	30	Male	Married	Kerala	PhD
10	Jay	25	Male	Unmarried	Tamil Nadu	PhD
11	Sree	26	Female	Unmarried	West Bengal	PhD
12	Diya	31	Female	Married	Kerala	PhD
13	Nirem	39	Female	Married	Kerala	PhD
14	Chipra	24	Female	Unmarried	Bihar	MBA
15	Shika	24	Female	Unmarried	Haryana	MBA
16	Manoop	27	Female	Married	Kerala	PhD
17	Vindy	27	Male	Unmarried	Kerala	PhD
18	Rupa	27	Female	Married	Karnataka	PhD
19	Miksha	24	Female	Unmarried	Maharashtra	MBA
20	Mod	35	Male	Married	Kerala	PhD

Source: Authors.

Results

In the process of data analysis, emerged themes took on greater-than-anticipated importance. It was evident from early on, during the interviews, that the transformations a woman undergoes were much more critical than expected. Women’s relentless aspirations to achieve the perceived ideal beauty and body image came to be a serious concern. Identity concerns surfaced repeatedly in respondents’ motivations, as did issues of relative identities with men, and thereby conflict within themselves became noteworthy. The identity women portray differently in their public and private selves and thereby the manifestations of those feelings reflected in their consumption behaviours, which are of importance to marketers. Finally, based on these emergent themes, we present few implications for the marketing and consumer research.

Family and Upbringing: The Primary Conditioning Factors

At the first level, the question ‘Who is a woman and how she should be?’ is addressed by the family and upbringing, while traditions, rituals, customs, religion, culture and subcultures play a significant role, and women are expected to adhere to these specific cultural norms. Women are expected to adhere to specific cultural norms. Though it seems quite obvious and intuitive, these factors seem to have a significant influence on the formation or development of a woman. The traditions, rituals, customs and culture influence the way you behave, what you eat, what you wear and on a broader level, how you consume. Extant research has highlighted the influence of family, upbringing, place of origin, religion, culture and other external factors which influence the formation of a person and personality (Nicosia & Mayer, 1976). Women are expected to adhere to specific cultural norms. This can be seen from the excerpts reproduced below. A female respondent from Kerala indicates the influence of family on her being a woman:

Though I was born and brought up in Bangalore, my parents made sure that we follow and adhere to Kerala culture in every way: the way we dress, coming back home by 6 pm, lighting the lamp, not speaking to boys, not going to friends’ houses, etc. My parents were scared about us, about the extravagant life of Bangalore, and so we were restricted a lot and were often reminded of our Kerala culture.

So, it shows that family and culture has a great influence in the formation of a person and especially a woman. When it comes to traditions and rituals, customs and religion, women have a special obligation to be in a certain way. This can be seen in the following excerpt from a female respondent from Haryana:

At home, I never spoke, I never argued, because as my mom used to insist on, a girl should be polite, should not speak much and wear a duppatta [a long scarf worn around kamiz] when someone is at home, have a smile on face.

This ideal woman syndrome does not just emerge from a man’s mind, but also from a woman’s mind. And women also observe, learn, emulate and imitate the ideal woman image from various sources. Let us see one of the excerpts from a female respondent who is married, which describes an ideal woman.

I used to always fantasize to be this ideal woman who is a great daughter at home, a responsible and caring sister, and I used to watch these daily soaps and romantic movies, where this perfect girlfriend and wives are shown, the way they dress, the way they behave. I imitated to be like those perfect wives in these daily soaps.

The cues from which a woman tries to catch up being the ideal women is not surprising. These daily soaps, which represent the women in a particular way and the feedback what such behaviours get back from the society reiterates the trust and confidence in a woman that such behaviours are behoving of an ideal woman. Thus, characterization of an ideal woman is directly or indirectly associated with her upbringing, roles, relationships and different transitions in life.

Perception of Femininity

Gender in advertising was first explored to see how it depicts asymmetrical relations and cultural notions of femininity (Goffman, 1979, p. 9). Schroeder and Borgerson (1998) further detailed the representation of male and female bodies in advertising and the construction of gender differences through the images and messages of ads. Studies demonstrate how marketing and consumer research has moved beyond biological processes to constructions of femininity and masculinity (Bettany et al., 2010). For example, studies on women bikers (Martin, Schouten, & McAlexander, 2006) and women in sports (Brace-Govan, 2010) relate female interpretations of femininity to women’s identity projects.

Biological perspective of femininity of the female respondents and few male respondents correlate with the understanding of the larger scientific community that femininity arises out of the fact that a woman has different hormones than men, and the ability of a woman to give birth, or in their terms, to create a new life, which can be seen in the following excerpt from an unmarried female respondent:

A woman can do what both men and women can do, but a man cannot do what a woman can! Femininity is being a mother, the fact that she can give birth to a new life makes a human being feminine.

The physical idea of femininity came from both female and male respondents. The idea of being beautiful, having a curved body, having a body which can attract men, and having an appearance which represents a woman. These ideas can be seen in the following excerpts from a male respondent who is unmarried:

At first sight, what attracts me in a woman is her looks, and I like if she is feminine than a tom boy kind. Her hair, body structure, and [figure to be precise…laughs…], her skin, smile and all these things. Usually men [generally] like women who are more feminine in their looks and body, then comes the person and personality.

The definition and expectation of a man for a woman’s being feminine influence a lot how women define themselves and try to be that expected woman. This could exert a huge pressure on their psyche to comply with these expectations. This is evident what an unmarried female respondent says,

I am comfortable wearing jeans and t-shirt, but I like wearing sari, because my figure comes out the best in sari, I like my curvy body when I wear sari [Laughs with a shy…]. And many times my friends [male friends] have complimented me that I look beautiful in sari and I look more feminine in sari. I like to be feminine, I don’t like to be this tom boyish.

Femininity has not just been defined and characterized as the presence of certain physical and biological elements in a woman but also certain psychological features which both woman and man perceive to be in a woman, which makes her feminine. There is a common understanding in this respect among both sexes but there is a difference of opinion also as to what does femininity mean psychologically to a woman and to a man. This representation of a woman as being submissive, sacrificing, and sensitive to emotions and expressing emotions unreservedly is seen as feminine and the absence of these traits along with being tough, and arrogant is considered masculine.

Another female respondent talks about her physical features she thinks are masculine, which bothers her. And this makes her go an extra mile to look feminine and avoid getting along with men if she has not taken care of.

I regularly wax my hands, and do my upper lip threading, facial hair removal. It feels clean, exfoliated and soft after that, I feel girly after waxing, otherwise, it looks like a man’s leg, and I feel so conscious to talk to a man when I have upper lip hair like a moustache, I avoid facing them.

No wonder the market size of depilatory products is on a high rise both in India and globally. This market covers hair removal creams, waxes/sugars, mousses/gels, wax strips and hair bleachers/lighteners for women. The communication of a brand in 2016 actually used the phrase ‘You are not a boy’ in its appeal to the shame and guilt of women with unremoved body hair.

The Ideal Beauty Aspirations

Beauty seems to be an important factor which bothers women. Women aspire to possess the ‘picture perfect’ beauty pushed by marketing, expected by society and desired by men. This aspiration reflects in their consumption choices, responding to the marketing stimuli. Constructions of female beauty are indeed intricately embedded in the complex interaction between gender and marketing. Because cosmetics and personal care goods, as an industry (and the culture of female beauty accompanying it), initially developed in the West and spread in the rest of the world as a side effect of globalized marketing (Chapkis, 1986; Leslie, 1995).

According to one of the male respondents, what makes an ideal woman can be seen from what he says:

Girls should not be too fat, it spoils their looks, I like women who are tall, and slim, and it makes them look beautiful… Women look good when they wear saris, and other Indian dresses, but it is rare to find that perfect bodied girls like these models or heroines.

We can see the reference to a perfect body in terms of the body size, weight and appearance, anchored to models and actresses. This idea of perfect woman or ideal woman in terms of physical standards is also seen in terms of the physical features which make an ideal woman. As expressed by an unmarried man of 25 years of age:

I say that a woman is beautiful at first sight if she is tall, fair, slim, and if she has a good skin complexion.

This understanding is not just of unmarried men, but of married men as well. As expressed by a married man of 31 years of age:

I am anyway married, but usually if I look at a girl, first obviously I will notice her body structure [figure in our terms], I get attracted to curvy bodies, and then ya, her hair, I like straight soft long hair, I don’t know why. Then, eyes are something which attract me, they speak a lot, finally lips, probably smile, than lips.

Expectations from men influence women to comply with those expectations of ideal woman images. A positive feedback from men reinforces the feeling of being an ideal woman among women. A female respondent thus expressed:

Beauty is something which comes within, yes, I am beautiful, pretty beautiful, I like my curvy body, and hence I like saris. My beauty comes out best in them. I don’t like getting dark [my boyfriend actually…]. Once I had been to bleach and got a bad suntan, I had to apply all sorts of stuff to get rid of it. If you show me a dark-skinned girl and ask me if she is beautiful, probably I would say No, but doesn’t mean that I don’t like dark-skinned people.

Another female respondent stated as follows:

I feel sometimes why I am so short, especially when I am with tall people. And people identify me as the short girl. I wish I was at least 5 plus like 5.4 or something. Now I cannot increase my height. I can only wear heels [laughs].

So, we find that men place more importance on the physical attractiveness of women than women do on the physical attractiveness of men. As a result, women’s social opportunities are more affected by their physical beauty than are men’s, and women are under more pressure to conform to the ideal of beauty. Although standards of female beauty are not as arbitrary as is sometimes claimed, they do vary greatly over time and across subcultures. Advertising, media and entertainment produce vivid notions of beauty that keeps changing, creating pressure upon women to conform to the body image currently in vogue. The best known of these beauty standards are the ‘zero figure mania’ spread through female celebrities and hence the women’s trend towards slenderization. As women attempt to adapt to each of these changes, a few even over-adapt, sometimes to the point of a breakdown. The consequences of the mania are reflected in women’s meticulous exercise regimes, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and even obsessive compulsive behaviours towards weight loss/gain.

The Body

Women have long been subject to what is termed ‘the gaze’ (Foucault, 1975). Extant research divides and genders the body in binary terms of the mind as rational, objective, strategic and therefore ‘male’, compared to the body as emotional, sensitive, passive and therefore ‘female’ (Classen, 1993; Howes, 1991; Ortner, 1974). This division in gendered ideologies has great implications in terms of agency, consumption ideologies and issues of control over selves and others (Malefyt & Morais, 2012, pp. 60–73). Discourses on the female body that surround global popular representations of female attractiveness are dominated by Western-influenced constructs of the body as separate from the mind, as a site of struggle, and as a fragmented object to be brought under control (Berman, 1989; O’Neill, 1985; Parameswaran, 2003).

This idealization extends to even the physical attributes of a woman where she ensures that she maintain that perfect representation of a perfect body. One of the female unmarried respondent strongly explains this aspect of ideal woman in her interview:

I am very conscious about how I look, my fitness and appearance. I don’t want to go beyond ‘M’ [medium] size, neither ‘S’ [small], nor ‘L’ [large]. ‘M’ is the perfect shape for a woman actually.

The drive to have a perfect body (size, shape, colour and feature) was found in each of the interviewed women, but in different degrees. Dissatisfaction, dislike and embarrassment towards their body was present in each of them. This dissatisfaction and lower body esteem seems to pull their confidence down, which results in specific consumption behaviours. A married female respondent stated as follows:

I don’t like my thighs and big butts, because of which I don’t wear short tops and I wear only knee length tops.

I used to feel inferior whenever I get into a group of pretty and fair girls, just because I was not fair I missed out so many opportunities in life.

Women aspire or envy the ideal images portrayed on media, experience depression and inferiority complex. A common feeling among all the women with respect to their bodies was low self-esteem and high public self-consciousness during their menstrual cycle. The extent of dissatisfaction towards their own bodies even reflected in cursing themselves for being a woman. A young unmarried female respondent expressed as follows:

Every month whenever I am down with my cycle, I feel like cursing. I will be like why the hell am I a woman. Why don’t men have these problems? Those 3 to 5 days I feel like my freedom is gone. I restrict myself doing everything. But ya, I can’t help it. Otherwise I am happy being a woman.

The feminine care industry introduced the idea of protection starting in the 1920s (Brumberg, 1998). Scholars posit that the notion of feminine protection was used only in advertising to emphasize shame and secrecy (Howie & Shail, 2005; Kissling, 2006). Specifically, and critically referring to representation of menstruation in advertising and women’s identity, Luke (1997) notes, ‘Advertisements advertise and make public the feminine products through which women are reminded of their duty to hide menstruation, that these products “protect,” “help prevent accidents,” provide “confidence” so the public world doesn’t find out that women are menstruating’ (p. 29). In critiquing such gendered imagery, the marketing and consumer research literature confirms that embodiment is a sociocultural phenomenon (Brace-Govan, 2010). Since a woman’s relation to her menstrual cycle is mediated by consumption, critical feminist scholarship raises the issue of agency and power to define the body (Lee, 2010). Malefyt and McCabe (2016) argue that adoption of a ‘natural’ discourse is a means for women to counter the sense of shame and embarrassment in the ‘protection’ discourse, and to reclaim control over their feminine identity. The ‘protection’ discourse, upon which early advertising ideology is based, emphasizes a negative, disembodied perspective of menstruation in which women are subject to the objective judgement of others. It may have its origins in the social construct of ‘the gaze’, which privileges an external orientation towards the social self and others.

Multiple and Relative Identities of Women

Identity theories distinguish between notions of self-concept and identity. From this perspective, individuals have only one current self-concept, containing the totality of meanings that individuals hold about themselves (Stets & Burke, 2005). The self-concept emerges over time, as individuals observe and categorize themselves relative to others (i.e., form multiple identities), based on their goals, how they perceive others respond to them and their self-evaluations (Stets & Burke, 2005). The understanding of identity has attracted extensive research attention across social sciences, resulting in significant variation in its conceptual meaning (Stryker & Burke, 2000). The question ‘Who am I?’ has been consistently responded to with the answer, ‘It’s a difficult question’, or ‘It’s the toughest questions I have to answer’, all of them on average taking two minutes to start answering. A few respondents, both man and woman, even delegated the responsibility to others by saying, ‘Others would be more apt to answer this question.’ It becomes more important to focus on women here as the responses were long, complicated and there were multiple answers from a single respondent for this question, and because they were different from the answers by the male respondents.

Individuals observe and categorize themselves relative to others, based on their goals, their self-evaluations and how they perceive others respond to them. These multiple identities can be attributed to the network of roles and relationships which one is involved in. A married female respondent observed as follows:

From the day you are born, you have various roles to play. You are a daughter at home, a student at school, sister for your siblings, girlfriend, wife, daughter in law, etc., and when you have to manage them simultaneously, it is obviously challenging and you feel like what the hell, but it’s ok. Between all these, you will never think or even imagined to answer the question ‘Who am I’? A woman will never have a single unique identity of her own, you are always somebody’s dash.

Women’s identity is relative and they seem unhappy about it. An unmarried female respondent observed as follows:

I am Shika, that’s it. I don’t want to be identified as somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, wife, etc. I don’t want to be identified that I come from so and so caste. No. I have my own unique identity.

Women are apprehensive about losing their identity. They take efforts to create their unique identity and protect it. Another unmarried woman observed as follows:

I have my name, my surname, and I love my name and surname that is something which identifies me. I don’t want to change my name or surname for some random man in my life. I am born as Sikaria and I will die as Sikaria only [stresses]. I don’t want to and I can’t even imagine me being something else, some other name. No, it’s like losing my identity [stresses again].

Conflict Between Actual, Desired, Expected and Ideal Self

Researchers have described three classes of self-conception: the ‘actual self’, the ‘ideal self’, and the ‘ought self’ (Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002; Higgins, 1987; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Ryff, 1991). An individual’s drive to arrive at the conceptions of their ‘ideal self’ and ‘ought self’ can be both congruent or incongruent with the actual self, and more or less helpful for the individual and those around them. The interplay between an individual’s expressions of personal identity, while functioning in the context of a social environment, provides fertile grounds for the development of more or less functional, adapted and congruent identities. Functional patterns of behaviour are typically understood as psychologically healthy emotions and behaviours that allow individuals to function well personally and socially, ideally allowing individuals to express their real characteristics, emotions, motivations and traits, whereas dysfunctional patterns of behaviour tend to reflect a lack of congruence between an individual’s ‘core self’ and the roles they play in life, the behaviours they exhibit, and the perceptions they create (Hillenbrand & Money, 2015).

Women seem to experience a latent conflict—the gap between what they want to be as a person and what they are expected to be in a particular role or a situation. Idealized roles and expectations from different people creates a pressure within women. They try to cope with it in their own ways which is reflected in their consumption behaviour. As expressed by a married female respondent:

I am actually a short-tempered person, but I can’t show it at my home. I am supposed to be like this ideal daughter kinds, who is very patient, composed, handles the problems very peacefully and a responsible sister to her siblings. Sometimes I feel like just run away somewhere very far and scream my heart out. But, no, I can’t do it. I go for a movie, or parlour when I get fed up and frustrated.

A similar feeling, expressed by a male respondent about his wife, confirms the situation of women:

My wife is very independent and ambitious; she likes wearing western clothes, casuals, and she likes shopping, going out and being modern. When she is with me, she is a different person, when she comes home to Kerala, she is a totally different woman! She doesn’t like to come here, she just wants to run away, my parents, relatives raise their eyebrows if she wears something other than sari. She cannot go out, she gets suffocated. I will be helpless sometimes.

Extant literature has looked at alignment and issues of congruence or lack thereof have been investigated systematically at the level of different layers of the self (Cheng, Govorun, & Chartrand, 2012; Mok & Morris, 2010; Richards, Campenni, & Muse-Burke, 2010). Research has looked at the human need for congruence of emotion and cognition. Most widely known are cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957/1962) and balance theory (Cartwright & Harary, 1956; Heider, 1946; Hummon & Doreian, 2003). Predictions on emotions and psychological dysfunctions that result from cognitive imbalances (Higgins, 1987) and alignment between different senses of self (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Obradović et al., 2009) have resulted in explaining dysfunctional patterns due to the conflict of selves, such as creation of false/pretentious selves and escape-related or numbing behaviour, expressed, for example, in overachievement, addiction, control-need, perfectionism, obesity and antisocial behaviour (Karger et al., 2007). These behavioural patterns can imply heavy costs at individual and societal levels, and can be a step further towards mental health problems (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008; Kahneman, 2011; Luthans & Jensen, 2002; Obradović et al., 2009).

Transition from Private Self to Public Self

People who are highly public self-conscious are more likely to be attentive to how they are viewed by others and behave accordingly (Greenwald, Bellezza, & Banaji, 1988; Scheier & Carver, 1985). People who are highly private self-conscious are typically more aware of their inner world and behave based on their privately held beliefs, values, and feelings about the self (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975; Scheier, Buss, & Buss, 1978). We found that women in their private space behave and consume differently than when they are in public. They expressed greater concerns about being rejected by others and making good impression; hence, they are more likely to engage in the creation of positive and favourable public self-images (Burnkrant & Page, 1982; Doherty & Schlenker, 1991; Leary & Allen, 2011). Similarly, women reflected high private self-consciousness, had stronger motivation to engage in self-presentation in an authentic manner (Fenigstein et al., 1975) and were very specific about their transition to a public self. This is expressed by an unmarried female respondent as follows:

When I am alone or in my room, I like to be myself and natural, when I go out even to a small shop I make sure that my hair is combed and I am well dressed.

This transition is reflected in their appearance, body language, language and script, the places they go, the people they get along. For example, a female respondent who is 24 and unmarried speaks of how she ensures all these aspects when she has to go out:

I am very particular about how I look when I go out. It might be just to the nearby place. But I make sure that I look decent, not like I am just out of my bed. I dress up well.

Women express an apprehension to voice opinion in public due to the fear of rejection and embarrassment. They make conscious efforts to justify their actions, when they deviate from the expectations. Women feel the fear of being ignored or rejected by men due to incongruence to the stereotypes, low self-esteem, low body esteem and inferiority complex about not being beautiful. This depression leads women either to proactively approach or to avoid her potential romantic partner. As expressed by an unmarried female respondent:

I used to never talk or voice my opinion in public. I used to be in a corner and sitting quiet, to myself. If something is wrong, I would never say it. Because I was afraid of what people will think about me, what if it is wrong, what if I am insulted?

Women try to adhere to a role and script to behave in public and personal space to protect their identity. Another unmarried female respondent thus expressed:

I never took an initiative to approach the guy first, because, I am scared of being rejected. It hurts me a lot, I lose my confidence.

Influence of Marketing on Women’s Consumption

The influence of marketing and advertising in society is powerful and omnipresent as a ‘super-ideology’ (Elliott & Ritson, 1998). Advertising professionals are also influenced by ideological forces, which inform the assumptions they hold about gender (Zayer & Coleman, 2015).

The ad appeals have portrayed in a haze of romance, an independent career role with varied emotional appeals of fear, humour, love and care, compassion, envy, jealousy, aspiration to be a perfect woman, depression, courage, etc., by defining and setting a particular standard of lifestyle. A married female respondent expressed her irony as follows:

I straightened my hair, it totally changed me. People didn’t recognize me for a few days. I felt like I lost my identity. I want to be recognized and identified as a Malayalee. I saw a lot of people straightening their hair, it is a trend now. I felt it looks good, I spent 3000 Rs for it…but it took away my identity. Its ok, I look more formal, clean and presentable now.

Not just the ads, but the movies—the way they portray actresses, the product placements, the kind of clothes worn, the lifestyle and finally the message of being a woman—also influence women in negotiating their identities. Television serials, the daily soaps revolution, actually tapped the market of households in influencing women at all levels. As observed by another married female respondent:

I used to love these serials, the Ekta Kapoor ones. You don’t believe I used to imitate them a lot. This typical saas bahu serials which were there, I have even imitated to be like those perfect bahus and wives.

Media though has influenced, social media has revolutionized this further by facilitating freedom of expression. An unmarried female respondent observes:

I like my pictures, I like myself, I do post on Facebook, and it gives you instant freedom and flexibility to change your identity. You feel nobody is watching you, but actually yes the world is watching you!!

As for culture shaping advertising, ‘gender is probably the social resource that is most used by advertisers’ (Jhally, 1987, p. 135). Goffman (1979) further reveals the ideological prevalence of gender inequalities in advertising, such that men are typically portrayed in dominant positions relative to women in a variety of consumption situations. These discourses generally depict men as ‘idealized’ (Elliot & Elliott, 2005) and women as ‘vulnerable’ (Zayer & Coleman, 2015) and draw from an entrenched legacy of inaccurate gendered stereotypes in the marketplace (Dobscha, 2012), which essentialize dichotomies of maleness and femaleness in society as ‘natural’ (West & Zimmerman, 1987). This reaffirms the notion that ethical perceptions of women as ‘vulnerable’ and in need of protection are indeed ‘institutionalized’ (Zayer & Coleman, 2015, p. 269) in ideologies, to which both consumers and producers respond.

Discussion and Conclusions

Women spend much of their lives with self-concepts that are relatively unstable, reflecting changing social roles and attention to building and maintaining particular life structures (Levinson, 1978). This study illustrates the importance of marketing activities in restoring meaning to a relative, incongruous and multiple self-concept of women (Schouten, 1991). During such transient states, however, the self may anchor to a dormant predisposition towards change (e.g., aspirations towards ideal beauty or a negative body image). The study explores that in the process of conforming to ideal woman norms, Women typically behave and consume in a response to the expectations of society in general, the significant other in specific. It seems to be a reassurance and justification of her aspirational attempts to adhere to the identity benchmark created by the marketing stimuli in various situations. The conformance to the expectations of men for her to be an ideal woman creates pressure in women to behave in a specific way. Thus, women adapt themselves to multiple identities expected by others thereby subordinating their actual ‘self’. Camouflaging her identity depending on place, type of people, occasion, likes and dislikes, women undergo a transition from the private self to the public self. This transformation manifests in her consumption behaviour. Consumption is an expression of freedom, and passive/active way of self-identification for a woman as she continuously tries to renegotiate her desired self against her lived self.

Influence of marketing in development of a woman is not just restricted to her consumption or portrayal in ads but at a micro level as well: how her identity is formed, how does it transform her ‘self’, and what are its consequences. We also looked at how marketing influences the formation or transformation of a woman and her identity, how marketing and advertising create an identity benchmark, which in turn creates a pressure to comply with or reach that identity standard. So, the identity of a woman, self and being a woman have been the most sensitive and aggressive issue in marketing over the last decade. Upon feministic voices in the country, marketers have become more cautious and conscious of what they show, what they sell and tell. Along with the creation of consumption pressures to be complied with for the identity standard of being a perfect woman through ideal consumption, marketing also plays a role in the development of a woman, who she is, making her aware what she is and guiding her how she is and should be. Thus, it becomes a point of interest to understand further what are these intrinsic processes involved in the construction of self and identity of a woman. Marketing’s role is not just to sell products and reap profits for the brands but also to solve the real-world problems, so as to enhance consumer welfare. And advertising is not just a medium of communication for the products and brands but it has become an instrument of identity construction.

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