Beauty in a Box: An Integrative Study on the Construction of Filipina Beauty in Television Commercials for Beauty Products
ABSTRACT
Eugenio, N. A. S. (2016). Beauty in a Box: An Integrative Study on the Construction of Filipina Beauty in Television Commercials for Beauty Products. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.
What is physically beautiful to the modern, metropolitan woman has often been shaped by dominating Western and East Asian standards. Filipino women have come to think this way with the plethora of beauty product commercials on television – where the fantasy is created and developed to become part of our consciousness.
The study has integrated 11 beauty product and commercial related theses from 2005 to 2014 from the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman, and 4 Pond’s commercials through which the researcher was able to identify specific fantasy themes present in beauty advertising. The frameworks used were Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory, Semiotics, and Post-Colonial Feminism.
By studying the production and presentation of advertisements, the researcher was able to identify the aural and visual signs that have created these fantasies. Further analysis also brought to light the counter-discourses that question how these social realities and beauty standards were constructed from these fantasy themes.
Keywords: Beauty, Commercials, Advertisements, Symbolic Convergence Theory, Post Colonial Feminism, Semiotics