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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.12
Publication Date: December 25, 2020
DOI:10.14738/assrj.712.9528.
Kalender, G. I. (2020). The Semiotic Analysis of Cosmetic Advertisements on Facebook. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
7(12) 658-671
The Semiotic Analysis of Cosmetic Advertisements on Facebook
Gulcin Ipek Kalender
Communication Sciences Faculty
Department of Communication Design and Management, Anadolu University, Turkey
ABSTRACT
The cosmetic industry is one of the major industries in the world, and it
continually enhances with the current high-technology developments in
the sector. Just from the very early ages, young girls have a curiosity
about trying their mother’s make-up products and they satisfy their
curiosity by doing make-up to their dolls. When girls become young
women, they start trying a variety of cosmetic products and they wear
make-up in order to look attractive for the opposite sex. Wearing make
up helps women to feel content about their physical appearance. It
increases the self-confidence of women and makes them happy, as it is a
pleasurable activity. The cosmetic industry offers products, which are in
abundance according to the taste of each women coming from different
ranks in society. It surrounds women with cosmetic advertisements and
draw their attention in the fashionable districts of the city, at shopping
malls and through certain media tools such as women’s magazines and
social media. The cosmetic industry is a part of the consumer culture,
and it is also closely related with the ideal feminine beauty. It
disseminates messages through advertisements that every woman
should use cosmetic products in order to reach the ideal beauty, which
is desired. This paper aims to portray how the white ideal beauty is
portrayed on the Facebook pages of three cosmetic brands representing
different characteristics in terms of class, social status, lifestyle, and
aesthetics.
Keywords: cosmetics, make-up, consumer culture, ideal beauty, semiotics
and social media
INTRODUCTION
The traces of wearing make-up go back to the Egyptian culture in ancient times, and Egyptian
women and men mostly use make-up in order to draw a thick black line on their eyes, they dab
perfume and nourish themselves with oil and balsams in daily life, and they wear wigs by giving it
a different hairstyle just because they perform religious rituals and show their noble status and rank
in the society this way (Fletcher, 2005, p.3-10). In our era, the meaning of wearing make-up has
undergone a change, and in Westernized societies wearing make-up is mostly seen culturally
appropriate for women. Cosmetic products help women apply different stylish make-up styles on
their faces to look charming. The word cosmetics means decorating and taking care of the body
while looking neat, and women use cosmetics in order to be acknowledged both by their peers and
the opposite sex (Kışlalıoglu, 2010, p.3).
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Kalender, G. I. (2020). The Semiotic Analysis of Cosmetic Advertisements on Facebook. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(12) 658-671
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.712.9528 659
In Westernized cultures, in order to draw the attention of men, women who want to represent the
idealized femininity need to preserve the form and size of their slim bodies by spending time and
money on physical exercise, diets, cosmetic surgery, and cosmetics products, and this way they are
implied that they will normalize their appearance (Pompper, 2017, p.7). The cosmetic industry
constantly reminds women through advertisements that women should always care their bodies,
and thus women should be occupied with dieting to get into shape, wearing make-up to look more
feminine, dyeing their hair to look younger and waxing their body to get rid of the excess hair on
their bodies (Hoskins, 2014, p.110). Therefore, women who resist amending their appearance
according to the standards presented by the cosmetics advertisements are usually excluded by the
women who are continually engaged with doing make-up (Ringrow, 2016, p.2).
Also, wearing make-up has an effect on women’s relationships with the opposite sex. The researches
show that men can approach women wearing cosmetics more easily for asking a date when they see
them in a café, or pub (Russell, 2012, p.367). According to Richardson and Locks, there are two main
reasons why women wear make-up one of them is a natural cause, the other is a political cause.
Women intuitively wear make-up to find a mate for themselves for reproduction, which is a natural
cause; on the other hand, men expect women to wear make-up in order to fulfill their fantasies and
question women’s self-worth with make-up, which is a political cause (Richardson and Locks, 2014,
p. 32).
Also, some women are obsessed with their physical looks and they cannot go outside without make- up even to the closest distance outside of their homes, as they always want to look good. These
women always question what other people will think about their natural physical look and they
don’t want to have uncomfortable feelings about their bodies. In other words, some women who
don’t wear make-up feel uncomfortable, and they don’t want to come across with acquaintances
that day because they might have embarrassing feelings about their physical appearance and feel
incomplete (McCabe et al., 2017, p.15). Most of the women have a body part that they don’t feel
comfortable about, and thus using a variety of cosmetic products improves their looks and self- confidence (Freedman, 1990, p.191).
Furthermore, women like to take care of their bodies by applying purifying shower-gels, nourishing
them with creams and lotions, or refreshing them with toners. They also use sun protection creams
to protect their skin, while they spray deodorants and dab perfume to have a nice smell. All of these
activities are named grooming and women mainly do that for two reasons one of them is to keep
the body healthy and clean while the other is to sustain cultural and social relationships such as
being neat in daily life or being attractive for the opposite sex (Richardson and Locks, 2014, p.32).
The researches point out that when the issue is about purchasing cosmetic products, women take
action more with their impulses, and while women buy cosmetic products more related to
aesthetics benefits, men purchase cosmetic products more related to functional usage (Souiden and
Diagne, 2009, p. 98). Also, while teenagers whose ages are between 19-23 prefer to buy cosmetic
products from online shopping platforms, middle-aged women prefer to buy cosmetic products
from physical stores (Lu and Liu, 2018, p.176). Thus, how people of different genders and ages shop
for cosmetic products is different.
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Furthermore, the researchers point out that wearing make-up has different effects on women of
different ages. For instance, while women who are around 40 to 50 years old look younger, women
who are around 30 years old look no different than their normal age; on the other hand, women
who are around 20 years old look older when they wear make-up (Russell et al., 2019, p. 87). Thus,
wearing make-up has an effect on our outlooks and it can influence in which age we look.
Also, the desire of many women to have control over aging created another field of cosmetics, which
is combined from the usage of both cosmetics and pharmaceuticals ingredients named as
“cosmeceuticals” and using these products are found more natural than having a Botox (Muise and
Desmarais, 2010, p.127).
Some of the cosmetic products are produced environmentally friendly without giving harm to the
species with the ingredients and the packages that it uses, and this is called green marketing
cosmetics (Singhal and Malik, 2018, p. 2054). Thus, some women who don’t want to use synthetic
cosmetic products are more willing to pay premium prices for eco-friendly cosmetic products using
organic ingredients, which are not tested on animals, and which include biodegradable packaging
as these women are more concerned both with their health and the environment (Pudaruth et al.,
2015, p.191).
THE PURPOSE AND METHOD OF THE RESEARCH
This paper aims to look at how the ideal feminine beauty is put forward within the cosmetic
advertisements on social media. The researcher also examined how cosmetic brands reflect class,
social status, lifestyle, and aesthetics. In order to find answer to these, the advertisements on three
cosmetic brands’ Facebook pages were analysed with the method of semiotics. For this aim, the
advertisements on the Facebook pages of Estee Lauder International, Lancôme Turkey and a
Turkish cosmetic brand named Flormar were picked with purposeful sampling and this way a
comparison is made among three brands, which represent different characteristics. With
purposeful sampling, the researcher picks the best social media advertisements that represent the
population and analyses them.
Social media is today’s way of communication for many people worldwide. Facebook brand pages
are created mainly for companies who want to connect with their fans all around the world, and
who want to share their own content about their brands including many information about their
services and products, and these pages are great places where they can reflect their brand values to
their consumers (Brito, Zanette, Abdalla, Ferreira, Limongi and Rosenthal, 2015, p.33).
On Facebook brand fan pages, companies use many multi-media images and advertisements, which
can easily draw the attention of their fans who have gathered on their brand community, and with
the help of likes, comments and shares on Facebook they interact with them in the meantime
(Plowman and Winchel, 2016, p.32). Therefore, today consumers who follow the Facebook brand
pages are an active participant of the pages, and they want to continually interact with brands that
they like because not only they care about these brands that they use, but they also know that these
brands’ products help them to fix their problems and they fulfil their needs (Rohm and Weiss, 2014,
p.2-6).
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Kalender, G. I. (2020). The Semiotic Analysis of Cosmetic Advertisements on Facebook. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(12) 658-671
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.712.9528 661
The content on Facebook are composed of colourful multi-media images and a qualitative research
helps to reveal the hidden meanings within these images and texts thanks to its techniques such as
semiotics (Daymon and Holloway, 2011, p.277-287). The content on Facebook helps the researcher
to collect data about brands straightforwardly because these images are available on the website,
they can be easily accessible, they are short in length compared to other documents, they represent
the brand identity and they carry the values of brands, which make them valuable resources (Braun,
Clarke and Gray, 2017, p.119). The visuals in social media, in other words, the images contain many
elements such as thoughts, ideas, and emotions and these images are open to the interpretation of
other people who looks at them, and thus there isn’t a definite interpretation and differences can
occur between interpretations due to the diversity of each people (Boeije, 2010, p.140-141).
Therefore, it is not possible to make generalizations about this research.
Semiotics helps to disclose the latent cultural meanings within the images and texts by drawing
attention to two things, which are denotative meaning, representing the first understood meaning
in real life, and connotative meaning, representing the latent meaning, which should be interpreted
within the personal and cultural context of the person (Daymon and Holloway, 2011, p.277-290).
According to Fiske (2003, p.62-64), apart from the first meaning of the sign, the signifier actually
exists within a system and culture, in which its representations are formed and this connotative
meaning is actualized thanks to the shape that the person’s mind takes at that particular moment,
and this process is explained as the crossing of the frame of reference. In other words, the
connotation consists of myths, images, feelings, excitements and associations (Kucukerdogan, 2009,
p.111).
ANALYSIS OF THE RESEARCH
In this research, the social media brand fan pages of three cosmetic brands were analyzed with the
technique of semiotics and differences are tried to be revealed in how they handle the ideal feminine
beauty. The differences between how they portray class, social status, lifestyle, and aesthetics
differently are tried to be shown, as well. The analysis consists of brands such as Lancôme Turkey,
Estee Lauder International and Flormar, a Turkish cosmetic brand.
Photo 1: Lancôme
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In this picture, the Lancôme perfume called miracle is located among the pink roses. The rose is a
sign and the message of this sign is that this product makes the skin smell so soft just like pink roses,
which are delicate, sensitive and smooth. The message, which is tried to be conveyed in this picture,
is that Lancôme products use the extracts of flowers and natural ingredients, which make the skin
smell so beautiful. Rose is an expensive flower therefore this perfume is adorned among a bunch of
pink roses so it also gives a luxurious and romantic feeling to the women who use it. Therefore, this
picture is related with the signification of class and social status and this perfume addresses to
women in upper classes. The message what is tried to be conveyed in the picture is that women who
use Lancôme products are always special and unique and this perfume is prepared for them to have
a feeling of miracle in their lives with its mesmerizing effect. The romantic atmosphere created with
the pure beauty of pink roses promise the women a feeling of attraction for their partners.
Photo 2: Lancôme
In this picture, the Lancôme perfume, which gives such a light feeling to the women who use it, is
aired with two balloons on the air. The perfume is so light that it has a fresh feeling and it prepares
women to a fresh start every week. In a way, it announces the coming of spring, so the aroma of the
perfume is about the beautiful smell of different flowers, which bloom in spring. Furthermore, the
subtle meaning is related with the transformation of women’s bodies from being heavy to light.
Women who gained weight during winter will start losing that weight with the coming of spring as
they will start dieting and this light feeling, which is tried to be achieved, is also shown in that image.
Therefore the sign is a balloon and it represents being light and it symbolizes getting rid of the fat
on the body. The feeling of luxury is also given with the cute pink balloons holding the perfume, and
the white ribbon, which decorates the elegant perfume bottle. The perfume indicates that it is purely
feminine since it represents the color of pink.