ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Skin and Identity Janet Borgerson, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA Jonathan Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA This presentation argues that in consumer culture, commodified skin, far from a simple surface, neutral background, or ‘white space’ plays a key role in foundations of meaning and identity creation in branding practices and strategic communication that appropriate, co-create, and build meaning. [to cite]: Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder (2012) ,"Skin and Identity", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 10, eds. , Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 465-468. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1011126/volumes/ap11/AP-10 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. $VLD3DFLÀF$GYDQFHVLQ&RQVXPHU5HVHDUFK 9ROXPH _ within their personal context, opposes the values and standards inherent in advertisements and other marketing communications, upholding their own values as established away from the marketplace. For this study the portrayal of body image in marketing communication served as the channel through which to understand how moderately resistant consumers oppose values and standards of the marketplace. It is a marketplace that engenders much passion and intense response including government policy and corporate acknowledgement (ie Dove) as well as extensive academic investigation. Body image is an important topic and a source of much GLIÀFXOW\ IRU ZRPHQ LQ SDUWLFXODU $ PHWDDQDO\VLV of 77 studies yielded strong support for the notion consumer exposure to thin-ideal imagery in media is correlated to women’s body image disturbances and vulnerabilities (Grabe, Ward and Hyde, 2008). However, small numbers of women from this, and other studies, were shown to be able to resist, or avoid, negative social comparisons to fashion models and fashion advertising. Despite the evident tendency to identify with models in advertisements, communication theorists claim that advertisements are designed to portray a metaphoric and symbolic depiction rather than an DFFXUDWH UHÁHFWLRQ RI UHDOLW\ 0F4XDUULH DQG 0LFN 1999; Scott 1994). On the other hand it has been shown that consumers turn to marketplace statements as a reference for societal norms, ideologies and cultural meanings (McCracken 1986; Phillips and McQuarrie 2010, 2011). In relation to body image a very small proportion of studies have uncovered clues that some consumers both explicitly disapprove of the standards conveyed in advertisements and block the internalization and negative impact they cause (Engeln-Maddox 2005; Hirschman and Thompson 1997). The aim of this research was to examine this privately resistant consumer, exploring their motivations, life experiences and expressions of resistance. The investigation was undertaken using the issue of body image and the portrayal of female models in advertisements. A grounded theory approach formed the basis for a three-stage data collection process and purposively selected resistant consumers. Themes were uncovered from blogs and industry expertise to establish criteria for participant recruitment. Analysis of the data yielded intriguing ÀQGLQJV GHPRQVWUDWLQJ WKDW IDPLO\ YDOXHV ZHUH an integral antecedent in both participants’ ability to critically interact with advertisements as well as maintain strong self-esteem and self-acceptance. $GGLWLRQDOO\SDUWLFLSDQWVHDFKLGHQWLÀHGWKHSUHVHQFH of a ‘trigger experience’ that shifted their approach to the issue of body image. Finally four resistance strategies emerged as common defense mechanisms that participants engaged in as expressions of their opposition to the body image values in advertisements. Importantly, RXU ÀQGLQJV KLJKOLJKW D SDUDGR[ LQ FRQVXPHU interactions with media. Prior research claims that consumers who are adequately socialized develop the ability to display skepticism toward advertising by the age of eight (Mangleburg and Bristol, 1998). Yet research on media literacy programs aiming to instruct young females on critically evaluating body image advertisements have reported that skepticism towards ads was an outcome of the intervention (Irving and Berel, 2001; Irving, DuPen and Berel, 1998; Posavac and Posavac, 2001). This clear contradiction suggests the presence of mediating factors to consolidate this skeptical approach towards marketing communications, such as the family values or trigger events as discussed by participants. While consumer activists and textual shifters PD\EHWKHORXGHVWLQÁXHQFHUVRIVRFLDOFRPPHUFLDO change, there is potentially a substantial component of the consumer population who, in their private space, are opposing the values and standards that marketers FRQYH\ WKURXJK FRPPXQLFDWLRQV  7KHVH ÀQGLQJV are valuable in assisting companies to understand FRQVXPHUV· UHMHFWLRQ EHKDYLRXUV GLUHFWHG DW PDUNHW offerings. They are also important in taking action to foster more constructive approaches in young women towards body image portrayals in the marketplace. In acknowledging the limitations of the present study, directions for further research will be addressed. SKIN AND IDENTITY 7KLV SDSHU DUJXHV WKDW FRPPRGLÀHG VNLQ IDU IURP a simple surface, neutral background, or “white space” performs meaning creation roles in consumer culture. Much consumer research proceeds as though WKHVXEMHFWRIUHVHDUFKLVDERGLOHVVGHFLVLRQPDNHU and draws body awareness into the mix only as particular variables of sensation that may impact upon individual consumer choices. The potentialities of body and skin typically become invisible, yet remain active nonetheless. In a recent controversy, H&M utilized “virtual computer-generated human ÀJXUHVµ RQ WKHLU ZHEVLWH 'LIIHUHQW PRGHO ´KHDGVµ $VLD3DFLÀF$GYDQFHVLQ&RQVXPHU5HVHDUFK 9ROXPH | were placed on the same digital body, and skin tones were digitally manipulated to “match” the heads (Abraham 2011). Thus, a “black head” was matched with a “black body”. Though largely a conceptual synthesis, the paper draws upon consumer responses to this practice – posted on the UK newspaper the Daily Mail website – to generate insights into the intersection of skin, consumption, and identity. An analysis of skin reestablishes skin’s role – not only as “the ultimate accessory” – as a recent exemplar from a Dove campaign declares – but also as a meaningful liminal engagement between self, other and world (Schroeder and Borgerson, 2003). The human body – which has long served as an important genre in visual representation – plays a key role in foundations of meaning and identity creation. In consumer culture, branding practices and strategic communication appropriate, co-create, and build meaning. Not surprisingly, the human body and related distinguishing elements such as skin function as “radiating landmarks” for innumerable product attributes, including social and emotional characteristics, ascribed to a vast array of products, services, and ideas in ads, websites, annual reports, promotional brochures, as well as wider discourses (e.g., Buchanan-Oliver, Cruz and Schroeder, 2010). 0RUHRYHU3DWWHUVRQDQG6FKURHGHU·VZRUNFRQÀUPV WKHFRFUHDWLYHLQWHUVXEMHFWLYHSURGXFWLRQVRIERGLHV suggesting that skin embodies primary tensions in consumer culture, and provides a communication medium that can ground meaning and identity creation (2010). CONSUMPTION, MATERIALITY, IDENTITY Consumer culture apparently offers up a plenitude of commodities and symbolic resources to be incorporated by consumers in the construction of identities and related narratives. Consumption may be understood as diverse processes of resolving paradoxes and contradictions and materializing value and meaning in everyday life (Miller 1987). Theories of materiality underlie concepts of consumption, in the sense that theories of materiality propose XQGHUVWDQGLQJVRIVXEMHFWVREMHFWVDQGUHODWLRQVKLSV between them which notions of consumption entail. Often, much remains inexplicit regarding meaning and identity construction through consumption – of luxury brands, trips to Tahiti, or human skin – and there is a call for investigating the way in which VXEMHFWV DQG REMHFWV HPHUJH DQG HQJDJH ZLWK HDFK other in relation to these processes (Borgerson 2005, 2009). How does skin serve consumers as signals of desire, ontological markers of difference, and exemplars of brands? Representations of skin appear WR IXOÀOO WKHVH SURGXFWLYH IXQFWLRQV HIIRUWOHVVO\ “Anyone who points a camera at family, friends, fellow tourists, or strangers encountered on holiday becomes a ‘skin’ photographer.” (Bybee, 2007). In other words, without any particular intensions regarding meaning creation, the simple process of picturing friends, arguably now more common than ever with cameras present on almost every mobile device, engages a philosophy of skin. SKIN SIGNS AND SKIN CODES Marketing images often invoke ethnic and racial identity through the use of models with varying racial appearance, but lately, skin itself – tone, color, sheen, complexion, texture, skin secretions (e.g., sweat) – has become a focus of ad campaigns for brands in several product categories, valorizing, reifying, eroticizing, and essentializing skin. Modes of being, who one is and who one is not, including abstracted characteristics around race, class and gender, materialize from basic building blocks of skin represented in strategic communications. Moreover, photographic isolation of skin, such that broader identifying or unifying aspects of the body and human identity disappear, such as an entire arm and hand or a face with eyes, condenses the possibilities of meaning, allowing fewer and fewer signs for communicating an overall sense. Indeed, ads often decontexualize human skin, avoiding reference to facial features, intellectual identity, and sometimes, gender identity. Many print ads, website images and commercials – including the recent H&M swimwear images – emphasize racially coded skin tones such as black and white in a way that emphasizes racial identity based on what is known as “the epidermal schema.” CONCEPTUAL CONCERNS: THE ‘EPIDERMAL SCHEMA’ Marketing communications draw upon fetishism VLJQLÀHUV LQ YLVXDO FXOWXUH IRU H[DPSOH LQ WKH DGYHUWLVLQJ SUDFWLFH RI IRUPDOO\ UHLI\LQJ REMHFWV via photographic technique, drawing upon liminal divides, such as nature versus culture, and reproducing the exoticization of blackness. According to Bhabha, skin color is ‘the most visible of the fetishes’ (1983). $VLD3DFLÀF$GYDQFHVLQ&RQVXPHU5HVHDUFK 9ROXPH _ The growing body of thought in critical race theory has done much work to understand issues of how identity is linked to human characteristics, and how racial ideology, as embodied by Western philosophical thought, has systematically worked to deny human traits to particular people and certain races. Black, of course, has become a racial category; blackness in semiotic terms often connotes exoticized identity and a sexualized fascination with the other, via what has been called “the epidermal schema” (Fanon 1967; Gordon 1995). The epidermal schema works by reducing identity to skin color, to focus attention on differences in skin color, and to emphasize the ontological distinctions between skin color (Fanon, 1967). Blackness, then, has ontological status. Whereas skin may be drawn upon as a landscape against which other objects might be set or a context into which other elements might be put into play, skin’s communicating potential is not silenced nor are identifying characteristics made invisible. This may be seen through instances in which gender or class or race fails to be evacuated, and for example, skin touching skin continues to express relationships. 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