El cuerpo femenino en la publicidad española de las revistas de alta gama

Advertising, in high-end women's magazines, is constituted as a representation tool of the current capitalist and patriarchal system. Advertisements, in this sense, tend to shape the social imaginaries that shape the beauty canon of women. This study, through a methodological triangulation, focuses on the examination of five of the most important Spanish women's magazines: Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamor, Telva and Vogue. Through focus groups - preceded by an initial survey - with the addressees of the advertisements of these publications, it has been observed the existence of a restrictive body pattern, PCE, erected on a height ≤36, a height ≥170 centimeters and an ectoform somatotype. Interestingly, the women interviewed in the focus groups recognize all these attributes, but do not identify with them, although they do express a desire to achieve that bodily perfection. All this leads us to verify the existence, in the advertising of these magazines, of numerous stereotypes that shift women's attention to the private sphere. And this is a type of symbolic coercion that, according to the participants, implies, on the one hand, that women have to be very demanding with their bodily perfection and, on the other, they feel insecure when they do not achieve this aspirational ideal.