Recently, I found a book about the visual stereotypes of women created by stereotypes. I was immediately intrigued. The book asserts that magazines geared toward the female have had a long tradition of creating the "ideal" woman. Now, while this idea might not be brand new I have found some parallels with what we have been discussing in our argumentation class.
First, in order to understand the meaning of "ideal" one must be given an example. In the aforementioned book, the author discusses the "Gibson Girl" as the most revered illustration of a woman on the front of a magazine. The "Gibson Girl" epitomized what it meant to be a woman. Mr. Charles Gibson introduced the "ideal" woman in the Feburary 1903 edition of the Journal magazine. Mr. Gibson offered society a pen and ink drawing of a woman that differed significantly from the oil paintings that had graced the covers before him. The "Gibson Girl" as it became widely known as presented a "type" of woman to society. The drawing disposed of the normal, realistic portrayls of women and instead focused on the prototype of a female. It was the first illustration of a female visual stereotype.
One newspaper reported offered an explanation of the "Gibson Girl" phenomenon: "Before Gibson synthesized his ideal woman the American girl was vague, nondescript, inchoate; there was no type of her to which would one point and say, 'That is the typical American girl'" From her introduction, this ideal picture of a woman became an instantly regarded representation of what a woman should inspire to be and what a man should expect of a female. What I find particuarly interesting about the "Gibson Girl" is that she was easily reproduced. Perhaps this was the attraction. Before her entrance into society, the drawings of women were unique and difficult to synthesize.
My overall question for this post is "What was it about the 'Gibson Girl's' ease of reproduction that made her so attractive to society?" More specifically, "How did the 'Gibson Girl' become such a powerful argument for the ideal, protypical woman?"
I hope to continue to explore these questions in future posts. I also want to explore the current debate about visual arguments. In particular, do visual arguments have to be accompanied by written text? I also want to identify the role of the enthymeme in visual arguments.
This is a really interesting example that you have found. It seems like many scholars are thinking about visual as functioning enthymematically, but I wonder if your example suggests that visual argument really functions inductively through example (or what Aristotle calls paradigm-- reasoning particular to particular). I wonder if shifting thinking about visual argument in this way can help explain some of the more unusual elements of visual argument-- such as the way that meaning appears to be simultaneously more constrained and less constrained than verbal argument. In your example, the visual image is provided for the audience whereas the verbal would leave the visual image up to the imagination of the audience (meaning more constrained), but, at the same time, there is an ambiguity in the visual that almost forces a multiplicity of meanings (ex, what is it that makes the Gibson girl ideal? the hairstyle? the look in her eyes?)
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