For my project, I would like to investigate how a multimedia exhibition could show the history of women in advertising from early objectified portrayals to contemporary images of agency, and what this transformation reveals about our ongoing Ustopian tension between symbolic empowerment and real-world gender inequality. My medium will be a multimedia exhibition mockup using: curated posters, staged “rooms” representing historical decades, short-form video installations, and speculative “future ads” imagining feminist world-building.
I care about this topic because advertising has always been more than sales, it is a cultural mirror that teaches people who women “should” be. From 1950s housewife ads to today’s empowerment-branded campaigns (#LikeAGirl, Dove Real Beauty), ads shape social norms, bodies, desires, and gender expectations. Yet even “empowering” campaigns often reproduce new forms of control. This contradiction aligns perfectly with Atwood’s idea of Ustopia, where utopian progress and dystopian regression are always intertwined. I want to explore whether visual culture genuinely advances gender equality or simply simulates progress.