The cover story of the New Zealand Listener of March 10-16, 2007 is “HOW WOMEN GET AHEAD.” The story is clearly intended to promote “woman-power” in the business world by profiling six successful woman and asking, “are female bosses better?” The cover promises “10 strategies for success” for the women reading the article to become these better female bosses.
The most immediately visible image on the cover is a vivid red graph. The graph is the stereotypical business chart: it goes up and down jaggedly (because this is “honest”), but ultimately springs upward into the heavens (“business is booming!”). Although the graph has oscillated previously, the implication is that the final upswing, which vanishes off the top of the page, is infinite (“it’s off the charts!”).
Women are both the reason for this infinite rise in business (“are female bosses better?” – yes!) and the subject of the graph (the graph also represents the progress of women specifically in business). The graph is obviously about women because it is made out of lipstick. The lipstick has not been used to draw the graph, but actually forms it, zigging and zagging its way to the final, erect, red tube (this is still a “man’s world”, after all).
The message given by the lipstick graph is that if women are succeeding in the essentially male world of business, they do so by using their “feminine wiles.” In other words, the graph says, the application of women to business (like lipstick to women) is oriented toward men in business: you don’t need to have a penis to be in charge here, but it helps to keep ‘em happy!
This reading is confirmed in the six photographs toward the bottom of the cover. The male parallel is drawn again: these individual head-shots on magazine covers are almost invariably of men. If the question asked by the cover is “how are women successful in business?” then the answer can be found in the photos. The “10 strategies for success” advertised are, in fact, six commandments:
- Be white
- Be blue-eyed
- Be blonde
- Wear black clothing
- Wear red lipstick
- Smile
These six, confident women inform us that, yes, women do get ahead, and that, yes, they are better bosses than men. Their smiles vary evenly between the close-lipped (warm, yet firm and in control) and the wide grin (open, yet firm and in control). They each look successfully at the reader, ready to issue an order, or, in the case of Josephine Grierson, looking into the middle distance and thinking about what that order might be. These are the white faces, red lips, and blonde hair of the better, and unquestionably feminine, bosses.
It might be argued that there is not just a double meaning in this imagery, but a triple one: that it is, in fact, empowering that these lipstick women can be so stereotypically feminine and get ahead in business. The fact is that these kinds of messages are too convoluted: like the gentle and loving wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is either the first (“it’s a sheep”) or the second (“no, it’s a wolf!”) level of meaning that transmits. The third level message, “oh, no, it’s actually a friendly, transvestite wolf,” does not make it through.
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