Acceptance with a Twist: from Drag Queens to Transgender Persons in U.S and U.K Advertising Campaigns

The presence of transgender people in advertising campaign worldwide is still an issue. This clearly reflects and reproduces current social and cultural values, which both influence advertising choices. If advertising definitely has a cultural influence on contemporary society (e.g. Cook 1992; Goddard 1998; KellyHolmes 2005), it also has an effect on the formation of women’s and men’s identity, as well as on the representa tion of femininities, masculinities and gendered identities in different media (Cronin 2000; Parkin 2006; Carter and Steiner 2004). The analysis in this essay tackles the presence of transgender people in commercial ads. The starting point is clarified by these questions: 1. are transgender people represented in advertising? 2. if so how and in which contexts? 3. If their presence in noncommercial ads that aim at raising awareness and acceptance of transgender people is obvious, what happens in commer cial ads aimed at a larger audience and wanting to sell products? 4. For which products have they become testimonials and how? Starting from the basis that sex and gender are not necessarily coincidental and that gender roles and gender role orientations may crosscut sex, my aim is to analyse under which circumstances trans gender persons are visible, and thus considered as a positive addition in advertising specific products. Choosing a diachronical perspective my analysis will present examples from the Anglophone world, mainly the North American and British contexts, showing how the representation of transgender people has changed over the years in parallel with social and political changes. The incorporation of transgender people in advertising texts reflects changes in the social context and, at the same time, it shows that trans gender people have become testimonials, not only for products, but for civil rights and gender equality in noncommercial advertisements. Using as methodological tools the semiotics of advertising (Greimas 1987; 1989, 1990; Floch 2001) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Anal ysis (Kress 2010; van Leeuwen 2013), I will analyse some case studies of transgender people in advertising campaigns using both printed ads and commercials starting from these premises: 1) are transgender peo ple represented in advertising and how? 2) is there a market for trans gender people which has encouraged this representation? 3) for which products are transgender people used as testimonials and why?