Smooth bodywork: the role of texture in images of cars and women on consumer magazine covers

Abstract

This article examines the role of texture, specifically smoothness, in commercial communication, specifically magazine cover imagery. It takes as its empirical focus images of women and cars on the covers of magazines aimed at the male market in order to argue that smoothness is an important semiotic resource, embedded in stereotypical and heteronormative conceptions of gender. This argument is framed and introduced through a review of the connotations held by various smooth surfaces in western culture, and a discussion of questions of affect and ideology that underlie those connotations. Analysing two examples of each magazine genre, the paper then illustrates how smoothness is a semiotic resource in which consumption-oriented superficiality interfaces with ideologically gendered images of women and cars on magazine covers. It concludes by raising questions for the future study of smoothness in the media.