This paper, written during the MA in Gender, Media and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, answers the following question: according to a feminist new materialist approach, how might the relations between media and bodies be understood? The case study analyses a marketing campaign by the haircare brand Pantene focusing on trans women and gender non-conforming people to promote The Dresscode Project, an initiative aimed to educate hairstylists to approach LGBTQ+ customers.
Introduction
This paper analyses the ways media and bodies interact and how their relation can be understood from a feminist new materialist perspective, using a case study: a marketing campaign by the haircare brand Pantene focusing on trans women and gender non-conforming people to promote The Dresscode Project, an initiative aimed to educate hairstylists to approach LGBTQ+ customers. Many beauty brands have opted for progressive and liberal advertising campaigns to attract underrepresented audiences — Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty and Always' Like a Girl among them. Pantene's advert, which features interview quotes from trans and gender non-conforming cast members, offers a particularly suitable case study.
The paper explores three main theories central to a feminist new materialist approach: how matter needs to be taken into consideration while examining how bodies are constituted ('Acknowledging the Material'), where bodies stand in relation to their surroundings and environment ('Bodies and the Environment'), and how the relation between bodies and media can be understood through the concept of becoming ('Becoming through Images').
Acknowledging the Material
Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (2010) wonder how materiality could be excluded from philosophical and sociological study for so long, critiquing a poststructuralist 'allergy to "the real"'. Feminist scholars' departure from materiality can be understood as fear of reinforcing the male-mind/female-body duality; however, 'the more feminist theories distance themselves from "nature", the more that very "nature" is implicitly or explicitly reconfirmed as the treacherous quicksand of misogyny' (Alaimo and Hekman 2008).
A new wave of feminist materialists shifted the critical lens back to matter and the materiality of the body, considering it not only as formed by language, culture, and politics but also as formative in its own right — matter has its own 'peculiar and distinctive kind of agency' independent of human intentionality (Frost 2011).
In 2019, Pantene released videos announcing their partnership with The Dresscode Project, an initiative started by hairstylist Kristin Rankin to create gender-affirming salons and train hairstylists to avoid misgendering trans and gender non-conforming clients. Interviewees such as writer Paris Lees and performer Travis Alabanza describe their relationship with their hair as central to their identity: 'Finding my identity was finding how I want people to see me, and hair is such a big part of that'. According to research commissioned by Pantene, 96% of transgender people agree that hair is crucial for their gender representation, while 93% report experiencing misgendering in hair salons in the UK — demonstrating the entanglement of materiality and culture in the need for such identification.
Bodies and the Environment
The common conception of matter as inert and non-agentic stems from Descartes, whose theory holds that material objects are identifiable and concrete and move only under external agentic forces. Feminist new materialists reject this, defining materiality instead as 'an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable' (Coole and Frost 2010), repositioning human subjectivity as intertwined with, rather than central to, its environment.
Pantene has also faced criticism for the chemicals contained in its shampoo and conditioner lines — parabens, formaldehyde, and sulphates among them — highlighting the tension between a brand's progressive marketing values and the material harm of its products. Separately, research shows that haircare products marketed to women cost on average 48% more than equivalent products marketed to men, illustrating how gendering of products reinforces stereotypes largely for commercial gain rather than any real biological difference.
Becoming through Images
A criticism of Pantene's campaign is its narrow portrayal of only feminine beauty standards among the trans and gender non-conforming people featured. Through a feminist new materialist lens, however, the analysis cannot stop at critiquing representation alone: as Rebecca Coleman asks, 'what knowledges, understandings and experiences of bodies are produced through images?' Bodies and images should be understood as entangled, each with their own agency, rather than in a one-way relationship where media simply affects the body.
Model and transgender activist Angela Ponce explains that seeing a photograph of a model as a child led her to want the same hairstyle — illustrating how images played a crucial role in her process of becoming, particularly given she grew up without information about what it means to be a trans woman. The Pantene storyboard itself narrates a story of transformation, showing a young person's hair being cut short before culminating in Travis Alabanza's reflection: 'Whether you are trans or not, I think what trans people are showing is that we're allowed to exist in ways beyond what we have been told.'
Conclusion
This paper discussed how a feminist new materialist perspective can help make sense of the relation between bodies and media, applying theories to Pantene's November 2019 campaign with The Dresscode Project. The section 'Acknowledging the Material' gave a framework for the analysis, showing how the materiality of hair constitutes a considerable part of trans people's identity. 'Bodies and the Environment' explored how matter has an agency independent of human agency, repositioning human beings on the same level as their surroundings — examined here through Pantene's own contradictions around chemical safety and gendered pricing. Finally, 'Becoming through Images' argued that bodies exist not separately to images but become through them.
A feminist new materialist approach to the study of bodies and their relation to media can provide a more complete picture than a purely discursive methodology, though this essay's lack of primary research opens the door for further investigation in a longer paper.
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