This study examines the significance of representations of masculinity with particular focus on the consumer industries, building a form of cultural analysis that draws together the study of texts and institutions.

Focusing on advertising's relationship to the mass market housewife, this study shows how advertising promoted new standards of material comfort in the selling of a range of everyday consumer goods and, in the process, generalised a cross-class image of the 'modern housewife' across the new medium of television. Nixon shows how the practices through which advertising understood and represented the 'modern housewife' and domestic consumption were influenced by American advertising and commercial culture. In doing so, he challenges the way critics and historians have often understood Anglo-American relations, and shows how American influences across a range of areas of advertising practice were not only a source of inspiration, but were also adapted and reworked to speak more effectively to the British consumer. Now available in paperback, Hard sell offers a major new analysis of the techniques of advertising in the decades of post-war affluence and advertising's relationship to the social changes associated with growing prosperity. -- .

Hard Looks is a fascinating examination of the new masculine imagery that has developed in relation to popular consumption over the last decade. The author skillfully investigates the development of this "new man" imagery and its relationship to contemporary formations of masculinity and masculine culture. This lively and innovative study will prove essential reading for sociologists interested in the study of men and masculinities and students of cultural, media, and gender studies.

Since 1997 Representation has been the go-to textbook for students learning the tools to question and critically analyze institutional and media texts and images.

This long-awaited second edition:

• updates and refreshes the approaches to representation, signalling key developments in the field
• addresses the emergence of new technologies, media formats, politics and theories
• includes an entirely new chapter on celebrity culture and reality TV
• offers new exercises, readings, images and examples for a new generation of students

This book once again provides an indispensible resource for students and teachers in cultural and media studies.

`Nixon's study is a major contribution to the cultural sociology of the new service sector professionals and their gendered identities.It's importance lies in it's skilful synthesis of detailed ethnographic research and social theory. This is a genuinely innovative book which reopens cultural debate about advertising and society' - Frank Mort, Professor of Cultural History, University of East London

`Advertising Cultures is a lucid, thorough and highly engaging account of advertising creatives that unlocks two crucial issues for understanding the culture industries: creativity and gender. It marks a major new contribution to the cultural study of economic life' - Don Slater, London School of Economics

The economic and cultural role of the `creative industries' has gained a new prominence and centrality in recent years. This new salience is explored here through the most emblematic creative industry: advertising.

Sociological debates about the new information-intensive economies, and government policy on the creative industries have begun to focus attention on the practitioners of `creative work'. The book presents a case-study of the social make-up, informal cultures and subjective identities of these creative practices.

Sean Nixon forges a distinctive style of cultural analysis out of this world of economic and cultural endeavour that draws on studies of consumer and commercial cultures, and is richly informed by extensive original research.

Advertising Cultures also marks a significant contribution to the study of gender and of commercial cultures through its detailing of the way gender is written into the creative cultures of advertising and into the subjective identities of its key practitioners.