The gender bias in NIVEA® sunscreen advertisements in Sweden: A transhistorical perspective

This article explores gender bias in NIVEA ® sunscreen advertisements through a transhistorical lens, using multimodal critical discourse analysis to interrogate their linguistic and semiotic features and how these shape discourses around health and beauty. Comparing historical advertisements (1931–61) in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet with contemporary advertisements (2015–23) on NIVEA ® ’s Swedish Instagram and website, it identifies three core themes: Sexualization and Beauty; Scientific Rationality; and Shifting Functions, Formulations and Usages. The analysis reveals that sunscreen marketing has long been tied to feminine beauty, with advertisements employing pseudoscientific claims to encourage women to protect their skin and avoid premature ageing. Both past and present advertisements emphasize personal and collective responsibility, reinforcing neo-liberal ideals of bodily self-management. Although contemporary advertisements portray women as slightly more empowered, they still uphold idealized standards of feminine beauty, positioning sunscreen as an essential everyday product for maintaining youth. This study advocates for marketing strategies that frame sunscreen as a universal health necessity, with diverse representations and practical use cases, and calls for stricter regulations to address misleading visual and semiotic elements in advertising.