The Handmaid: A Semiotic Analysis

I glance over my shoulder one more time before my eleven year old self typed “Playboy” into Google Images. A hoard of scantily clad women pop up on the screen, fulfilling my sexual curiosity. My sexual curiosity was never quite quenched when I was younger because there was a never ending supply of naked women, always more pages to refresh. At such a young age, I could not realize just how artificial and fake these pictures were. All of the women had been carefully dressed and positioned, frozen in space to fulfill their function of pleasing the sexual desires of the male viewer. The erotix pictures in the Playboy magazine are about “waiting, about objects not in use” (Atwood 69). What happens when a woman is completely reduced to an object

The “male gaze” also highlights the man or the viewer is active while the female is always passive, acting as an object in the scene only to be looked at but not interacted with. The Handmaids must also “look good from a distance: picturesque… Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that's who this show is for” (Atwood 212). The Handmaids do not look good in the Playboy sense of sexy; rather, the Handmaids look good by being in a perfect uniform with no sign of

The Playboy Bunnies are adorned in pink because it invokes a sense of youth and innocence. Pink is the standard color used for decorating girls’ rooms from a young age; thus, the onlooker sees the Playboy model as young and very feminine. By leaving the Playboy Bunny in this pink outfit, the photographer traps the model in this illusion of innocence. All of the Handmaids’ clothes are red, “the color of blood, which defines [them]”(Atwood 8). Red is the color of menstruation, underscoring the Handmaids’ main duty of procreation. The Handmaids are also covered in red for the pragmatic reason of making them easily identifiable if they try to escape. Offred sees herself as “some fairytale figure in a red cloak” when looking in the mirror (Atwood 9). Handmaids are dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, identifying the women as naive girls that is prone to being attacked, duped, manipulated. The portrayal of the Handmaids as helpless makes it easier for the government to enforce infringing rules set under the veil of “necessity” for the Handmaids’