Selling cruises: gender and mobility in promotional brochures

Leisure cruising combines movement and stativity in a particular tourist experience: users are supposed to enjoy very different activities, with the movement of the ship guiding them to their destinations. This paper analyses visual representations of gender and mobility in over 600 images collected from leisure cruise promotional brochures by taking advantage of a qualitative methodology and by focusing on narratives related to themes of pleasure, work, age, and contact with nature/culture. The results stress the presence of an implicitly masculine gaze, with complex and non-linear associations with the themes of mobility and immobility, which relates to visual narratives in a number of different ways, testifying to the multiple meanings that may be assumed by the idea, the practice, and the experience of movement.