Magazines and gender

Key points from Julian McDougall’s textbook ‘OCR Media Studies for A2’,

pp50-57

Key focus point – magazines exist to sell their readers to advertisers

• Magazines create a sense of belonging based on gender codes and the social effects these might have.

• There is a set of learned values and behaviours that is reinforced for the reader.

• This contrasts with the idea that the postmodern reader plays with gender identity and is able to pick and mix the meanings of gender representations.

Analysis of ‘Men’s Health’Dominant discourses in the magazine:• Quick-fix problem solving• Male narcissism (and anxiety)• New male sensitivity• Male superiority/manipulationTake 3 editions and map out articles and features in relation to these discourses. Try to

separate your finds into:1. Those that fit neatly into one (e.g. Steps to avoid prostate cancer, advice on male

grooming)2. Elements which appear to take a range of positions and could fit into more than one

discourse (e.g. A feature on sex where advice for ‘driving her wild’ is combined with a sense of ‘trade-off’ (if you do these things, in return she will..)

3. Those which appear to defy these categories.

Overall, what are the positive and negative implications of these discourses?Is the magazine ‘setting a balance’ in that women have been subjected to anxiety about

body image for decades, so no it’s the men’s turn? What do readers really get out of the magazine?

Semiotic analysis of magazinesTwo theoretical perspectives:1. Winship (1987) offers a feminist application of male gaze theory to

women’s magazine covers, arguing that ‘the gaze between cover model and women readers marks the complicity between women seeing themselves in the image which the masculine culture has defined’.

2. A Marxist idea developed by Althusser (1971) is ‘interpellation’ – the social/ideological practice of misrecognising yourself.Combine these and you have women being prepared to recognise an ideal version of ourselves. For feminists, the male culture reinforces its power by defining women in this way and encouraging our anxiety when we compare our real appearance to the ideal. The Marxist term for this is ‘false consciousness’, distracting women from the inequality in our society. Thus, instead of asking for equality, women are reading ‘Hello’ and commenting on the waistlines of celebrities.

How a magazine audience is constructed

• Look up the press kits for two or more women’s magazines. These define the reader for potential advertisers – where she shops, what she likes, how she understands herself.

• Think about how ‘Men’s Health’ articles combine with, say ‘Nuts’. ‘Men’s Health’ may claim to a more sensitive, aspiring man; however its quick-fix approaches are based on the traditional hunter-gatherer approach to male behaviour.

Three key questions for the discourse, or ideology, in magazines:

• How does it represent its ‘own’ gender to the reader?• How does it represents its ‘own’ gender to the ‘other’

gender?• How does it represent the ‘other’ gender to its

readers?Think about the ‘secondary’ reader, e.g. The gay male reader of ‘Cosmopolitan’ or the female reader of ‘GQ’.Think particularly about the colours and models on the cover!

Contrasting view from David Gauntlett

Gauntlett argues that we pick and mix the way we select our identities from the media:‘I have argued against the view that men’s lifestyle magazines represent a reassertion of old-fashioned masculine values... Instead, their existence and popularity shows men rather insecurely trying to find their place in the modern world, seeking help regarding how to behave in their relationships and advice on how to earn the attention, love and respect of women and the friendship of other men. In post-traditional cultures, where identities are not ‘given’ but need to be constructed and negotiated, and where an individual has to establish their personal ethics and mode of living, the magazines offer some reassurance to men who are wondering ... ‘Am I doing this OK?’, enabling a more confident management of the narrative of the self.’