Lesson Starter - Questions on Woman Magazine
- What messages about female identity are encoded in woman magazine?
- Women need to wear make-up otherwise they will not be considered beautiful.
- Women must rely on men for certain things in their life.
- They belong in the kitchen, need to bring up children - article on kitchens.
- What impact could this have on the target audience?
- Target audience is female, heterosexual and 25-45 years old
- It cultivates the idea of women having to wear makeup.
- It cultivates the idea that women are supposed to be housewives.
- What functions might woman's magazine serve?
- Brings together the female community to construct a target audience.
- What potential advantages are there for reinforcing hegemonic notions of gender in a primarily reader base?
- Reflects the society of which this magazine was released into.
- Its a lot better to keep telling women that they are crap.
Key Theory - Feminist Theory - bell hooks
- Feminism is a struggle to end patriarchal hegemony and the domination of women.
- Feminism is not a lifestyle choice: it is a political commitment.
- Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals are exploited and oppressed.
- Her latest book is called 'Feminism is for everyone' this quote sums up her and her theory.
Advertising from the 1960's
- Female Stereotypes
- Women are useless as she ruined the dinner.
- Women are emotional as she's holding the male's tissue and crying.
- She's failed as being a women as she burnt the dinner and she needs the male to make it better and to consolidate her.
- The male prefers the beer to the women, objectifying the women.
- Men are the beer drinkers and women are not.
- Women are in the kitchen - cultivation theory (Gerbner)
- Nurturing/maternal
- Dependant on man
- Filling a housewife and domestic role
- Romantic element
Advertising in Magazines
- Magazines generate revenue primarily through sales of copies (print and digital) and through advertising.
- Advertising accounts for approximately one third of total revenues across the industry. It is, therefore, vitally important that the magazine and advertising content target the same audience in order that the advertising brands benefit from increased sales as a result of advertising in the magazine.
- Andrew Green identifies the ways in which magazine advertising can benefit the advertisers in an article entitled 'ESSENTIALS: The Power of Magazine Advertising':
- High audience engagement.
- Less distraction likely from other activities.
- The ability to target niche audiences.
- High production values.
- Potential for placement in highly relevant editorial environment.
- Non-Intrusive - readers can turn the page.
- Long shelf life.
Representation - Advertising in Woman
- Main attraction is to the naked women, the font is extremely small so the first thing the audience will see is the naked woman, and they will then go on to read the advert to see what it is about.
- Because the women is heavily sexualised in this advert men will find her attractive and also women will want to be like her to be appealing to men so they're stuck with the ideologies that this soap will make the women look sexualised and appealing to males so they will buy it.
- Stereotypes is that women are thought to be sexy and that this soap will make them look even sexier.
- She looks like she's supposed to be sat in the bath but she's not actually in the bath as if she was then we wouldn't see her legs and her hair is all done up and her makeup is all done.
- The logo is also bigger than the text but smaller than the image so if either the primary or secondary audience decide to flip the page after seeing the naked women their attention will also go on the logo so when they see this soap they will always see the advert of the naked women and it will become memorable.
- The soap states to make you more attractive, more femininity and to be fresh, so it also has connotations of freshening your life so you dont have to worry about anything as this soap will make all your worries go away and will make your life sweet, kind and fresh again.
- The woman is being sexualised in this position as we can still see her cleavage and her legs, so it is an exceptionally racy advert for 1960's.
- Her body language is also extremely shy as her body is closed and makes her seem quite gentle although she is completely sexualised, and her body is saying that she's sexually unattainable, and makes her look as if she's empowering women as she's closing her body off away from men, which adds to the context as this happened when women started going to uni, so its a step in the right direction showing that they've changed how they used to be as this advert came out in mid 1960's.
- A preferred reading could be that women can smell, as she is now working and getting independence so it shows that women can get dirty and smelly too, so it breaks the conventions that women dont work and women are always clean and tidy, it shows that they need to maintain themselves no differently to how males need to.
- There is a binary opposition between clean and destruction.
- An oppositional response could be that through the choice of lexis and the use of 'darling' makes us feel quite flattered, whereas recently if someone said it there are assumptions that its creepy and condescending.
- The word 'freshness' comes back to the ideas of kitchens and women having to belong in the kitchen so if the women is fresh then so is her kitchen.
