This is my Second Year, first semester Theory Assignment for Journalism in Context. We had to choose a certain research method that we had been learning about, and then use in order to answer a question we had devised ourself. I focused on the representations of Women in Magazines. I used textual analysis and questionnaires to complete my research.
Introduction
The representation of women is a well debated topic throughout the media, whether it being in magazines, film, television or radio. With the attitudes towards women changing in society regularly since the 1940s, the media seems to have followed through with the changes. ‘The Feminine Mystique’ by Betty Friedan (1963), marked the reawakening awareness of Women in Britain under the pressure to conform to the traditional female role. Friedan’s theory was that magazines and other media most often depict women in traditional stereotyped roles such as homemakers or models of attractiveness, which doing so has given a narrow impression of women. Friedan supports her theories with evidence from movies, television, books and magazines.
In this report, I am going to look at the changing representations of Women in British Magazines, looking at various issues of Women’s Magazines, such as ‘Cosmopolitan’ ‘Glamour’ and ‘Vogue’, and how their representations of Women have changed over the years. I am also going to look at typical “Lad Mags” such as ‘Nuts’, to see how the Women featured in the Magazine are presented in there. Lastly, I am going to look at a new trend that seems to be taking over the Magazine world, looking at how they use Women to sell certain items, whether it is Make-Up for Women, or the new Gadgets for Men. I am going to conduct textual analysis of these various magazines to see how the representations of Women are shown in different genre of magazines. I will conduct a questionnaire to gain people’s opinions on the matter of representation of Women in magazines.
Stereotypical Views on Women
There are various stereotypes for Women, which have changed drastically over the last 40 years. Women used to be seen as the ‘stay at home’ types where they were designated to the kitchen and looking after the family and the home, rather than creating a career in the world of work for themselves. But throughout the last 40 years, Women have started to be seen as ‘objects of desire’ and something to look at for the males, as said by Laura Mulvey in her ‘Male Gaze’ theory in her well known essay ‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema’ in 1975. A particular device that is often used to refer to women is that of linguistic metaphors. Looking at pages of magazines these are very relevant, in the forms of food, animals, babies etc. Women’s magazines cause a lot of these representations and stereotypes, as they always feature beautiful, skinny and perfect women and highlight the apparent need of beauty products cause they will ‘change your life’. What we see and read in these magazines is not ‘reality’, and they don’t represent the ‘real woman’.
In The Past
A great example of the change of representations of Women in Magazines would be ‘Cosmopolitan’. It was first published in 1886 where it was seen as a family magazine, it eventually became a Women’s magazine in the 1960’s. Its content nowadays includes articles on relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, fashion and beauty.
In old issues of the magazine, the themes seemed to follow ‘being the perfect housewife’, following stereotypes at staying at home, looking after the house and her family, and mainly looking up to her husband. These themes were following the outlook of life that was around before the 1940’s. Articles hardly ever featured anything about Women having their own careers, and earning their own money. If articles in Women’s magazines did feature anything about Women working and having careers, it would deem them as being a ‘bad’ wife, as they were not concentrating on looking after her husband, children and the family home. As said in ‘Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture’ by Joanne Hollows, “Women no longer had a sense of their own identity because they were encouraged to see themselves only as someone’s wife or mother” The articles that were featured in the old issues of the magazine followed the on-going conventions that were presented in society in the past. In research taken from ‘Women’s Magazines and the Cult of Femininity’ by Marjorie Ferguson, in 1949 alone, 17 articles appeared in Women’s magazine ‘Woman’ about achieving the perfect family and 11 articles on keeping your man happy.
‘Cosmo-Girl’
‘Cosmopolitan’ has since created a popular image of the magazine meant for women. They believe, their typical reader is the “fun, fearless female”, a “Cosmo-Girl”. She is seen as powerful and very independent. As said ‘Women’s Magazines and the Cult of Femininity’ by Marjorie Ferguson, “Cosmopolitan is every girl’s sophisticated older sister… Cosmopolitan says you can get anything if you really try, if you don’t just sit on your backside and gaze in on life with your nose pressed to the glass”. But when flicking through the pages of current issues of the widely popular magazine, I don’t see this representation, when they are reading articles like “Questions not to ask your man” and “Just change one small thing, and create a beautiful new you”. If they were fun and fearless, why would they be worrying about asking their boyfriends or husbands questions? Or why would they be following instructions on how to be beautiful?
‘Cosmopolitan’ and it’s ideas of the fun and fearless woman, are not always what their readership actually portray. Female’s will often read Women’s weekly and monthly magazines, like ‘Cosmopolitan’ in order to gain a escapism from the real world, and feel an emotional release, which is mentioned in Blumler and Katz (1974) Uses and Gratifications Theory.
Women’s Magazines
Women’s Magazines such as ‘Vogue’ and ‘Glamour’ are Women’s monthly lifestyle magazines featuring articles of fashion, relationships, sex, careers, beauty, health and celebrities. They are all very popular magazines with a huge female readership.
‘Vogue’ is more aimed at the high fashionable female, advertising very expensive items of clothing and beauty. When you look through the pages, you see what’s shown on the fashion catwalks. The models featured in the articles of the magazine, mirror what you see in fashion shows; tall, incredibly skinny, perfect features. The Women used in the magazine are not a true representation of Women. As said in ‘How Does Vogue Negotiate Age?: Fashion, the Body, and the Older Woman’ by Julia Twigg “Vogue is notable for an almost perfect match between editorial and advertising, with the high production values of its fashion spreads reflected in the adverts for major perfume and garment houses. Its high advertising revenue means it is one of the most profitable women’s magazines”
‘Glamour’ magazine is aims itself more at the everyday female. Compared to ‘Vogue’ it features more admirable females, it features the odd few real life stories, and features admirable females, such as January 2012’s cover star Tulisa Contostavlos. But the magazine still has a lot of self-improvement articles, and portrays Women as weak, who always need the help of others. As said in ‘Branding and Discourse: The Case of Cosmopolitan’ by David Machin and Joanna Thornborrow, “Women’s magazines have been seen as damaging to women’s self-image as they offer women a distorted view of themselves and the world.”
Although, you can still find negative portrayals in Women’s Magazines in the 21st century, compared to the articles and ideals you would find in the magazines many years ago. You now often see inspiring females appear throughout the magazines and also a lot of articles talking about Women having successful careers, where as many years before you would never find these articles appearing. But they still offer articles on self-improvement and then giving the reader a lack of self-confidence, like it says in “The Portrayal of Beauty in Women’s Fashion Magazines” by Brian Moeran, “The fact that the magazine reader’s face and body are carefully dissected and fragmented into dozens of different parts enables magazines and their advertisers to conjure up numerous beauty dilemmas that appear designed to keep women in a permanent and continuous state of concern and lack of self-confidence.”
‘Lads Mags’
A men’s magazine, or ‘Lad Mag’ as they are now generally called, is aimed at young, usually single men, whose main interests are sex, drinking, sport and humour. It portrays the media construction of a new type of ‘red-blooded’ male, who is highly sexed and emotions masculinity, also known now as ‘lad culture’. The magazines seem to also portray the males’ uncontrollable desires. As said in “The Dark World of Lads Mags” by Kira Cochrane, “Any young woman who felt that there might be something a bit offensive about blokes talking loudly about ogling women's "tits", who might have wondered why the men around her - often middle-class men - were acting out some sort of tired cartoon of male dominance, was simply derided as po-faced. Lad culture was, as one journalist put it, a "blokelash", a reaction to the gains of feminism which, although it was based on the idea of having big cojones, didn't even have the balls to be open and honest about what it was doing. This was the old-style sexism dressed up as the new-style irony.”
The women you see in your typical ‘Lad Mags’ are completely different to the women that appear in your typical magazines aimed at the female audience. Flicking through the pages of lad magazines such as ‘Nuts’ magazine, they all seem to follow the same strategy, sexualising Women. Like I referred to earlier, the theory of Laura Mulvey, describes what the magazines do perfectly. Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze’ theory was based around the sexualising of Women, through the Television and Film industry, but I feel that it can be used in a similar way, when looking at the way Women are represented in these ‘Lad Mags’. She says that “They present ‘woman as an image’ (or ‘spectacle’) and man as ‘bearer of the look’. Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at.”
When looking through the pages of popular ‘Lad Mag’ ‘Nuts’, the only views you get from the magazine, about women, are sexual views. The pages are full with various semi-naked women, with the odd few articles on cars and beer. It is a concern in society when these magazines are that the content of these magazines are ‘normalising’ the idea of women as sex objects. The magazines are giving the idea that sexism is accepted and normal, when in reality it should be rejected.
There are not many studies when looking at the representation of women in so called ‘Lad Mags’, but I feel the ideas represented in studies about the way women are portrayed in the porn industry work well along what I am talking about. As said in ‘Imagining Women’ by Frances Bonner, “It is certainly true that the commercial sex industry is currently run by and for men: the women who in it have no control over production. There is also no doubt that much of the sexually explicit material produced by it is degrading to women.”
All the samples of magazines I have looked at, all follow the same kind of structure. They all feature scantily clad women dominating the front covers and pages of the magazines, although no full frontal nudity is included. Looking at ‘Nuts’ magazine, they seem to feature more ‘real’ girls, maybe to make them feel more accessible to the reader.
Using Women to Advertise
When I was looking through the various magazine shelves, for my research, I noticed something on the front of a few magazine covers. One in particular, ‘Stuff’ caught my eye. ‘Stuff’ counts itself as a gadget magazine, featuring electronics and cars. But when looking at the front cover, it didn’t really convey a typical gadget magazine cover. In my opinion, it looked more like as I mentioned in the last section, a ‘Lad Mag’. The front cover featured, yet again, a scantily dressed woman, holding a new digital camera.
To gain the males attention, using half naked women to sell these items to men who are interested in gadgets, and to sell the magazine, to those men with ‘laddish’ qualities, with the half-naked women featured on the cover and throughout the pages of the ‘top selling gadget magazine’.
On the other hand, Women’s magazines do the same thing, just in a different format. To sell products advertised in their magazines, or to sell the magazines. For example on the front of ‘Glamour’ Britain’s number one selling women’s magazine, it features Tulisa, looking stunning and flawless, enticing the female general public to buy the magazine in hopes of finding out how to look like her inside the pages.
When you look through the pages of ‘Glamour’ magazine, it also follows similar. Fashion and beauty articles all have photographs of young, beautiful and ‘perfect’ women wearing them.
NME Beth Ditto Cover
In 2007, a very controversial cover appeared on favourite music magazine ‘NME’. ‘The Gossips’ lead singer Beth Ditto, appeared on the front cover of the magazine, completely naked. It caused a hell of a lot of controversy when it hit the shops. Not because Ditto was naked, but for the fact that she herself was not your stereotypical “ideal woman”. She herself weighed 15 stone, only 5ft tall and covered in tattoos.
It split the nation in half, some shocked and disgusted by what she was doing. But most praised her efforts and fight for feminism. She was showing the nation that you don’t have to be beautiful, skinny and tall to be the ideal woman. She put all the typical stereotypes and portrayals of women in magazines to shame. Ditto also gave a lot of confidence to Women in society, if she could be brave and stand up for what she believes in and be confident in herself, flaws and all, then every other Woman in society could, and the definition of the perfect woman, would not be the skinny, beautiful, perfect tall woman we see splashed over Women’s magazines, but the everyday Woman you see in reality walking down the street, at the supermarket or at the office.
Questionnaire Results
As I mentioned earlier, I completed a questionnaire asking various students and colleagues on their opinions on the issues I raise in my essay. A copy of the questions I used in my questionnaire, and all the answers from respondents are available in my appendices, but here, I am going to give a summary of my findings from the Questionnaire.
I firstly asked ‘What are the first three representations of Women you think of?’ The most popular answers were being a mother, loving shopping and enjoying cooking.
I secondly asked ‘How true do you think the old representations of women having to stay at home, to look after her family and husband and not have a career? Do you think these representations were right?’ Everyone agreed that they are very old opinions and does not reflect the state of society today, and anyone who wants a career is allowed one.
I thirdly asked ‘How do you think Women are represented in your typical ‘Lad Mags’ such as Nuts, FHM, Front, Zoo etc.’ Everyone agreed that it objectifies the women, and makes them just look like objects, and makes it seem that men are only interested in how they look.
I fourthly asked ‘How do you think Women are represented in Women’s magazines now? Such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour etc.’ Most people said that they seem to concentrate on making themselves look good, and wanting to be similar to the celebrities and models portrayed in the magazines.
Fifthly, I asked ‘What do you think of scantily dressed Women advertising gadgets and cars in Gadget magazines?’ They agreed again that is very similar to how they are presented in Lads Mags, being seen as just objects. But then again, sex sells.
Lastly, I asked ‘Did you see the 2007 NME magazine cover with Beth Ditto appearing naked? What do you think that did for the representation of women?’ Not many of my respondents had seen it, but the ones who had said it probably gave women a lot more confidence, and gave the public the idea that not all cover girls portray the real woman. But then it’s not changed a lot, as the cover girls of magazines are still the same.
Summary
Overall, I think that Women’s magazines in the 21st century have improved compared to when they were first published, with the ideals of Women having to stay at home and look after their husband and family. But still nowadays magazines are trying to ‘make’ the perfect woman, by following their articles in how to look one of their models or to celebrities. Some of the magazines make the Women seem self-obsessed and just interested in the way they look.
As for how Women are portrayed in ‘Lads Mags’ and Gadget magazines, I think the portrayals are very damaging, making Women just seem like objects to the males of society, who are just interesting in looking at these ‘perfect’ bodies. It is very demeaning and offensive to the female population.
Appendices
Questionnaire Questions:
1)
What are the first three representations of women you think of?
2)
How true do you think the old representations of women having to stay at home, to look after her family and husband and not have a career? Do you think these representations were right?
3)
How do you think Women are represented in your typical ‘Lad Mags’ such as Nuts, FHM, Front, Zoo etc.
4)
How do you think Women are represented in Women’s magazines now? Such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour etc.
5)
What do you think of scantily dressed Women advertising gadgets and cars in Gadget magazines?
6)
Did you see the 2007 NME magazine cover with Beth Ditto appearing naked? What do you think that did for the representation of women?
Respondents Answers:
1) Shopping, cooking, cleaning.
2) I think that I'd be quite happy doing that! Although I think any woman who wants a career and a life on her own is perfectly entitled to do so.
3) As objects not people.
4) Sometimes the same way as the lad's mags, particularly in magazines like vogue; the women are like clothes horses not real people, if they're not the right shape they're out.
5) Sex sells!
6) No I didn't, but I can imagine it to be quite a liberating image!
1) Mothers/carers, cooking at home, loves shopping
2) Very true in the olden days. I disagree with that and believe that women should be given equal opportunity to pursue a career they want and the responsibility of taking care of the family, financially and physically should be shared between the parents
3) It objectifies women, makes it seems like men only care the outward/physical appearance of women
4) They focus more on making themselves look good, not necessarily to be attractive to men (it is in some cases) but generally, to boost self-esteem. It promotes fashion, hence the loves shopping. Less explicit sexual contents, although I think some still contains sex tips etc., but more about improving sex life rather than for sexual fantasies.
5) Almost equivalent to lad’s magazine but just that they aren't fully exposed. Gadget magazines use them because it can be a bit 'dry' to promote a gadget magazine just on its own and the presence of women makes it more appealing
6) No
1) Independent, being a mum and shopping
2) I think people didn't know any better at the time and it was difficult to change but I think it was wrong as women are just as capable as men and cooking/cleaning/children duties should be shared equally.
3) Just there to be looked at for their body and not for their intelligence or personality.
4) To only be interested in celebs and too concerned about the way they look.
5) I think it is a cheap way to get sales from men.
6) No I didn't see it but as I know who she is I would imagine it boosted a lot of women’s' confidence and made a point about women being allowed to be natural.
1. Feminism, being passive, and loving shopping!
2. It's a bit difficult to say if they were right or not because people didn't really know any better back then, but they're definitely not right now.
3. Just as sex objects really, or something to look at. It's not very positive but you could say that no-one forces these women to be models!
4. I don't know, but I'm guessing that it might be as more fashionable and powerful.
5. It's a better representation in a way, because they’re not supposed to be the main thing you're looking at in those types of magazines, I think it's just to add some 'sexiness' to the product.
6. I didn't, but I Googled it now you mentioned it and I was quite surprised! I don't think it's done much, cover girls are still seen as slim and attractive.
1) -Sexual/body
-Delicate/emotional/
-Motherly/caring
2) I think that these representations were probably true of women back then but they do not represent the women of today. More women are head strong and career driven and stand independently.
3) In magazines such as mentioned women are represent as solely to be looked at, they are there for the male audience's attention and pleasure, there is nothing more to them they are just a body.
4) Women are representing as caring about their image, being image conscious but also taking back the 'sexual' image and making it their own. Women can be fashionable and sexy without giving the same connotations as glamour and page 3 images.
5) I think again as in NUTs etc. it degrades women, they are just something on the side to give more appeal to the gadgets. It is selling an ideal to men that women are there for them to look at and by having such material objects they can attract women with them.
6) I think it opened up people's eyes to what women really are. We are not all perfect, with massive boobs, but real people and we are all different. It created a representation that allowed audience's to think about women and what 'sexy' is. How she was posed is still in a similar manner to other generic 'glamour' girls, but because she is of a bigger body size it adds a difference and directs people to appreciate women differently.
Bibliography
Blumler, Jay and Katz, Elihu (1974) Uses and Gratifications.
Bonner, Frances (1992) Imagining Women. Cultural Representations and Gender. The Open University Press.
Cochrane, Kira (2007) New Statesman. The Dark World of Lad’s Mags. 136 (4858), 24.
Cosmopolitan Magazine (2012) ‘Issue 01’ Cosmopolitan. January, pp1-202
Ferguson, Marjorie (1983) Forever Feminine. Women’s Magazines and the Cult of Femininity. Heinemann Publications.
Friedan, Betty (1963) The Feminine Mystique. W.W Norton and Company Publishing.
Glamour Magazine (2012) ‘Issue 01’ Glamour. January, pp1-244.
Hollows, Joanne (2000) Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture. Manchester University Printing Press
Machin, David – Thornborrow, Joanna (2003). Discourse and Society. Branding and Discourse: The Case of Cosmopolitan. 14 (4), 453.
Moeran, Brian. (2010). Fashion Theory. The Portrayal of Beauty in Women’s Fashion Magazines. 14 (4), 491
Mulvey, Laura. (1973) Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema. Brown University Press.
NME Magazine (2007) ‘Issue 22’ NME. 23rd May pp1.
Stuff Magazine (2012) ‘Issue 1’ Stuff. January pp1-100.
Twigg, Julia (2010). Fashion Theory. How Does Vogue Negotiate Age?: Fashion, the Body, and the Older Woman. 14 (4), 471.
Vogue Magazine (2012) ‘Issue 01’ Vogue. January pp1-
Zoo Magazine (2012) ‘Issue 1’ Zoo. January pp1-90.
