Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazines. Show all posts

Monday, April 9, 2012

The "Right Kind" of Readers and Repetitive Messages

So coincidentally before reading this article, I had just purchased a SELF magazine to read over the weekend. I hadn't purchased a magazine in a long time, what with all the reading I had to do for school and reading all three of the Hunger Game trilogies in a week (ya I was a little obsessed) I just didn't have the time, nor the desire to sit down and read through a Cosmo, or Vogue getting the same content and images about sex, how to "perfect your perfect self," organizing your life, etc. But for some reason, last week I decided to buy a Self and it actually allowed for me to read it in a different way after reading Gills article on "Gender in Magazines." 

Her section on contradiction versus coherence was particularly very intriguing and I set out to look at the content that was contradictory in the magazine. While Self is all about the empowerment of the individual woman, of being free and active to do what she pleases, the advertising and content of the magazine seems to mold her and engulf her into more barriers and ideals of beauty than seems possible. While there are images of women, who are active and outside doing and accomplishing things that are fulfilling, the advertisements on every page send the message that you need to be conscientious of your weight (diet pills and protein shakes had full page spreads), that you need to maintain great nails, hair and skin, even if you are doing things that are active like running and working out, and that the clothes you wear will help you perform better. This myriad of images in hard to achieve, but we are greatly influenced by it. While I like Self because it is not as repetitive with its sex stories, fashion, and content, like Cosmo is, it still maintains a structure of blurring the advertising and content that all of these magazines do to create contradictory messages (Ten pages in, Jose Cuervo had an advert for "light Margarita" mix that was only 95 calories...since when does drinking helping you get six-pack abs like they say you can achieve on page 85?). 

I've noticed overtime that I have stopped purchasing these magazines because they all seem to be sending the same message and images about women. Yes, I will indulge occasionally like I did this weekend, but now it just seems to be a waste of time to try and replicate these images of femininity that our culture puts out month after month for us. It doesnt seem to be changing anytime soon, and I'm quite frankly tired of getting the same message every month. 

Magazines and Identity

Gill's chapter begins with an exploration of the multiple ideologies found in women's magazines. In preparation for this class, I went through my room's magazine collection only to find that we have almost every month of Cosmopolitan but no magazines of true "substance". Personally, I can say that I have no distinct reason for purchasing these types of magazines other than out of boredom but after reading Gill's chapter, I began thinking of what I was actually purchasing, in terms of ideology. As Gill mentioned on pg. 182, "magazine publishers sell the friendly and intimate relationship they have established with their readers"--I have most certainly been influenced by this trusting relationship with a magazine and the ideology it presents to me. There are constant suggestions on how to improve appearances, behaviors, how to portray yourself in a certain way, etc. What bothers me, however, is the sneaky tactics taken to convey those messages. I do not think of myself as a naive person or one who relies heavily on the media to control my looks/actions, but as this class has done in the past, my eyes have been opened to the "subliminal" messages of media. The "sympathetic environment" of magazines helps to contour the content and advertisements to create a relationship of trust among readers and publications; we regard the magazines as somewhat of a friend who we can turn to for monthly advice. Additionally, the women's magazines come in multiple feminist discourses so, just as you can choose your friends based on personality integration, one may choose one's magazine based on her particular opinion and her ideas can be justified and "listened to" by the magazine.
The teen magazine section of the chapter presents images to vulnerable teenage girls who are in constant tension with their own bodies and minds. The magazines subtly express how these girls should look and act so that they may "win over" the males who are presented in the magazines. This is problematic for feminism because it places males as the socially superior which, as Gill mentions, is just as bad as the objectification of women in men's magazines. The content "tricks" teenagers into thinking that the changes they should make to their appearances are done so because they are "super fun!" This idea makes me question the integrity of the magazine publishers because it is almost like they are taking their trusting relationships with readers for granted. While I understand that magazines are in the market for profit, I feel that they manipulate readers to the point of almost brainwashing.
The messages of men's and women's magazines are extremely different and Gill's interpretation of each ideology is that the "representations are designed to naturalize gender difference and male power" (217). Because each magazine has such a niche audience, or at least a gendered audience (typically), these representations are accepted. The magazine publishers know their readers and know what they want/do not want to read about and that "insider knowledge" translates into extreme success, whether we like it or not. There will always be an audience who accept the message of male power but it is the messages within the claims of ideology that we must pick up on.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Beautification of Self-Identity


What I found interesting in the Gill chapter on magazines is the significance of the teen market to magazines. Because magazines cultivate a certain identity for a certain group of people, teenagers, specifically girls, become the target for products that relate to beautification in creating the female teen identity today. Over the years there has been and increase in girls concern for how they look. Magazines, like the conduct books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, have become an avenue, which dictate appropriate behaviors and acceptable appearance for teenage girls through purchase power.
This ability to buy beautification increases significantly during this time of a person’s life as the period of adolescence is linked to the identity vs. role confusion stage of development. During this time teenagers are concerned with determining and establishing their identities and magazines contribute to this by suggesting to the consumer how they could be and look if they adhere to what the magazine is saying and promoting. With the focus on exploring identity comes the willingness to try different things out making teenage girls likely to consume products, furthering their identity search, aiding teenage girls in formulating a concept of what it means to be feminine. Teenage girls become easy targets for the beautification products as they generally have freedom because of their age and lack of responsibilities in life and because of the link to their parents who endow them with the power to purchase. Magazines like Cosmo Girl, Seventeen, Teen Vogue fill the minds of teenage girls with the suggestions of how to be a woman; magazines have become n influential factor contributing to the American culture as it relates to the teenage population.