Magazines / Representation of Gender

What is gender? Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

Gender and representations of gender are tied up with ideas of masculinity and femininity. Typically masculinity in the media tends to focus on: strength, power, sexual attractiveness, physique and independence. Femininity in the media tends to focus on: narrow conventions of beauty, narrow conventions of size/shape and physique, sexuality, emotional dealings and relationships.

Stereotypes and countertypes – do either of these images appear to be a stereotype or countertype? How helpful or dangerous are stereotypes/countertypes?

How much age plays a factor - stereotypically youth is seen as aspirational for female audiences. This is the opposite of masculinity for which variants of age are seen as far more acceptable.

Gender representation is wholly dependent on culture, audience and audience expectations.

Media producers encode dominant preferred meanings into texts but mainstream audiences that consume mass media have just as much responsibility in terms of the representation – they have to decode these and they are also the ones buying (or not buying) the magazines.

How much does the media challenge hegemonic constructs of femininity and masculinity and how much does it reinforce, circulate and perpetuate stereotypes, thus maintaining up to a point patriarchal ideology?