An investigation into the representation of women in Fitness magazines. With specific reference to Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, ESPN’s Body issue and SELF magazine.
Representation is the way media texts portray a “real world by presenting reality in various ways.” In a way the audiences are manipulated to believe the synthetic ideologies and meanings from a reality purposely constructed to give a bias depiction. The focus of this investigation is to deconstruct the stereotypes around gender roles by analysing series of fitness magazines, looking at how gender identities are portrayed and how stereotypes are used in selling products. Ultimately, I will find out its overall impact on the viewers.
One of the most important issues in the representation of women is the growing amount of sexualisation of women in advertisement. The use of sexual content such as provocative images and sexual
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The Oppositional Gaze theory explores black people's right to gaze, both off and on screen because she claims that “There is power in looking” . Hooks looks at black women in particular because they are primarily the ones that are not represented accurately or realistically in the media. She even says; “even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve - to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze.” As recognised in the Sports Illustrated magazine, white women are seen as the ideal women and more attractive and desirable by the white male gaze theory. Black women like Serena Williams have gained power from avoiding such messages that enforce racial superiority, white supremacy, and gender inequality. Alternatively Serena Williams has ignored the gender and racial identities instilled in the media and instead, she has chosen her own individual
Like a blueprint or instruction manual, the objective of a rhetorical analysis is to dissect a written argument, identify its many parts, and explain how all of them come together to achieve a desired effect. Susan Bordo, a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky, wrote “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies”, published in 2003 in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her essay examines how the media plays a pervasive role in how women view their bodies to the point where we live in an empire of images and there are no protective borders. In “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies”, Bordo not only effectively incorporates numerous facts and statistics from her own research and the research of others; she also appeals to emotional realities of anxiety and inadequacy felt by women all over the world in regards to their body image. Ultimately, her intent is to critique the influence of the media on self-confidence and body image, and to remind her audience of the overt as well as subconscious messages they are receiving on a daily basis.
Media is a wide term that covers many information sources including, television, movies, advertisement, books, magazines, and the internet. It is from this wide variety of information that women receive cues about how they should look. The accepted body shape and has been an issue affecting the population probably since the invention of mirrors but the invention of mass media spread it even further. Advertisements have been a particularly potent media influence on women’s body image, which is the subjective idea of one's own physical appearance established by observation and by noting the reactions of others. In the case of media, it acts as a super peer that reflects the ideals of a whole society. Think of all the corsets, girdles, cosmetics, hair straighteners, hair curlers, weight gain pills, and diet pills that have been marketed over the years. The attack on the female form is a marketing technique for certain industries. According to Sharlene Nag...
The media is a fascinating tool; it can deliver entertainment, self-help, intellectual knowledge, information, and a variety of other positive influences; however, despite its advances for the good of our society is has a particular blemish in its physique that targets young women. This blemish is seen in the unrealistic body images that it presents, and the inconsiderate method of delivery that forces its audience into interest and attendance. Women are bombarded with messages from every media source to change their bodies, buy specific products and redefine their opinion of beauty to the point where it becomes not only a psychological disease, but a physical one as well.
Glamour and money are not the only components surrounding sports; many athletes experience what can be considered the dark side of sports. In the article The Meaning of Serena Williams by Claudia Rankine, some not so glamorous aspects of her life are highlighted. One of the most prominent rough parts of her life includes the racism that constantly surrounded her as an athlete. Whether it be the name calling and humiliation, or being paid less compared to a white woman, Serena has endured it all through her career; it is how she handles such cases that promotes her positive character.
In this video, a man by the name of Hennessy Youngman focuses mainly on “cultivating an ‘angry nigger exterior’” as a mode of success (2014, p. 23). Hennessy’s use of anger as a mode to gain notoriety feeds into the trope of the “angry black,” a stereotype we constantly see applied to Serena Williams.
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
Gender bias in media is a problem with multiple different aspects. Statistics show that 40% of all athletes are women, but they receive just 4% of media coverage (The Statistics). Secondly, a recent analysis found that of 6,503 sports photos taken by national newspapers, only 78 were of females (Media Coverage). What are the reasons toward such uneven coverage? Females participating in athletics get more attention to their physical appearance than their actual ability to perform the sport. Athletes that are not considered appealing or attractive are commonly disregarded and forgotten by the media. In addition, female athlete’s are often compared to male athletes in their same sport, and ignored for their real ability because not as impressive as their male counterparts (Low Female). For years, women have not only been fighting equal treatment and coverage, but also discrimination and sexism. Media’s coverage of female athlete’s is a problem that can be solved by closer to equal coverage in the press, and more attention on actual ability than physical appearance.
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
In society today the media misrepresents a lot of things giving people the wrong impression and false beliefs that something is what it isn’t or gives them the belief that they might be able to achieve something that is not very likely to be achieved. Media today is all about making money and trying to persuade people to consume as much as they can. The paper that you are about to read focuses on how the media incorrectly portrays weight lifting and working out in the gym in general. They show misleading photos and advertisement that could give a person the false impression that working out is easy and idea of the perfect body is only a couple pushups away. And also gender stereotype weightlifting makes females seem weaker and inferior to men in the weight room. After reading this paper there should be a better understanding of how the media incorrectly portrays these ideas.
this magazine is aimed at women in their late 20’s as the woman on the
The practice of sexualizing women athletes is an example of dominant ideology. Women can have two personas in the media: The All-American Girl and the vixen. All too often we see the vixen featured instead of the girl next door. Anna Kournikova is an example of a female athlete that has the persona as the vixen and made a lot of money by doing so.
2010 ‘Sculpting my Feminist Identity and Body: An autoethnographic exploration of bodysculpting and poststructuralist feminist fieldwork’ The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Annual Conference, Sydney. TASA Balsamo, A. 1994 ‘Feminist Bodybuilding’, Women, Sport, and Culture, Human Kinetics Publishers, Boston Bartky, S. (ed.) 1988 ‘Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power’, in Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on resistance, Northeastern University Press, Boston Bolin, A. 1992 ‘Flex Appeal, Food, and Fat: Competitive bodybuilding, gender, and diet’, Play and Culture 5: 378-400. Heywood, L. 1998 Bodymakers: A cultural anatomy of women's bodybuilding, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick Butler, J. 1999 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity, Routledge, New York.
Women and girls seem to be more affected by the mass media than do men and boys. Females frequently compare themselves to others, finding the negative rather than looking at the positive aspects of their own body. The media’s portrayal of the ideal body type impacts the female population far more than males, however, it is not only the mass media that affects women, but also influence of male population has on the female silhouette too.
Men and women were not seen as equal human beings; instead it has been obvious that men were more likely to be on the upper hand. In 1987, it has been recorded that 2/3 of the people who were presented in the media were male. However, it is evident that the media usually presents and sexualizes women who are “young, fit and beautiful” hence probably creating self esteem issues more than confidence, especially in younger women who are religious towards the media’s expectations. This stereotype of a desired body shape only forces women to meet unattainable, perfect physical standards (Gill 2015).
Graydon, Shari. “How the Media Keeps us Hung Up on Body Image.” Herizons Summer. 2008: