Gender

• Crotean and Hughes

  In mid 90's, 6% of newspaper management were female, only 20% of top TV management were women
• Cumberbatch

  Over 90% of voices over advertisements were men, 66% of all people in adverts were men
• Wolf and Orbach

  Argue rise in eating disorders in women is a result of women being presented as ideas for women to aspire to in the media
• Techman

  Symbolic annihilation = achievements of women are shown to be less important than their sex appeal > occurs when a group is represented negatively or ignored
• Ferguson

  Researched women's magazines and found they gave advice and training on being stereotypically feminine
• Binary opposition

  Looking at the world in terms of pairs of opposite

  • Strauss argues one half of a binary opposite pair is culturally marked as being more positive than the other
  • media uses binary opposition in stereotypical gender representations, e.g. binary opposition of genders, men are culturally determined as positive
• Westwood

  Lots of female characters on TV and in film who don't conform to gender stereotypes - characters are seen as transgressive as they go beyond the female norms
• Gauntlet

  Looked at changes in media portrayal of masculinity

  • found some men's magazines mirrored format of women's magazines with advice on attracting women
  • often promote metrosexual male who cares about how he looks and respects women
  • acknowledges male magazines still sexualise women
• Hermes (postmodernist)

  People can reject media images about gender
• Mulvey, the male gaze

  Camera focuses on women's bodies for the sexual viewing pleasure for men

  • camera puts audience in perspective of heterosexual man, women are displayed as sexual objects in media for viewer
• The Bechdel Test

  Test which presents a quantitative analysis of representation of women in relation to men in films and must contain all three:

  1. Two named women
  2. Must talk to each other
  3. Talk about something other than men
• The beauty myth

  Tebbel argues women are under more pressure to conform to beauty myth due to editing of bodies and faces

  • Killborn argues media represents women as 'mannequins' with no imperfections
  • Orbach argues media continues to associate slimness with happiness and success
• McRobbie

  Media representations of young girls has changed in recent decades

  • 1970's = young girls presented in magazines as being passive, led by desire to impress boys
  • 90's = magazines aimed at young girls used "girl power" language to suggest girls were free
  • argued media wanted to create a consumer market for products aimed at young girls > media encourages girls to desire products > become consumer