Milly Does Media

ONE PART

The way women are represented in most mainstream magazines is almost identical from each other. The talk is always involved in sexualisation of women and/ or some talk of their sex life and how they should be acting for the pleasure of men. Most research taken place over magazines has been critical of them, pointing them as a locus of ideological messages that serve to legitimize and naturalize unequal relations, which offer a narrow and restrictive template of femineity constructed around fashion, beauty and ‘how to get a man’. Magazines are charged with promoting the ‘beauty myth’ that damages women’s self-esteem and with supporting harmful social practices ranging from dieting to cosmetic surgery (Bordo, 1993; Greer, 1999; Ussher, 1997; Wolf, 1990).  This relates to how I want to go against the dominant representation and how I want to create a magazine that allows women to be truly themselves and doesn’t bring down their self-esteem. 

With headlines down the side of an image of a undressed woman, such as ‘how to get a man’ and about their ‘sex lives’ the target audience of these magazines being young women/ 18-30, this ingrains in women that they need to live for men and creates a dominant ideology within society that we must learn how to please a man, to therefore ‘get him’.  Gender is performative and is always a doing. Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being (Butler 1990). This relates to the fact that these magazine covers make women perform to be sexually orientated and never intellectual. 

Bibliography

Gill, R. (2009). Mediated intimacy and postfeminism: a discourse analytic examination of sex and relationships advice in a women’s magazine. Discourse & Communication, 3(4), 345-369. doi: 10.1177/1750481309343870

Butler, J. Gender trouble.

For my production piece, my identities will be based around gender and the representation of women in mainstream media, focusing on magazine covers. Specifically, upper class, well known women and how they are represented. The reason I have chosen these identities to focus on is because most magazines you see involve women being sexualised and the whole focus being revolved around how they look and how aesthetic they look. Also, the text and headline surrounding the women always involve sex. Therefore, to challenge the archetypal representations, I am going to be creating my own magazine featuring a front cover and a double page spread that will involve a woman of a normal job, and regular lifestyle and all about her success and not solely focused on how she looks and her body, neglecting the stereotypical representation we see in our magazines daily. 

When I have taken a look at existing magazine front covers such as ‘Cosmopolitan’ and ‘Heat’ they follow similar ideologies when it comes to women. Almost every issue includes a woman with very little clothing and some sort of heading sexualising them. Heat issues usually involve a paparazzi picture of a celebrity caught off guard with an insinuating comment body shaming them to some degree. Issues usually have really bold bright colours and the women are in the centre.

The feature pages inside the magazine usually involve a two-page spread interview talking ‘all things sex’ or about the women’s relationships. To go against the dominant ideology, I am going to revolve my two-page spread interview around the successes of the working woman on the front cover, rather than her sex life. 

My target audience for my magazine is mainly focused at women of ages 16-30. I chose to go as young as 16 because the aim of my magazine is to show that you do not need to be like every other woman in today’s magazines and that you shouldn’t be afraid to be different/ express yourself however you like and to challenge mainstream media’s ideas that all women have to offer is their body and looks.

In order to complete my magazine to its full potential planning is essential to make sure all of the aspects I have planned are covered. In order to succeed, I have allocated a timescale of five weeks to complete the photoshoot, conclude my interview and content writing and finally putting together my magazine and editing it. I have also put time aside to quality check my work and make sure all spellings and information is correct. In terms of health and safety I have carried out a risk assessment to avoid any potential dangers and so that the safety of the participants is valued. As I am photographing another individual, I have provided a consent form for them to read, fill out and sign. For equipment I will be using my iPhone 11. Due to recent circumstances and due to government guidelines with COVID19, I was unable to use university’s equipment, I will be using my laptop to edit my magazine. This will include using Microsoft word to construct edit and write my two-page spread interview and photoshop to edit my images and magazine front cover.

When I first proposed my initial idea’s, I drew sketches of the layout in which I may want my magazine to go, taking inspiration from other mainstream magazines but changing the content completely to challenge the norm.  This will be helpful when it comes to making my magazine as I will already have a rough idea of where I want things to go.