Media Essays

Text:Look Magazine 
Question:Representations of Women 
Essay: Magazines rely on stereotypes in which they base their whole text on. These stereotypes are seen in the imagery and within the articles. These represent the magazines basic assumptions about their target audience. The magazine encoders determine their content based om assumptions regarding an audiences interest and thus stereotype that particular group. The colour scheme and fonts are stereotypically associated with femininity, they consist of reds, pinks and yellows with curvy fonts. Content pages in mass serve to reinforce gendered stereotypes. The magazine itself takes the order of several articles broken up by advertisements. The articles have the aim to provoke anxiety about achieving stereotypically accepted norms of femininity. These norms include the views of women needing to be a certain dress size, have a certain figure, weight and complexion. The advertisements then claim to solve these anxieties. One issue focusses on the topic of becoming more healthy and active when modelling the sportswear being advertised. The women are not really doing any exercises. The magazine describes women as beautiful and happy. But then hints at that gender being shy and have low or lack of self-confidence. There is a lot of focus on body image. ‘the celeb mantras we need to heed’ This is hinting that girls should follow the lifestyles of different celebrities, and presents them as the target audiences icon. Through the magazine, the target audience, which is women, are presented as having a lack of confidence with the imperatives ‘Be confident’, ‘Be strong’. Many of the articles are how to guides. When the mode of address is that of a mentor, lifestyles become less, matter of choice, more dictated. The main reading of these is that the audience needs guidance on how to be strong, confident or independent, this is a contradiction as it hints that the audience needs the magazine to be independent. Confidence is largely linked to body image. Magazines promote a template of femininity including factors such as, conventionally pretty with a symmetrical face, embellished skin and thin. 

Completed: YES Word Count: (Highlight essay, look bottom left corner) 341 Grade: