Representation of female and males in a magazine
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Representation of female and males in a magazine
Here are two different covers on a Billboard magazine. On the left hand side cover is Nicki Minaj who has received a total of six Grammy nominations and won many other awards. As you can see she has a whole body picture with not a lot of clothes on. This is what the media think attracts both the male and female and men like to look at women and women like to look at women. Nicki is in quite a sexual position, this sets of the wrong image as it does take the headlines away. It focuses more on her body rather than her talent. Women are represented as pretty and pink in the magazine media.
Here on the right is a cover of Usher, he just has a face shot. Men are represented as being tough and brave, that is why User is wearing a crown, the media want people to get the message that the men are in charge. It is a close up picture with no emotion. This is how the media think men work. Most of the audience buying this magazine would be men as this is their ideal look and way to act.
The stereotypical colour for a girl is pink and for a boy is blue. This is shown clearly in the Billboard covers above.
Here is some more examples of the cover of magazines. On the left is Beyoncé. We can see that she is also is quite a sexual position that would attract men. Her top is see-through as it is wet. One of the cover lines say 'BEYONCE STRIPS DOWN FOR SUMMER'. This is basically saying buy the magazine and see Beyoncé strip down. This could be quite offensive to women as it is just using her body as a selling point. She isn't wearing many clothes.
On the right is Trey Songz. This is a better example of the media showing men to be brave and powerful. He has no top on and looks like he is only covered by boxers. This attracts both men and women because men want to be this image and obviously women are attracted to this.
The media is selling young people the idea that girls’ and women’s value lies in their youth, beauty, and sexuality and not in their capacity as leaders. Boys learn that their success is tied to dominance, power, and aggression.
The issues for magazine editors
The issue for magazine editors is that they could effect the women when it comes to miss representation. This could cause a big problem with the people staring the magazines or the public being offended by what they see. They also might just genuinely have a problem with putting their name on something that would offend people.
Not many people take this into account though, from both the editors side, meaning that they don't care what people think and from the publics side, they don't know how hard it can be for editors to publish what could effect people.
Miss representation
“You never see the photograph of a woman, considered beautiful, that hasn’t been digitally altered to make her absolutely, inhumanly perfect. Girls are being encouraged to achieve that ideal at younger and younger ages all the time. They end up measuring themselves against an impossible standard and feeling themselves wanting as a result.” — Jean Kilbourne
This is what was said in the 'Miss representation' film. This shows that the media does mess with minds. That there is something girls always have to look up to and if they aren't that they fell bad about themselves. This could cause many problems when it comes to health.
In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message we receive is that a woman’s value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 33rd out of the 49 highest income countries when it comes to women in the national legislature. And it’s not better outside of government. Women make up only 4.6% of S&P 500 CEOs and 17% of directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.
The study examined women directors across more than 3,200 short and mid-length films screened at top 10 film festivals worldwide so as to better understand the challenges women face as directors in the film industry.
“These findings demonstrate that female film directors face a fiscal cliff in their careers soon after making a short film,”. “Male and female directors are put on opposite paths as their careers progress. For males, opportunities grow, while for females, they vanish.”
However, the study did find one game changer. Festivals like LUNAFEST film festival, a year-long traveling film festival that highlight award-winning short films by, for, and about women, celebrate women’s voices. As a result, there’s a dramatic difference in gender representation behind and in front of the camera. For example, girls and women appear in 63% of the speaking roles in LUNAFEST shorts, and 81% of the lead or co lead roles were held by females.
In the film they have some theory's of being able stop the miss representations. They have women running for president to show their power as well as men.
They also have some ideas like helping around schools and getting the word across to students. This helps growing the students into the proper way women and men should be represented.
Here are some of the things that the media have caused people the think:
Representing gender effectively
Sex, whether one is male or female, is essentially a question of biology and genetics; Gender is the cultural and social codes and conventions which are associated with either sex. One way of thinking about this is to think in the following terms: "Biology says 'It's a Boy!', and Gender says 'We'll buy the blue outfits, the train sets and the Action Men!". The distinction between 'Sex' and 'Gender' has become increasingly important as feminist and masculinise criticism have sought to question the orthodox and established conventional ways in which we are brought up to think of 'Men' and Women', arguing that the ideas and associations which surround, say, femininity are not issues of Biological determination, but rather of social and cultural convention. The way to stop things like this is to get the media to understand that women and men could be represented the same way when it comes to magazines, TV, newspapers and many more.
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