Representations of Femininity Flashcards
What do Tuchman et al. mean by the term ‘symbolic annihilation’?
A term to describe the way that women’s achievements are often not reported, or are condemned or trivialised by the media.
Often their achievements are presented as less important than their looks and sex appeal.
What is a good example of symbolic annihilation of women’s activities in media coverage?
In coverage of women’s sport in newspapers and television. Research into TV sport presentation shows that what little coverage of women’s sport there is tends to sexualise, trivialise and devalue women’s sporting accomplishments.
The Bristol Fawcett Society found in their analysis of The Observer (2008), 177 men were featured compared to only 13 women.
‘The media also subject women in sport to the male gaze because female athletes are increasingly photographed in hyper-sexualised poses.’
What is the male gaze?
The consumption of women as sex objects, through the male gaze where the camera lens essentially ‘eyes up’ the female characters, providing erotic pleasure for men.
Describe Ferguson’s ‘cult of femininity’.
And the research that supports this.
Conducting a content analysis of women’s magazines from between 1949, 1974 and 1979 and 1980, she concluded that women’s magazines are organised around a ‘cult of femininity’, which promotes a traditional ideal that excellence and success is achieved through caring for others, the family, marriage and appearance.
She argues that , although modern female magazines, especially those aimed at young women, are gradually moving away from these stereotypes, they still tend to focus on ‘him, home and looking good (for him)’.
Research:
The Bristol Fawcett Society found that of analysis of 521 magazines in 2008 that featured people, 56% featured idealised images of men and women, of which 84% were women. The other 44% which were focused on subjects such as sports, only featured 15% of women.
Who challenges Ferguson’s ideas?
Winship argues against Ferguson, claiming that women’s magazines generally have a positive and supportive role for women today.
She argues that such magazines present women with a broader variety of options than before, and help to discuss and tackle issues which have been ignored by the (male dominated) media, such as domestic violence and child abuse.
What does Gill claim about the depiction of women in advertising?
They have changed from passive sex objects of the male gaze, to active, independent and sexually powerful agents. From an analysis of television, magazine and billboard adverts, she claims that there are 3 broad stereotypes we can see:
- The young, physically toned and smart heterosexual who uses her sexual power to control a man.
- The vengeful heterosexual beautiful women set on punishing her ex lover.
- The ‘hot lesbian’ entwined with another beautiful women.
However, Gill claims that although these advertisements may empower women, the young sexually attractive women in these ads are born straight out of the most predictable templates for male sexual fantasy, and embody very narrow standards for women’s beauty and sex appeal. In other words, these images are contradictory.
