Transcript The Gendered Rhetoric of Slick Magazines

The Gendered Rhetoric of Slick
Magazines
A brief look at men’s and women’s
magazines from the summer of 1999
Two Covers from June Magazines
Who is the audience for these magazines?
• Both capitalize on popularity of Austin
Powers movies
• How are models dressed?
– Michael Myers in pinstripes
– Heather Graham in bra
• What do magazines promise?
– “Mirth, Merriment, and Abject Hilarity”
– “Guys and Sex: What they think about foreplay,
experienced women and lust vs. love”
The Importance of a Magazine
Cover
In 1980, Ms. won a journalism award for a
story providing an intimate view of Soviet
women’s lives. Because the Soviet women
on the cover were not wearing makeup, the
article undid years of effort to get an ad
schedule from Revlon.
Maxim
“This recent addition to the rack is worse than
pornography. It insults men’s intelligence with
immature gags and remote-control user guides. It
degrades women as possession-obsessed sex kittens
who are tricked into bed and like it. Know what?
It’s selling like mad in Middle Tennessee. One
distributor says he can barely keep it in stock in
Green Hills.”
--from “Pictures AND words: Men’s magazines
come of age” by Mike Kilen in the Aug. 26, 1998
issue of The Tennessean
Alcohol ad from Maxim
“Adding Grand Marnier to a
margarita is also quite enticing.”
Grand Marnier
It Changes Everything
Tiny Text in Upper Left Corner:
“Drink with style.
Drink responsibly.”
Alcohol ad from Cosmopolitan
• “Women and men like
different things.”
• “Seagram’s Coolers.
It’s what women like.”
• Nothing more at stake
here than whether
toilet lid is up or
down.
Evian ad from Seventeen
• Uses sex to sell water
• Appeals to teenage
girls’ desire to be
grown up by drinking
• Two bottles to indicate
mixed drink
Kellogg’s Ad from Maxim
Aggressive face--primal scream?
Unruly hair
Surreal use of color.
A Kellogg’s Ad from Cosmopolitan
•
•
•
•
•
Complex carbs
Essential vitamins
Key minerals
Great taste
Perfect Cereal
• Bare calves and low
heels
A Sony Ad from Maxim
“Re-recordable a million times, which is
just about how often you change
your mind about your mixes.”
Alyssa’s Mix (marked out)
Christine’s Mix (marked out)
Amy’s Mix
“Trouble making decisions?
No problem.”
“Sony Portable Music:
Let Your Mind Play.”
A Sony Ad from Cosmopolitan
• Same campaign--Sony
Portable Music: Let
Your Mind Play
• “Make Waves”
• Products are designed
to play music, not to
compose or record.
Agonic/Hedonic Dichotomy
• Agonic power is link to the male gender role; is
equated with “doing” roles; and is obtained
through achievement, action, independence,
aggression, strength, and expertise.
• Hedonic power is associated with the female
gender role, is analogous to “being” roles and is
derived from indirect or covert means such as
display and adornment of the physical self or
dependency on others.
• From Jennifer L. Paff and Hilda Buckley Lakner,
“Dress and the Female Gender Role...”
An SUV ad in Maxim
“Cars like pavement.
That’s why we don’t make cars.”
“. . . at Isuzu, we don’t think nature
should give in to cars with low
clearance or low thresholds for pain.”
“Isuzu: Go farther.”
An SUV ad in Cosmopolitan
• Sophisticated City
Scene
• “Enough Cargo Space
to Max Out Your
Credit Card.”
• Fine Print: “Buckle
Up! Do it for those
who love you.”
Images of women improving?
From June issue of Glamour
Part of outstanding ad campaign that
accompanied the Women’s World Cup
“You pass on more to your children
and your grandchildren than your eye
color, . . . You provide the living
example that they can become more
than they ever thought they could.
Because you did.
Just do it.”
From “School Zone” Spread in July Seventeen
• “We’ve been
on the soccer
team for the
past three
years. Our
girlfriends
always come
out to watch
us play.” -Curt
Ellen Goodman: “The GIRLS and
why we get a KICK out of them”
• “For every Mia Hamm, there are still
dozens of supermodels. For every message
of self-confidence, there are still a stunning
number of folks investing in feel-bad
visuals.”
• “The 274 pages of Seventeen were full of
nail polish and bad hair days and models
who would wilt by halftime. There was one
page on softball, including a tip on how to
wear your hair under a batting helmet.”
A Strong Woman in Seventeen
Tattoo:
“Tampax was there”
An advertisement from Seventeen
• The only ad for a soap
in any magazine I
looked at
• Obviously geared to
sell sex to a young
audience
• Series premieres
during summer
vacation
Catherine Fitzpatrick, “Sugar
and Spicy”
A recent study published in Journal of
Communication found that “magazines that
counseled girls in the years of their emerging
and maturing sexuality were urging them to
be enthusiastic consumers in pursuit of
perfection--perfect hair, perfect complexions,
perfect wardrobes; were holding up thinner
and thinner models as the ideal; and were
serving as field guides for haphazard sexual
indulgence.”
Complementary Copy
Page 66
Page 67
Two Quotations
“When women’s magazines from Seventeen
to Lear praise beauty products in general
and credit Revlon in particular to get ads,
it’s just business as usual.”
--from Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies, and
Advertising”
“The day the copy had to rag around a
chicken leg was not a happy one.”
--Ellen Levine, editor-in-chief of Woman’s
Day
The Photo Spread
• From Maxim
• Flat-front wool
trousers, $95, by Perry
Ellis. Vest by Perry
Ellis, shirt by Perry
Ellis Portfolio.
• Doesn’t say where to
buy the bed.
Conclusions
What I found is consistent with the body of
research which says that advertising generally
portrays women as
•dependent on or subservient to men
•primarily in the home or domestic settings
•preoccupied with physical attractiveness
•sex objects
•decorations for men
•product users/demonstrators
Web Page dedicated to “Top Ten
Offenders”
http://www.aboutface.org/gallery/newten/one.html