Gender Representation

Gender Representation

I have researched the ways media represents men and women very differently in magazine covers.  Gender representation is the essential elements of our own identity, and the identities we assume other people to have, come from concepts of gender – i.e. what it means to be a boy or a girl / man or woman that are separate from biological differences. The media in general and advertising in particular, does not show us the real world.

The magazine on the left represents men as very masculine. As we can see, the man does not have a shirt on and his body is exposed to show how muscular he is. This is a way to attract people to buy the magazine as they made the mid shot the main focus. This representation portrays men in society. However, Trey Songz is a singer not a model, the cover line says “the hardest in R&B”, this pun says that he is not only the best (hardest) in R&B; he is also muscular (hardest) physically. The magazine “vibe” used this tactic to represent Trey Songz as one of the bests in order to gain more sales,

In most media portrayals, male characters are rewarded for self-control and the control of others, aggression and violence. We can see leadership through the way he is standing straight with his eyes looking directly at the camera, not smiling which shows control.

In contrast, the cover on the right’s main photo is a long shot of the singer “Ciara” who is seen as beautiful in the media. This is because the long shot exposes her long sleek legs and her fancy heels. Women are usually seen as sex objects due to the stereotypes of the weaknesses of women. We can see this through the way she is sitting, compared to the man standing straight; she is slouching with her legs open which links to the sex object stereotype