Media Institutions use many types of ways to promote and advertise their products. Advertising is essential to magazines although most magazines aim to make a profit from both advertising and the cover price. Every magazine will have a majority of advertisements which could consist of one-third of the magazine. Advertisements make up the majority of revenue that the magazine gets. Magazines are dependent upon advertising in order to survive. Advertising is not just about selling a product; it also promotes images and life styles. It also shows us a world (which is regarded as perfect) where the products are needed wanted and used. Because the images we see in magazines are so desirable it is easy to forget that the world presented to us is not real. Adverts sell a brand image as well as a product. A brand image offers o form of guarantee and a set of ready made values with the product that you buy. Most modern advertising deals with enhancing the image of a brand rather than promoting the benefits of the brand. Advertising also informs and draws attention to the availability of certain services. Cosmetic adverts in fashion magazines play along on woman’s fears and anxieties. Women are the major consumers in society therefore you see many adverts with them. When targeting women in advertising they use sexuality and stereotypes. Advertisements create both implicit and explicit messages of meaning. An implicit message is a message that is not directly expressed to the audience. An explicit message is a message which is directly expressed to the audience. Magazines aim to sell to as many people as possible and they will usually target a group large enough to make a profit, but specific enough to be distinctive.
Magazines for young men do include stereotypical images of both men and women. They depict a fearless, competitive masculinity, ignoring the emotional, sensitive male, and women are depicted as sex objects for men's enjoyment. People can look at the front cover of a magazine and immediately know what genre it is. Front covers of magazines need to be appealing to its intended target audience and are essential in promoting the magazine. In order to do this there needs to be image that will get noticed. That image needs to be relevant to what’s inside the magazine and it has to be conventionally attractive; meaning picture perfect. For example if the magazine was an fashion magazine there will normally be an dominant image on the front cover of an celebrity or an actor that is well respected, good-looking and an ideal role-model for the target audience of the magazine. The same will occur in a videogame magazine where there will be a dominant image of a famous footballer promoting a football game or a male-oriented figure that is conventionally attractive and is seen as a role model or that the magazine’s intended target audience can aspire to. Women’s magazines were run by men for the consumption of women in the early days. Today the majority of magazine editors and writers are now women. Local magazines targeted to a community tend to have more stories about women’s achievements and experiences than any other magazines. Contemporary magazines targeted to women have moved on from its historical backgrounds. Nowadays women’s magazines offer visions of feminism that involves independence and confidence towards women. However in a majority of magazines women are encouraged to look good in order to attract men and male audiences
I am going to analyse two magazines to help me discover what the stereotypical view of gender is in two different types of magazines. The two magazines that I have chosen are Marie Claire (a fashion magazine, which targets females aged 16 and over) and Playstation 2 UK (a videogame magazine, which is targeted to males aged 16 and over). On the title page of the Marie Claire magazine there is a 1 iconic dominant image of a conventionally attractive women actress Scarlett Johansson. This image will attract women as Scarlett Johansson is well-respected and is seen as a role-model for women. This image can be a symbol of independence as Scarlett is not put on the front cover to be objectified. She is dressed respectively and she is not half-naked for sexual fragmentation. The image may attract men readers for her beauty and sexuality. There is a grey background with little gradient behind the dominant image of the actress. This makes the image of Scarlett Johansson stand out and get noticed by readers. The title of the magazine ‘Marie Claire’ is printed in bright orange small case letters. So that it can be seen from the grey background and it is in a light female-oriented colour. The front cover consists of 2 colour texts white and orange. Again brightly lit colours used to ‘catch’ reader’s eye and also suggests female content. Whereas on the title page of the Playstation 2 UK magazine there are two dominant images of two famous footballers; the two footballers (Wayne Rooney and Ronaldinho) are promoting the videogame FIFA 2006 and appear to be in god-like light colour suggesting the game is holy and has a special prophecy. This image will attract football fanatics and Barcelona and Manchester United supporters. This will also attract audiences because of the popularity of the 2 football stars as they are seen as role-models for male football teenage fans. The background of the title page is in light blue and there is a stadium which is faded with a rainy effect. This denotes the image of the football stars as they are both related in football. This again adds to the heavenly effect of the football stars. The title ‘Playstation 2’ is printed in a normal white font with a little shadow. This makes the text blend in to the light colour images. The front cover of the videogame magazine consists of 3 colour texts white, black and red. The ‘FIFA 06’ text appears to be in strong bold font indicating masculine content. On the back page of the Playstation 2 UK magazine, Virgin Megastores are advertising six games from their stores. This denotes to the whole magazine as this is a videogame magazine. There are six thumbnails of the games which have a white frame each on a light blue background which also has a black frame thumbnail outline. This is done to make the games dominant images making them objects of importance. The back cover consists of two different colour texts black and white. Again this suggests masculine content as there are no feminine colours such as pink texts. This reinforces the ideology of red and black being masculine colours. Whereas the back page of Marie Claire magazine consists of five images, a left side of large image of a conventionally attractive woman. On the right side of the page there are four rectangular images of women wearing fashion clothing and garments. In between them is some text encouraging the reader to ‘Add some shine to your look’. This encourages readers’ to buy light shiny clothing and create fears and anxieties that if you do not buy these garments then you will never be popular and good looking. The images are on a white textured background. There is only black coloured text font. The advert emphasises the idea that feminine women need to look good by wearing gold valuable garments. In the videogame magazine a conventionally attractive women is being used on every few pages to make the reader look further into the magazine. There is a pattern in the use of female sexual fragmentation and they use women in relation to the subject (For example holding a gun). You can argue that sexual fragmentation in magazines has become acceptable in British Society. Women are still objectified in the videogame magazine. Therefore an implicit message is created meaning that women can only become successful if there are sexually exploited. The main features in the Playstation 2 UK magazine are games reviews, games releases, and generally information on consoles and games. The representation of males and females in computer magazines is very gender biased and stereotypical. Computer magazines and the advertisements in them are clearly marketed towards male interests, just like video games are traditionally seen as a male dominated and masculine cultural activity. Games magazines mostly have the feature of games reviews and information on upcoming games in the gaming market and gaming consoles in the gaming industry. In this case this videogame focuses on a singular brand (Sony) and the consoles and games which have been produced for that console brand. Most of the objects in are associated with computers and gaming. Words such as ‘monitor’ and ‘replay’ (seen in the contents page) are used to reflect this as they are words mostly used in computer orientated subjects. As this is a videogame magazine the content is made to simply entertain its readers and gives it advice on gaming. The Playstation 2 UK magazine does not intellectually challenge but just simply entertains its audience.
The main features in Marie Claire are beauty and fashion, Sex and Men. Much of the material is associated with beauty e.g. ‘September’s key looks’ and other features, or designer names in fashion such as Giorgio Armani and GUCCI. Also, the fashion material suggests it is possible to achieve ‘A style of one’s own’ by of course reading the magazine. Women are presented in Marie Claire as being sexually active, eager and adventurous. They are represented as independent, dependable and are seen as academic which bypasses the mother/whore dichotomy theory. Women are also seen as victims, there is an article on the July 7th bombings that discusses on how four women coped after the terror attacks. There is an implicit message meaning that women can cope in dangerous situations; this challenges the ideology of the damsel-in distress and women who need help from men. The advice in the Marie Claire magazine very often is either about pleasing the person, instead than building a strong relationship. Again it is a quest to be perfect and the magazines always suggest they have the answers to your problems. The magazine makes the audience aspire to have a perfect life. Men are often presented as a problem for women to sort out. Men are often referred to as ‘he’ or ‘him’ and are being presented as culprits and problems to women. Marie Claire challenges a women’s ideology of men and influences that not all men are bad and they can become successful. There is an article on Giorgio Armani which presents the fashion designer as positive. But it can be argued that because he is a fashion designer and because this denotes with the magazine’s content as well as a female interest in fashion he is given a positive representation. Marie Claire also challenges the ideology of celebrities spending too much as the magazine has a fashion guide and information on cheap garments and accessories that celebrities wear. Again, the magazines know best when it comes to solving the problems. In many ways Marie Claire presents as women positive role models. The magazine also offer women the chance to aim to achieve a perhaps to a more glamorous lifestyle. Marie Claire allows women to gain experience through other people. For less than £3 a month women can feel a part of this glamour lifestyle. Techniques such as populist content, the tone of voice, and a style that suggests the magazine is a cultural survival advice guide, help to create loyalty to the magazine. The women are encouraged to see themselves as consumers. The clothes they buy, the make up they choose, the perfume they wear are all important. The ideology of the magazine is driven by the need to define what is important in life as the things you buy. Magazines need to please the advertisers. A few adverts in both of the magazines give reference to the product’s website and this gives the audience a chance to interact with the product developers and gain information on the product as well as information on other products from the same brand. (This is another way of advertising and marketing products.
In comparison to the two front covers of the two magazines you can see that there are a lot of differences in terms of over-all appearance such as fonts; different colour fonts titles such as bold-orange for Marie Claire and thin-white for the Playstation 2 UK magazine. You can see that colour plays an important role for target audiences as helps the reader suggest what kind of content the magazine will have inside. Also the visual images will also help the reader know what kind of audience the magazine is targeted at as well as what social economic group is being targeted by the magazine for example Marie Claire is not being targeted for people of high economical status because of the use of small case letters. In conclusion to the representation of gender in the two magazines, men view the world differently than women do. Men are allowed to be more casual in their appearances; women have to have a more feminine look to get attention. This is showed in the videogame magazine where woman are simply there to be objectified and are sexually fragmented while men wearing casual clothing and are dominant in the videogame magazine as there are a lot of articles and content involving them. This also applies to Marie Claire magazine where women are still encouraged to look good and are fragmented in many of the adverts in the magazine. This influences the ideology that women need to look good to be feminine. Men are encouraged (just as women) to aspire to be like the role models they see in magazines. Men are finding it as difficult to live up to their media representations as women are to theirs. This is partly because of the increased media focus on masculinity. In the fashion magazine you rarely see men fragmented and when they are; they are fragmented with women. As Marie Claire encourages independence and confidence you will see that there are limited stories about men in the magazine. Marie Claire is intended to target young women who are confident, discerning, sophisticated and aware of the world around them. Magazines are often split along gender lines and it is difficult to find any popular magazine that crosses the gender divide. Over the past few years the representation of woman has improved.