Representations and Ideologies Within Magazines

Overtime, media has made two genders have quite oppositional gender codes. Magazines with ease can be aimed at the male or feminine audience specifically through the gender representations. Firstly, through the context of the magazine, typically there follows a stereotype of the context in which females and males follow. You would usually see females in the context of domestic situations such as housewives or mothers because the media associates women alongside cleaning products and even a sexual objectification to entertain and titillate the male audience. Women would be shown as young, slim, perfect skin, hair and overwhelmingly white in magazines targeted for males. On the other hand, men are usually represented as masculinity and would be seen as rough and ready, tough and usually in the context of sport or action.

It is also easy to spot if the magazine is aimed at men or women through representation by the color and font choice. In magazines aimed at the female gender you could easily see the bright, intense and luminous pinks, purples and yellows because these are the colours associated with the stereotype of the girliness inside of the audience. However, the men's magazine would look a lot more masculine in appearance which would consist of a more plain, bold and sleek aspect. The colours would be blue, red, black and grey because these are the colours associated with the male gender and the text is usually bolded which again emphasis that is is aimed at men only. The masthead for magazines can also represent gender at times, if the title is ‘BLISS’ you would almost certainly think it's aimed at females because it's the name you would expect as it reminds the reader as something glamorous or girly and the font would be more rounded and not hard edged like in men's. The material within female targeted magazines would consist of sex, fashion, makeup and bodies which would be spreaded all over the front cover so it will be easily known to which gender it's targeted at. You would see articles such as how women should be feeling and information such as ‘shortcuts to a sexier body’ as this is what women are more likely to be interested in which is ways to look great and how to achieve this. Dieting and health is a large part in what females are interested in, if they saw tips on how to get a ‘Bikini diet fast’ this would intrigue there interest from a distance.

Resulting in this research I now have came to a realisation that when designing my own product, a school magazine, the written and visual content can be a very critical in creating representations and ideologies. In my product now I attend to select my ideas once I have a clear outline of how my magazine cover will be presented.