14 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Mediated intimacy and postfeminism: A discourse analytic examination of sex and relationships advice in a women's magazine
This paper uses a discourse analytic perspective to analyse sex and relationship advice in a best-selling women's magazine. It identifies three different interpretative repertoires which together structure constructions of sexual relationships: the intimate entrepreneurship repertoire, organised around plans, goals and the scientific management of relationships; men-ology, in which women are instructed in how to learn to please men; and transforming the self, which calls on women to remodel their interior lives in order to construct a desirable subjectivity. The paper considers each repertoire in turn, and also looks at how they work together in order to privilege men and heterosexuality. Discussion focuses in particular on the postfeminist nature of the advice, in which pre-feminist, feminist and anti-feminist ideas are entangled in such a way as to make gender ideologies more pernicious and difficult to contest
Recommended from our members
Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising
This paper argues that there has been a significant shift in advertising representations of women in recent years, such that rather than being presented as passive objects of the male gaze, young women in adverts are now frequently depicted as active, independent and sexually powerful. This analysis examines contemporary constructions of female sexual agency in advertisements examining three recognizable âfiguresâ: the young, heterosexually desiring âmidriffâ, the vengeful woman set on punishing her partner or ex partner for his transgressions, and the âhot lesbianâ, almost always entwined with her beautiful Other or double. Using recent examples of adverts the paper asks how this apparent âagencyâ and âempowermentâ should be understood.
Drawing on accounts of the incorporation or recuperation of feminist ideas in advertising the paper takes a critical approach to these representations, examining their exclusions, their constructions of gender relations and heteronormativity, and the way power is figured within them. A feminist poststructuralist approach is used to interrogate the way in which âsexual agencyâ becomes a form of regulation in these adverts, that requires the re-moulding of feminine subjectivity to fit the current postfeminist, neoliberal moment in which young women should not only be beautiful but sexy, sexually knowledgeable/practised and always âup for itâ.
The paper makes an original contribution to debates about representations of gender in advertising, to poststructuralist analyses about the contemporary operation of power, and to writing about female âsexual agencyâ by suggesting that âvoiceâ or âagencyâ may not be the solution to the âmissing discourse of female desire' but may in fact be a technology of discipline and regulation
Pro-anorexia, weight-loss drugs and the internet: an 'anti-recovery' explanatory model of anorexia
This paper explores the online âpro-anorexiaâ underground, a movement that supports those with anorexia and adopts an âanti-recoveryâ perspective on the disease. While encouraging a âhealthyâ diet to sustain an anorexic way-of-life, the movement also recommends the radical use of weight-loss pharmaceuticals to pursue and maintain low body weight, in contrast to their conventional use to treat obesity. Using ethnographic and interview data collected from participants in the âAnagrrlâ website and online forum, we analyse the pro-anorexia (or âpro-anaâ) movement in terms of its underlying âexplanatory modelâ of the disease, and contrast it with medical, psychosocial, sociocultural and feminist models that encourage a ânormalisationâ of body shape and weight. We suggest that for participants in pro-ana, anorexia represents stability and control, and Anagrrl offers support and guidance for those who wish to remain in this âsanctuaryâ. We discuss the pro-anorexia movement's use of the internet to facilitate resistance to medical and social theories of disease, and its subversion of pharmaceutical technologies