Beauty Before the Eyes of Beholders
Beauty Before the Eyes of Beholders

Author: Kayla Runkel

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9781321264654

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1994, Englis, Solomon and Ashmore conducted a study that examined the overall prevalence of different beauty ideals and their distribution on two popular forms of mass media: fashion magazine advertisements and music television videos. Now, 20 years later, this thesis served as a partial replication of the original study. Due to the decreased popularity in music television, this thesis focused solely on fashion magazine advertisements and the prevalence and distribution of various female beauty types within each ad. Although the beauty categories remained the same, many of the descriptions were updated in accordance to the changing times. Additionally, to further advance the study past what was originally discovered, this study incorporated three theories: gatekeeping, feminist standpoint, and visual rhetoric. Although the distribution and prominence of many of the beauty types changed over the past 20 years, it was found that there was no one beauty type that could be deemed as a most prevalent look across all magazines sampled. The findings of this thesis showed significant differences between both men's and women's magazines and adult and teen magazines. Whereas the women's magazines featured a higher percentage of Trendy and Cute models, the men's magazines were more focused on the Sex-Kitten and Sensual looks. Similarly, in comparison to the adult magazines as a whole, the teen magazines showed that the Cute category was most popular while the adult magazines showed that the Trendy beauty category was the most prominent. Furthermore, through the addition of feminist standpoint theory and the theory of visual rhetoric, an analysis of advertisements representing each beauty type revealed that the advertisements send specific messages to those who viewed them, women in particular. The ads sampled were from men's, women's, and teen magazines, so the results of each of the analyses were compared. This study brought about a much-needed update to the original study. To conclude, suggestions for future research are offered that could further enhance our understanding of how beauty is portrayed in one of the most popular mass media: magazine advertising.

On Fashion
On Fashion

Author: Shari Benstock

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780813520339

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Barbie Magazine and the aesthetic commodification of girls' bodies (I.M. O'Sickey). This year's girl: a personal/critical history of Twiggy (L. B. DeLibero). A woman's two bodies: fashion magzines, consumerism and feminism (L.W. Rabine). No bumps, no excrescences: Amelia Earhart's failed flight into fashions (K. Jay). Sonia Rykiel in traslation (H. Cixous). From Celebration (S. Rykiel). Off the (W)rack: fashion and pain in the work of Diane Arbus (C. Shloss). An erotics of representation: fashioning the icon with Man Ray (M.A. Caws). Seduction and elegance: the new woman of fashion in silent cinema (M. Turim). Madonna, fashion and identity (D. Kellner). Fragments of a fashionable discourse (K. Silverman). Womenrecovering our clothes (I.M. Young). Fashion and the homospectatorial look (D. Fuss). Terrorist chic: style and domination in contemporary Ireland (C. Herr). Paris or perish : the plight of the latin american indian in a westernized world (B. Brodman). Tribalism in effect (A. Ross).

Advertising Domesticity
Advertising Domesticity

Author: Ellen Elizabeth DeLong

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Americans saw many social changes in the years immediately following World War II. Young women in post-war America looked to magazines for guidance and support, Seventeen magazine in particular. This study takes a closer look at the advertisements in Seventeen magazine for the years 1946, 1947, and 1948. A content analysis was performed using only full-page advertisements for the months of February, April, August, and November. The advertisements were analyzed according to their target audience, product category, and traditional message sent through the advertisement. Both quantitative and qualitative elements of the advertisements were analyzed. Through research, both teenage girls (ages 12-16) and coming-of-age young women (ages 17-24) emerged as the target audiences for the advertisements. The groups were close in age, but differed in social, school, fashion, and romantic needs. Traditional messages of 'looking good' or 'finding a man' were discovered to be predominate in most advertisements. Through close examination, the products advertised were then placed into the six product categories of dress defined for this study: clothing, shoes, lingerie, accessories, cosmetics, or grooming aids. The product category with the highest percentage of full-page advertisements overall was clothing, followed by lingerie, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and grooming aids.Overall, the messages focused on beauty and romance, leaving career almost entirely out of the picture. The traditional roles of the new American dream of security, marriage, and home life (even if not for a few years) ran throughout the advertisements. Whether or not the quintessential housewife of the 1950s depicted in women's magazines was the true result of the grooming of young women in Seventeen in the late 1940s is debatable. If these young women did fulfill the traditional messages sent to them, it is quite possible that the advertisements in Seventeen aided in their decisions to take on such roles.

Fashioning Teenagers
Fashioning Teenagers

Author: Kelley Massoni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1315428512

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Founded in 1944 by Helen Valentine, Seventeen magazine was the first modern “teen magazine.” An immediate success, it became iconic in establishing the tastes and behaviors of successive generation of teen girls covering the last half of the 20th century. Kelley Massoni has written the first cultural history of the origins of Seventeen and its role in shaping the modern teen girl ideal. Using content analysis, interviews, letters, oral histories, and promotional materials, Massoni is able to show how Seventeen helped create the modern concept of “teenager.” The early Seventeen provided a generation of thinking young women with information on citizenship and clothing, politics and popularity, adult occupations and adolescent preoccupations, until economic and social forces converged to reshape the magazine toward teen consumerism. A chapter on the 21st century Seventeen brings the story to the present. Fashioning Teenagers will be of interest to students of popular culture, sociology, gender studies, mass media, journalism, business, and American studies.

Millennium Girls
Millennium Girls

Author: Sherrie A. Inness

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780847691371

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Riding the wave of a booming girl culture worldwide, this collection of girls' voices from across the globe invites the reader to learn more about their varied girlhoods. From coming-of-age rituals in South Africa to the impact of computers and popular magazines on girls in Japan and Germany, the book offers a vision of girlhood from around the world. Though a universal experience, girlhood is not always carefree. Instead, as this book documents, many girls are not valued for who they are, whether culturally, socially or intellectually.

Campaigning for Real Beauty Or Reinforcing Social Norms?
Campaigning for Real Beauty Or Reinforcing Social Norms?

Author: Sara J. Roedl

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Since 2004, the Dove personal care product brand has received much praise for widening the definition and discussion of beauty through the use of nontraditional models in its Campaign for Real Beauty advertisements. This study examined the content of the Campaign for Real Beauty ads and the content of ads in magazines that ran Campaign for Real Beauty ads. This textual analysis of a series of five Campaign for Real Beauty billboards, commonly referred to as the Dove Vote Ads, sought to determine whether the message of the Dove Vote Ads was consistent with the Campaign for Real Beauty's stated mission of societal change and widening the societal definition of beauty. The content analysis portion of this study examined 785 female models in fashion magazine advertisements in a longitudinal analysis spanning the five years surrounding the introduction of the campaign. While the textual analysis questioned whether there were conflicting messages inherent in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty advertisements, the content analysis sought to determine whether there was a measurable change in the appearance of stereotypical beauty ideals and gender role portrayals after the introduction of the advertising campaign. This was accomplished through an examination of the 785 female models that appeared in the September 2004 and 2008 issues of Cosmopolitan and Glamour, the highest circulation fashion magazines. This mixed-method study addressed two research questions and seven hypotheses. The manifest message of each advertisement, which encourages the audience to rethink standard notions of beauty, is contradicted by the latent themes. The five years between 2003 and 2008 saw a significant increase in diversity of the female models shown in advertisements. Additionally, women were shown as more powerful in 2008 using a variety of techniques. These shifts, if sustained over time, will serve as evidence of the social and cultural influence of advertising campaigns"--Abstract.