Representation of Femininity
Representations change and evolve and none more so than the representation of
gender. This resource specifically explores the representation of femininity. In
2013 - the 21st century, the digital age audiences could expect to see distinct
moves away from old fashioned, traditional patriarchal culture and the
embracing of a much more pluralistic understanding of gender representation
but as David Gauntlett stated, “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one”.
Gender representation is also wholly dependent on culture and in terms of
media representations on audience and up to a point, audience expectations.
Media producers encode dominant preferred meanings into texts but
mainstream audiences that consume mass media arguably have as much
responsibility in terms of the representation of film action heroes, gender in
advertising, sports journalism, gender in situation comedy, video games and of
course Women’s Lifestyle Magazines to identify a limited range of media. As an
example, in the image below, taken from the home page of the AA’s website we
see a typical female rescue narrative as a helpless women driver is not only
saved by the male Roadside Technician but also by her mobile phone app.
There is now a female head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine
Lagarde, Angela Merkel is Chancellor of one of the world’s leading economies
(Germany), Dilma Rousseff is the first female President of one of the most macho
countries on Earth (Brazil) but interestingly if you type ‘famous 2013 women’
into Google (8th October 2013) the first link that comes up is ‘The Hottest
Women of 2013 – Men’s Health’. This is doubly interesting in that since 1987
Men’s Health has been almost exclusively interested in the narcissistic male
form to the point that women rarely appeared in covers of the magazine and did
not even feature as a ‘significant other’ - further evidence of the changing nature
of representation in the media.
The Forbes List of the ‘100 Most Powerful Women’ continues to interest with
mainly businesswomen and politicians e.g. Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama
dominating – the first media personality appears at number 13 as exactly that,
‘Entrepreneur and Personality’ Oprah Winfrey (did you guess it?) Beyonce
Knowles (17), Lady Gaga (43) and Angelina Jolie (37) appear in the top 50 while
Queen Elizabeth II languishes at number 40, less powerful it seems than
musicians turned entrepreneurs and actors. JK Rowling squeezes in at number
93, sandwiched between the Chief Executive of a financing company and the
Chairman and Managing Director of a holding company (textiles). Of course
influential women in public life continue to be sources of inspiration but how
much does the media challenge hegemonic constructs of femininity and how
much does it reinforce, circulate and perpetuate stereotypes, thus maintaining
up to a point patriarchal ideology?
Video Games may seem an interesting starting point with the historical,
stereotypical target audience of gamers as young, male 18-34 when in fact this
demographic has radically changed with 18-45, male/female audiences now the
biggest gamers. Mobile gaming and online gaming (particularly on social
networks) is a significant growth area which stereotypically has been labelled
as appealing to mainly a female player – apps and online games like Angry Birds,
The Sims and FarmVille have attracted criticism from ‘hard core’ gamers
labelling the texts as ‘toilet games’, serving as a distraction to female audiences
in the same way that flicking through a gossip magazine like Reveal or Heat
would or watching a soap opera. This does not simply reflect the polarity of the
gaming community; it also establishes (again) a cultural stereotype through
gendered audiences.
As part of some primary research into this article I asked 10 female friends
from a variety of backgrounds what the audience appeals of Angry Birds and
Sneezies were and they almost uniformly replied – cute sounds, facial
expressions and game development. In binary opposition to this were the male
gendered audience appeals of Triple A First Person Shooter games like Grand
Theft Auto V, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Halo as ‘violence, production
values, guns and women’. Female pan-European gamers account for 45% of the
playing demographic with apps accounting for a large proportion of this so called
gaming gender ‘revolution’. However, it is how femininity is represented within a
video game that is also a pertinent area of study. In BioShock: Infinite, a
mainstream, commercially successful classic first person shooter game we
meet the heroin of the narrative, Elizabeth who is clearly sexualised for the male
gaze within a patriarchal narrative that involves her rescue. At one level of the
game you even find out that you are her father again, anchoring the hegemonic
constructs.
Strip clubs, prostitutes, rape and violence against women are the staple of Grand
Theft Auto V – three morally corrupt men in the fictional Los Santos (LA)
practice stubborn sexism and misogyny that fails to recognise or hold up any
mirror on society, choosing instead to reinforce prejudice and maintain
unequal gender divisions. Fancy boats “make young impressionable girls drop
their pants” while lap dances morph into attempts to grope girls out of view of
the security guards with their breast augmentation scars visible. The
fundamental gaming protocol also prevents ‘you’ playing the game as a female
character but it is the narrative that still shocks on occasion with the nature of
the violence. A YouTube clip, Effectively killing prostitutes in GTA V has player
comments including “I sometimes enjoy just running them (prostitutes) over
during my night escapades”, “I only run them over in a sports car through – gotta
stay classy” and “I put mine in a blender”. Prolific gamer and Gamespot reviewer
Carolyn Petit described GTA V as ‘reinforcing and celebrating sexism’.
In contrast to this however, the mainstream Action Adventure game Beyond:
Two Souls for PlayStation 3, released in October 2013 stars Ellen Page (Juno,
Whip It, Inception and X-Men: The Last Stand) as central protagonist Jodie
Holmes who is taken by players on a journey of discovery through the 15 years
of her life (8-23) to discover the true meaning of the entity, Aiden who is her
constant companion.
In the Walkthrough http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THEoSrOf6No Jodie is
represented as both a vulnerable young girl in need or protection by a range of
men she meets but also as an empowered, resourceful and dangerous central
character who makes her own life choices.
In the official trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M48SZn83sPY her
representation is again in binary opposition as a girl, alone in a Police Station,
framed as in need of protection but also pursued by the SWAT team (Special
Weapons and Tactics) who see her as a perilous adversary they are hunting
down.
Intertextual references to Lara Croft in the action adventure video game Tomb
Raider (2013) are apparent in her representation as a post feminist icon who
exhibits both stereotypically male and female characteristics. Lara Croft has been
culturally associated with the actress and philanthropist Angelina Jolie, herself
someone who has developed and strong, resilient secondary persona but the
game has since moved on to use other actresses in the iconic role Jolie made
famous including Keeley Hawes and now Camilla Luddington. Luddington was an
interesting choice voicing Lara Croft as an actress, who had previously played
Catherine Middleton in William and Kate (2011) but who had a mid-Atlantic
hybrid accent able to play the role of a middle class public school educated
archaeologist but also a dynamic, sexualised adventurer.
Emma Watson is an English film actress from a similar background to
Luddington who has successfully transcended her perception as a child actress
into a number of respected adult acting roles and lucrative modelling contracts.
As with Reece Witherspoon (Man in the Moon to Legally Blonde) Drew
Barrymore (ET to Charlie’s Angels) and Lindsay Lohan (The Parent Trap to I
Know Who Killed Me) Watson has embodied the representation and theoretical
construct of ‘prom queen to working girl’. After 10 years of playing Hermione
Granger in the Harry Potter franchise she has morphed into a sexualised young
woman (Empire Magazine Sexiest Male Movie Star 2013) who has been linked
with a number of high profile roles including Guillermo del Toro’s Beauty and
the Beast and a live action version of Cinderella.
Watson, as with Kiera Knightly has successful exploited a sexualised secondary
persona that has been carefully managed and manufactured – objectification is
not welcomed but understood as a step on the ladder to movie star success, thus
conforming to the cultural stereotype of a good looking, physically attractive
female lead. This develops gender debate over this type of representation in that
stereotypically youth is seen as aspirational for female audiences while youth
and good looks are seen as essential for women in the film industry to remain in
the public eye. This is the opposite of masculinity in film for which variants of
age are seen as far more acceptable. Exceptions such as Helen Mirren and Meryl
Streep evidence this fascination as older women still at the peak of their careers
(or rather maintaining a successful reputation over some) who are sexualised
for the male gaze and who are empowering for female audiences. Tabloids
readily ignore their acting capabilities and happily promote their physical
representation before their professional portfolio.
Female Sports Journalists and Presenters have also had to fight through the
institutional sexism of organisations like Sky Sports and work very hard to
achieve respect in their profession. In the same way on the BBC, Weather
Presenters are fully trained meteorologists spending many years studying a
complicated science while on Channel 5 they are overtly represented as objects
of the male gaze with little actual knowledge of meteorology. This fulfils the
broadcaster’s voyeuristic approach to programming (Channel 5 is owned by
Richard Desmond, major shareholder in Northern and Shell whose broadcasting
interests include Red Hot TV and whose publishing interests include Asian
Babes).
Sky Sports are as guilty of promoting a patriarchal culture as any broadcaster
with presenters actively employed for their blonde, curvaceous looks rather then
their knowledge of sport. Clare Balding worked in BBC radio as a rite of passage
into television, making her television debut in 1995 and soon in 1997 becoming
the BBC’s leading racing presenter.
She has reported on 5 Olympic Games becoming the face of BBC’s rugby league
coverage making waves into sports that have historically been coveted by men
and reported on by men. In 2012 Balding was poached by Channel 4 to anchor
their racing coverage and in the same year appeared before an All Party
Parliamentary Group reporting on Women’s Sports. She famously stated
“Women having the freedom to play sport leads directly to women having
political freedom” here responding to marginalisation as one of the negative
effects of stereotyping. The BBC in 2013 responded to this with extended,
higher profile reporting of Women’s Football while Sky Sports in the summer of
2013 offered coverage of live Women’s Ashes Cricket via the ‘interactive red
button’.
Formula 1 and Motor Racing again, like Horse Racing and Rugby League have
been predominantly masculine domains but unlike the successful progress made
by Balding into challenging stereotypical gender representation television
coverage or motor racing still sees girls draped over cars and male presenters,
with the exception of Suzi Perry – ex advertising model and co-host of MotoGP
for 13 years and now in 2013, F1.
Perry has helped to co-present Wimbledon, The Boat Race, The London
Marathon and Royal Ascot but is known for her affinity with motor racing,
Stereotypically she presented MotoGP in leathers, flirting with her male co
presenter who often had the primary, anchor role but has developed this
representation to anchor F1 for the BBC during the 2013 season.
Women’s Lifestyle Magazines are a saturated market – despite the falling
circulation of print media however, both newspapers and magazines the
Women’s Lifestyle Market and the Women’s Weekly market have maintained a
circulation strong enough to attract advertising revenue and maintain market
growth. There are enough audiences out there who enjoy the representations
contained within the covers of this historical media form. Cosmopolitan first
published in the US in 1886 while in 1972 they ran a nude centrefold of actor
Burt Reynolds, long before notions of the female gaze were debated. Monthly
titles include Glamour (stereotypically in handbag sized mode), Elle, Marie
Claire and Vogue while weekly titles include Good Housekeeping, Woman’s
Own and Woman’s Weekly. A hybrid variant of gossip magazines have also
borrowed from similar genre conventions and include Chat, Reveal, Bella,
Take a Break and Heat with the Weeklies and the Gossip magazines most
criticised for reinforcing out-dated, hegemonic representations that fail to
reference a more progressive, pluralistic society.
Most of the high production value, glossy monthlies like Grazia will run with a
stereotypically good looking, aspirational models on the front cover framed
centrally in medium shot. Wealth and status are obsessions of many of the
monthlies with Grazia focussing on stereotypical European sophistication.
The ‘significant other’, the man will invariably underpin the representations but
there will normally be evidence of a more controlling element in that
consumerist ideology drives the ‘what women want’ narrative. The ‘how to
look good for your man’ narratives are still apparent but not as fore-grounded as
they used to be with career and career progression often seen as equally
important. Effectively however, many Women’s Lifestyle Magazine are now
upmarket ABC1 fashion magazines with sometimes up to 70% of the content
devoted to advertising images.
A direct mode of address anchors the representations and notions of inclusivity
market to some audiences who feel they are aspiring towards a collective
identity.
The hegemonic notion of beauty is something the target audience share and
understand – front covers and images are often pluralistic on the surface
referencing the modern ambitious woman but also can be construed as
voyeuristic in terms of female and male gaze.
Colour palettes of most of the monthlies are normally bright using saturated
primary colours while masthead fonts are often serif with stereotypical
feminine connotations.
Heterosexuality is always the preferred option with independence (as long as
sums add up) seen also as acceptable reflecting the pace of modern life with its
priorities.
Woman and Home is a monthly magazine however that offers radically different
representations of femininity from Grazia acknowledging its older, more
traditional 45-65, C1, C2, D demographic. It stills speaks to its audience with
words like “you” and “your” encoding a direct, inclusive mode of address but
suggesting a more conservative, traditional lifestyle revolving around family and
the home with gender roles clearly identified – women should look good (for
their man and for their own self respect), be responsible for cooking and
cleaning and effectively be a domestic goddess who is always their for their
family. The soft gold, yellow and brown colour palette suggests tradition with
cover lines such as “The decs, trees……just how you want it” and “Happy
Christmas, Treasure the Moment” using tradition and occasion to ‘place’ women
in a domestic environment. The cover could have been from 30 years ago had
not Dawn French been used as the cover celebrity.
Her role on the front cover of this edition is important in encoding the
magazine’s dominant brand of gender. French is famous but not stereotypically
good looking in terms of body size and represents more the ‘real’ reader who
aspires to her glamour but also recognises a stereotypical ‘mumsy’
representation that is smiling, welcoming and comfortable. This is anchored by
the cover line “Real Me. Dawn French – New Chapters and Happy Endings”
referencing the breakdown of her 25 year marriage to Lenny Henry and
subsequent new relationship and remarriage. This familiar narrative would be
something many readers could relate to. The very juxtaposition of words
‘women’ and ‘home’ together in the masthead underscores this very traditional
text that suggests a particular preferred reading of the representation of
femininity.
Across a range of media and a range of platforms representation of femininity is
a rich source of textual analysis – from Sandi Toksvig, presenter of Radio 4’s The
News Quiz to the BBC sitcom Miranda through to the ‘changing’ representations
of Bond girls. As identified earlier, understanding audiences is crucial in
encoding a specific type of representation but with the envelope pushed a little
by the producer of that particular media text (you will have, or will be
constructing your own representations in the production aspect of your
coursework). Most representations conform to some form of stereotype and are
exaggerated or hyper real for entertainment values. The ideological reading of
this form of stereotyping, as Richard Dyer would argue is to legitimise inequality
and in the case of the representation of femininity, underpin patriarchy. This can
be from repeated female victim narratives in Eastenders to killing prostitutes
in GTA V. Tessa Perkins would argue stereotypes use elements of truth but this
can still lead to marginalisation.
Some texts resist changing representations within society – Virgin advertising
has always claimed that their female cabin crew or flight attendants will be good
looking ‘eye candy’ for male travellers and that this is an acceptable
representation while their pilots will be dominant males, in control of their large
planes. The reality of course is very different but this is the stereotype Richard
Branson seeks to perpetuate in their advertising. Many modern texts still
promote traditional gender representations that hail a specific audience – the
www.welovepopmag.co.uk home page offers a pink, orange and red colour
palette targeting a young, female teenage target audience who are
stereotypically into Pop Music, love Justin Bieber and play The Sims 3 - all texts
are constructed for a specific audience.
As Judith Butler once stated, “There is no original or primary gender a drag
imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original”.
Mini Glossary of Terms
Cultural Stereotypes: Where individuals or social groups are
given homogenous (all the same) characteristics, as represented in the
media.
Hyperreal Representation: Exaggerated representations for
purposes of entertainment.
Iconic: Well known, famous or infamous.
Patriarchal: Male domination.
Secondary Persona: A personality/representation that is built up
in media coverage.
Dominant Culture: Whatever culture is seen to be ‘ruling’ or
preferential.
Binary Oppositions: Two things that are very different, placed
next to each other to create meaning.
Voyeuristic: The pleasure of looking at other people.
Ideology: An overarching set of ideas and beliefs that are often
used as a form of political or social control.
Encode: Put meaning in (decode takes meaning out).
Mode of Address: The way a media text speaks to its audience.
Dominant and Oppositional Readings: Where audiences either
decode what has been intended or a completing different interpretation.
Pluralistic: Diverse, different, equally acceptable more modern
representations
Hegemonic: Traditional, old-fashioned stereotypical
representations circulated as common sense
Audience Expectations: What audiences are ‘used to seeing’
Mainstream Audiences: Audiences who enjoy popular culture
Mass Media: Media consumed by large audiences
Narcissistic: The pleasure of looking at your own reflection e.g.
loving your own body
Demographics: A wide set of criteria used to identify the target
audience
Commercial Success: When a media text makes money
Male Gaze: Male audiences objectifying women
Female Gaze: Female audiences objectifying men
Misogyny: Women hating
Intertextual References: When a media text references another media
text
Post-Feminist Icon: When a female character exhibits the
stereotypical characteristics of a male and a female
From Prom Queen to Working Girl: A theory developed to
explain how young child actresses evolve into adult actresses playing
more mature roles
Consumerist Ideology: A belief suggesting were are led by the
products and services we buy into
Juxtaposition: Two things next to each other, creating a third
meaning.
WJEC MS1 Representation of Femininity – written by Rob Miller