This document summarizes key points about how magazines represent gender to readers. It discusses how magazines aim to sell readers to advertisers by creating a sense of belonging based on reinforced gender codes. It analyzes the magazine "Men's Health" and identifies common discourses around quick fixes, male narcissism and anxiety, new male sensitivity, and male superiority. It also discusses theoretical perspectives on how magazines encourage readers to see themselves through an idealized lens defined by masculine culture, distracting from social inequalities. Finally, it presents a contrasting view that readers can selectively construct their identities from media rather than passively internalizing representations.

1. Magazines and gender
Key points from Julian McDougall’s
textbook ‘OCR Media Studies for A2’,
pp50-57

2. Key focus point – magazines exist to
sell their readers to advertisers
• Magazines create a sense of belonging based
on gender codes and the social effects these
might have.
• There is a set of learned values and
behaviours that is reinforced for the reader.
• This contrasts with the idea that the
postmodern reader plays with gender identity
and is able to pick and mix the meanings of
gender representations.

3. Analysis of ‘Men’s Health’
Dominant discourses in the magazine:
• Quick-fix problem solving
• Male narcissism (and anxiety)
• New male sensitivity
• Male superiority/manipulation
Take 3 editions and map out articles and features in relation to these discourses. Try to
separate your finds into:
1. Those that fit neatly into one (e.g. Steps to avoid prostate cancer, advice on male
grooming)
2. Elements which appear to take a range of positions and could fit into more than
one discourse (e.g. A feature on sex where advice for ‘driving her wild’ is
combined with a sense of ‘trade-off’ (if you do these things, in return she will..)
3. Those which appear to defy these categories.
Overall, what are the positive and negative implications of these discourses?
Is the magazine ‘setting a balance’ in that women have been subjected to anxiety about
body image for decades, so no it’s the men’s turn? What do readers really get out
of the magazine?

4. Semiotic analysis of magazines
Two theoretical perspectives:
1. Winship (1987) offers a feminist application of male gaze theory to
women’s magazine covers, arguing that ‘the gaze between cover
model and women readers marks the complicity between women
seeing themselves in the image which the masculine culture has
defined’.
2. A Marxist idea developed by Althusser (1971) is ‘interpellation’ –
the social/ideological practice of misrecognising yourself.
Combine these and you have women being prepared to recognise
an ideal version of ourselves. For feminists, the male culture
reinforces its power by defining women in this way and encouraging
our anxiety when we compare our real appearance to the ideal. The
Marxist term for this is ‘false consciousness’, distracting women
from the inequality in our society. Thus, instead of asking for
equality, women are reading ‘Hello’ and commenting on the
waistlines of celebrities.

5. How a magazine audience is
constructed
• Look up the press kits for two or more women’s
magazines. These define the reader for potential
advertisers – where she shops, what she likes,
how she understands herself.
• Think about how ‘Men’s Health’ articles combine
with, say ‘Nuts’. ‘Men’s Health’ may claim to a
more sensitive, aspiring man; however its quick-
fix approaches are based on the traditional
hunter-gatherer approach to male behaviour.

6. Three key questions for the discourse,
or ideology, in magazines:
• How does it represent its ‘own’ gender to the
reader?
• How does it represents its ‘own’ gender to the
‘other’ gender?
• How does it represent the ‘other’ gender to its
readers?
Think about the ‘secondary’ reader, e.g. The gay
male reader of ‘Cosmopolitan’ or the female
reader of ‘GQ’.
Think particularly about the colours and models
on the cover!

7. Contrasting view from David Gauntlett
Gauntlett argues that we pick and mix the way we select our
identities from the media:
‘I have argued against the view that men’s lifestyle magazines
represent a reassertion of old-fashioned masculine values...
Instead, their existence and popularity shows men rather
insecurely trying to find their place in the modern world,
seeking help regarding how to behave in their relationships
and advice on how to earn the attention, love and respect of
women and the friendship of other men. In post-traditional
cultures, where identities are not ‘given’ but need to be
constructed and negotiated, and where an individual has to
establish their personal ethics and mode of living, the
magazines offer some reassurance to men who are
wondering ... ‘Am I doing this OK?’, enabling a more
confident management of the narrative of the self.’