Abstract
By the end of this report I would have cover over few chapters that would hopefully answer my question on: “ Are we to blame designers on why we see so many sexualised imagery around use?”. Do we need sexuailed images to be interested in a product. This is a very big topic to cover so I am going to break it down by focusing on the advertising and editorial content they use in lifestyle magazines. When I talk about the term “ sexualised I refers “to the making of a person, group or thing to be seen as sexual in nature or a person to become aware of sexuality”. Some of the areas that I am going to try to cover are:
• Who are the sexualized images aimed at (who are their target audience),
• Does the use of sexualised image have a different effect on men than it has on woman?
• If the designer didn’t use a sexualised image would the reader still be interested?
• Do these sexualised images put the reader under pressure to mirror the image?
I have based this questions on the fact a lot of lifestyle magazines have a lot of sexualised images, so I what to know is this to appeal to increase the effectiveness of an ad or commercial because it attracts the customer’s attention.
This report will be based upon many experiments and interviews that I will carry out with people from various age groups and with different interests to provide a more substantial base of knowledge. The answers and thoughts provided by people participating will be very useful when I come to the conclusion to my question.
Chapters
1. I will look through history on when the emergance of sexualised imagery in magazines first came about, and sets the context of feminism and post-feminism opinions.
I want to look back in history on when sexualised images become an everyday and look at a time when it was not ok to look at sexual images.
I will look at an female American writer, activist and feminist who wrote for a magazine company call Mc Calls called Betty Friedan, which in the late thirties portrayed women as autonomous heroines seeking to fulfill their own goals but as the forties progressed, the self-sufficient heroine gave way to the glorified housewife, praised. The magazine was aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now". Friedan work looks for the social definition of women’s role in the pages of women’s magazines, she saw the portrayals of women both editorial and advertising.
Courtney and Lockerets were another two people who analyze how people looked at women, they believed that there are four general stereotypes of women being shown in the 70’s in print advertisement:
Quotations
“ A women’s place is in the home; women do not make important decisions or do important things; women are dependent and need men’s protection; and men regard women primarily as sexual objects”
¬¬ Pingree, Hawkins, Butler and Paisley developed a scale for sexism and tested it against advertisements during the 1973-1974.
“ The most stereotypical level, level one, shows women as sex objects. Level two keeps women in their places by showing them in traditional activities. Level three shows professional women whose first place is in the home. Level four shows the sexes as fully equal and level five shows men and women in individual, nonstereotyed roles”.
Studies show that the attractiveness of the endorsing model provokes positive responses. Nudity and graphic erotic content, while still increasing consumer’s attention, doesn’t really generate positive feelings among viewers but that was not the case 40’s year ago. The media has changed so much over the years, in the late 60’s women in magazine weren’t used as sexual objects but instead their lifestyle of motherhood and the care of the home and husband were splashed over the magazine covers.
2. Advertisers tried to understand and explore the deep unconscious and subconscious factors that motivate people to buy products. Advertisers try to use word triggers and picture trigger to evoke desired responses. I am going to explore why and if sexualised Images makes people buy things?
Quotations
“The business man’s hunt for sale boosters is leading him into a strange wilderness: the sub-conscious mind.” (Wall street Journal, page 1)
Designers use sexualised images as one of their tactics to attract men and to twist their minds into purchasing a particular product. Companies are implementing the same tactics in the advertisements that target women by sending out the message of "Buy (this product) and he will notice you".
3. I am going to do different comparative analysis of sexualised imagery of both women and men in youth lifestyle magazines. I will then go on to visually deconstruct and comparatively analyse an issue of Cosmopolitan and an issue of Nuts magazines
Experiments
(The period of three issues)
• How many editorial about sexualised topic does cosmopolitan have compare to nuts?
• How many sexualised images do they both use ?
• Who are the target audience for these magazine ?
• If I change the sexualised image to something different would it have the same affect on the reader?
• Do men and female have different points of views when they look at this sexualised images
• The numbers of men/women featured in each magazine?
4. Do these sexualised images put the reader under pressure to mirror the image?
Is it human nature to be curious about sex? People in advertising say that all they do is hold a mirror up to society, reflecting who we are. So is it a surprise that most of the advert we see has a sexualised nature about them? Sexualised images in advertising has stirred controversy for many years, an advertiser must be careful when incorporating it in a campaign. They concluded that majority of advertisements does not reflect reality and that the image of women in advertisements is significant in influencing women’s perception of themselves. Great advertisers consider not only the attention- getting power of an advertisement or commercial, but also what kind of emotional response it provokes in customers.
5. The report will possibly conclude with a series of considerations for magazine editors.
Here are some questions I might ask them:
• Do you think there is a lot of sexualised imagery in lifestyle magazines?
• Do you think an editorial with a sexualised images will sell better the and editorial without? And why
• Do you think sexualised imagery put the reader under pressure?
Magazine’s choose carefully when picking images for magazine because for a man some images does not provoke the kind of anxiety that it may do in many women. Is the media is guilty of sexism in their coverage of celebrities? You will see more advert and cover of women then men. Does the use of sexualised image have an different effect on men than it has on woman?
Action Plan
• Researching on the history of sexualised images used in lifestyle magazines. Resources: Books, journals, the Internet and magazines. It will be used as a general background and back-up to support my theories.
• Research the demographic of lifestyle magazine
• Research about lifestyle magazines are trying to achieve
• Comparatively analyse an issue of Cosmopolitan and an issue of Nuts magazines. Resources primary research: Experiments, surveys/ questionnaires
• Pure pressure that lifestyle magazines have on society
• Contact Designers who are working in the magazine industry. Possible interviewing methods – face-to-face interview, phone interview and email questionnaire.
• Gathering and analyzing the information.
• Design my report looking at influences like “ creative review, id magazine
Bibliography:
Books
• Designing Pornotopia – Rick Poynor (2006)
• Picture of women sexuality written by Jane Root (1984)
• Channels of Desire written by Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen
• Sex stereotyping in Advertising - Alice E Courtney/ Thomas W. Whipple (1984)
• Female Fetishism – Lorraine Gamman & Merja Makinen (1994)
• Was it good for you, too? 30 years of Cosmopolitan" - Linda Kelsey (Robson Books, 2003)
• Marie Claire
• Nuts
• Cosmopolitan
• Editorial Design – Yolanda Zappaterra (2007)
• Design writing Researching – Ellen Lupton & Abbott Miller (1996)
• The will to knowledge – Michel Foucault (1976)
•
Websites
• www.google.co.uk/search?q=history+of+sexualised+images+in+magazines&hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=G&tbs=tl:1&tbo=1&ei=4x5eStv7B96rjAfhgOXdDQ&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11
• BBC NEWS | Health | Sexualisation 'harms' young girls http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6376421.stm
• http://www.idsgn.org/posts/now-and-then-sex-still-sells/
• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/upload/article_sexualized_images.pdf
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27595678/
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Tutors have said they report isn't supposed to be written in the first person so remove the "I..." stuff that you seem to have towards the top of the report and replace it with ways of talking about the work, by saying "This investigation will.. " This report will cover..." and you should read the Harvard Referencing link Catherine has put on the blog.
ReplyDeleteHi Saskay, here’s some advice – hope it’s helpful
ReplyDeleteFirst thing, you need to go through it and read it out loud to fix any sentences that aren’t grammatically correct – for example, “By the end of this report I would have cover over few chapters that would hopefully answer my question on: “ Are we to blame designers on why we see so many sexualised imagery around use?”.”
It would be better as – The aim of this report is to answer the question: “Should we blame designers for the large amount of sexulaised imagery we see?”
Reading it out loud will show you where other sentences that need fixing are pretty easily – the rule of thumb is that if you have trouble saying it – it could probably do with some editing.
I still think you need to decide on exactly what you are researching – the advertising content OR the editorial content. They are very different things. Advertising companies design the ads that go inside magazines. The magazines own designers just design the magazine.
I also think you are imagining that the power in the hands of the designer is greater than it actually – graphic designers are very low in the pecking order when it comes to deciding what is in a magazine – their job is normally just to make it all fit on the page and look a certain way. The editors, writers, photographers and researchers generate the content.
Perhaps you have to shift the blame away from the individual designers to the area of magazine design – which incorporates editors, art directors, publishers and all the other people listed on the inside of magazines.
I think your second question, “Do we need sexuailed images to be interested in a product” is probably more of an interesting one to look into.
At the moment your proposal looks like it’s for a VCT essay rather than a report. Maybe it would help if you really pinned down who you are aiming this report at and what you hope to tell them or make them do in response to reading it? That’s what we’re asking you to do – a report – not a long essay.
You could reduce down all the references and quotes and history and make much more of the experiments you aim to do. All the other stuff is what we’d expect to find in an essay. The experiments and their findings are what we’d expect to find in a report. You use the quotes/history etc to back up you thoughts on the experiments findings.
The list of questions you have for the experiments section are far more interesting than telling us the history of sexualized images. You could do the history in a graphic timeline rather than spend ages writing about it.
You say that the report will conclude with a series of considerations for magazine editors – maybe this is the intended audience ho you should aim the whole report at?
The book we gave all 2nd years Bo Bergstrom (2008) Essentials of Visual Communication should prove useful for your project – it has sections on how and why images are selected and edited.
OK – you don’t have long left – my plan would be put the questions you have in the experiments section in your abstract.
Look at the chapters again – you could go with:
An intro telling us about the aim of the report – who it’s for and what you hope to achieve.
A chapter with examples of sexualized work – you explain what you mean by sexualized and state your position and viewpoint – laying out your argument.
A chapter going into the history and reasons why sexualized images are used.
A chapter detailing all the experiments you have done and the results – perhaps broken down into sections.
A concluding chapter with a list of suggestions for the intended audience.
Sorry this is so long! Hope it helps somewhat.
drn