By: Taylor Cook, Dylan True, Ange
l Akinkuoye, and James Flynn
In class on Tuesday and Thursday we were asked to go through a Sports Illustrated for women magazine and identify how certain pictures related to several themes such as, the all-American girl next door, athletic competence, ambivalence, hyper heterosexual, soft pornography, and the sexy babe. We were able to locate pictures for each associated theme, but we found the most photos by far for the them of athletic competence. This is definitely because the magazine is Sports illustrated and the obvious main theme of the magazine is going to be sports and athletic competition. It is important for the writers of the magazine to show women being athletically competent and participating in a sport in some way or another.
One of the themes that really jumped out to us was the "sexy babe." In this theme/stereotype female athletes are shown wearing provocative clothing and looking "sexy," but still shown with some connection to the sport they participate in. The picture below expresses this stereotype/theme to the fullest in my opinion and this is from Sports Illustrated for women.
As you can see they focus on ways to show her good looks instead of focusing on her being one of the best skiers ever. This is always going to be a way women are represented in the media in my opinion because lets be honest, sex sells. Look at the body issue of Sports Illustrated, many people bought that magazine simply because Serena Williams was on the cover and was completely naked. Once again referencing the "soft pornography" theme talked about by Kane.
The last theme that I want to touch on that we found a lot of in the SI issue, was ambivalence. This is a theme that shows women with some indication of athletic ability, but focuses mainly on the off-court feminine portrayal. This is a great way to appeal to the female and male audience in my opinion because it shows females that they can be beautiful and still be a great athlete and it allows males to see the beautiful side as well as the athletic side of the woman. In the picture below it shows the star of the Florida State Women's Basketball team in a dress looking absolutely gorgeous, but she is holding a basketball in it.
No matter what there is always going to be these different themes associated with women and the media. It is important that we realize that whether it be athletic competence, ambivalence, or even the sexy babe theme it is simply a way for magazines to market their product to all audiences and to appeal to all viewers and readers.
I agree that the “Sexy Babe” and “Soft Pornography” types of ads are always going to be the way women are portrayed in the media and I was shocked to not see so many in the magazine we looked at. I guess magazines know who their target market is and how to market towards the majority for the best results and since it was a magazine for women they didn’t need to have as many of those ads. I also liked your take on ambivalence. This type of ad can really appeal to everyone since it kind of has women shown in their stereotypical roles in dresses or cloths that aren’t their uniform, and they aren’t doing anything athletic but they have some indication that they can. If it weren’t for that woman holding a basketball in the picture you posted most people would have know idea she was a basketball player they would just assume she was another attractive girl used to sell merchandise but instead they know she can look good and also be skilled in athletic competitions.
ReplyDeleteBy: Matt Goryance
By: Taylor Brown
ReplyDeleteIn our magazine, women were represented in every type of way it seemed. There were the examples of sexy babe and soft porn, but they also seemed to cover all of the other categories that we were instructed to look for. I actually think that the women's magazine did a much better job of appealing to mutliple audiences than the men's magazine did. It certainly appeared to be trying to reach out to both male and female audiences, whereas the men's magazine really didn't, at least to me. Even though the women's magazine too tried to send a message that there is still work to be done on your body, like the men's, I don't think it was nearly as extreme as the men's magazine. If these body building magazines would try and encourage people just to be healthy and do normal workouts, rather than try and convince them that their body will never be good enough, I think they would be much more productive and maybe even more people would enjoy reading them. AND take out the hundreds of adds that pretty much overhwelhm the rest of the content that's in the magazine.