Gender Roles In Teen Magazine Research

The media plays a major role in creating our social norms, whether it be through advertisement, television, film, newspapers, or magazines. From a young age, gender roles are taught to both boys and girls. Young girls are given dolls, carriages, and easy bake ovens, while boys are given action figures, toy soldiers, and cars. Once those same young girls and boys get a bit older, the messages send through the media change. For females, these ads seem to focus on physical appearance, during a time when self-esteem is most important in their lives.

The quality of American television has become a national disgrace. Young women in America who are displeased with their appearance more likely then not can trace those feelings directly back to images from the mass media on television. The unrealistic representations of women that the mass media bombards young women with indicates that the television has become a source for a distorted understanding of gender roles among adolescent women. These images warp young women’s views of their own gender identity. The mass media on television should in an attempt to provide more positive gender identities for adolescent women depict women on television in more realistic ways, should stop

Teenage girls are at an impressionable time in their lives. Mass Media is a key idea in one of the factors of socialization that become important to teenagers. Teenagers look to the media for a sense of entertainment. Whether it is movies, magazines, or even some aspects of social media, teenagers get a lot of influence from the media’s message. The problem with this is the media has a specific way of doing things and can be negative to a susceptible teenage girl. Media’s way of portraying a woman can be skewed and unrealistic way from what reality is. Teenage girls then have a desire for this look or way. In this essay the three ways I will describe as to why the media can negatively affect a teenage girls body image is by showing

In society nowadays, we are surrounded and affected by the social media. Often times we turn to social media to under the world around us, and also to make sense of our identity. For instance, people are influence and come to understand their identity with the interaction they make with media. Therefore, our perception of our existence is socially constructed through the influence of media. As stated by Duke and Kreshel, “we create and perpetuate and understanding what it means to be a woman [or men] in our society.” (Duke & Kreshel, 1998). But with this overwhelming clutter of information from social media it can impact on how we view our identity. Female adolescent’s self-identity is socially constructed through the magazine which can negatively impact their perception of their own femininity. Magazine creates female ideology, giving girls insecurity about their look and weight, and finally the feminine identity is socially structured from male point of view. In this paper I will analyse the magazine Seventeen how it socially constructs negative perception of female identity. Seventeen magazine is chosen for analysis because it is one of the top selling magazines and it is highly popular amongst the adolescent girls in the United States. I restrict my analysis only on teenage girls only because they are the largest consumer of magazines compare to male. Also, adolescent is the stage in life where they try to figure out their sexuality, gender identity and where would they fit into society (Durham, 1998).

How is it that on one page in a magazine the topic is focused on “Being Yourself” and on the next page it focuses on how to dress, look, and act like someone the complete opposite. If this isn’t confusing then I don’t know what is. The girls living their life out of a magazine are the ones who have the wrong interpretations of what’s most important in this world. Girls are transforming themselves to what they see portrayed in these magazines because they think those are the only images that are accepted in this world. These magazines are corrupting these young girls, making them believe that just being yourself is not enough. Many teen magazines are marketed towards girls between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, but of course, these magazines are attracting younger audiences as well. Carol Platt Liebau, who is a writer and political commentator, mentioned that some of the content is relatively innocuous teen fare, with stories about lip gloss, parties, and how to be popular. But 18 percent of magazine articles pertain either to sex, sexually

Originally I was going to focus more on the media such as television and movies/ music videos for example music videos promoting girls in a negative way, exploiting their bodies and the way they should act. Instead I decided to focus on the print media aiming towards magazines involving the models about how teenagers compare themselves to them even though they have been photo shopped and sometimes ending up looking completely different to what they naturally would.

Every day adolescent women are being influenced and affected by the media. The media includes anything from magazines, television shows, billboards, radio advertisements, commercials, newspapers and more. Through the media, women are being exposed to all forms of advertisements, including images that display misleading figures of women. These advertisements do not feature women with large hips, wide shoulders, lengthy arms or fuller figures. Instead, the women found on the front pages of magazines and advertisements are usually cookie-cutter cropped and photo shopped models with thigh gaps, perfect curves, high cheek bones and all the features of a deceivingly perfect looking woman. The media neglects to show the average woman, who comes

This is indicated by the decreasing weight over time of models, actresses and beauty pageant contestants who are held up as ideals of beauty. A number of studies have documented the trend of increasing thinness in playboy centerfolds, Miss America contestants and fashion models between the 1950’s and 1990’s. (Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz and Thompson 1980). Incidentally during the same period there has been a significant increase in weight in American women thus creating an ever increasing discrepancy between the media ideal and the actual body size of the American woman. (Garner et. al 1980, Wiseman et al 1992).Magazine articles, television shows, and advertisements have also created a social context that may contribute to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in girls and women. Women magazines(Vogue,Glamour) and magazines that target teenage girls(Seventeen,teen vogue) are readily available in many homes,libraries,offices and bookstores. In the fall of 1989, Seventeen magazine conducted a nationwide survey of 1034 girls aged 12 through 19.They found that 83% of girls in that age range spent an average of 4.3 hours reading magazines per week. Wiseman and colleagues (1992) found a significant increase in advertisements for diet foods and diet products for the years 1973- 1991.In comparing pressures on women and men Anderson and DiDomenico (1992) showed that women’s magazines contained

Popular culture has an undeniable influence on how society perceives itself. When examining mass culture, one must keep in mind the equilibrium between how much we, as a society, affect the way popular culture is constructed and to what extent popular culture influences the way we view ourselves and shapes our ideologies. An aspect of popular culture that may serve to greatly exemplify this theory of society as both the affecter and the affected is the genre of magazines targeted at young women. Though these publications are targeted as the representation of our society’s adolescent females, they actually have a great influence over the ways in which teens view and construct

Every time you open a magazine or watch a commercial, individuals of both genders are wearing minimal clothing and promoting sexuality. This is especially true for women. Research conducted by Sarah Murnen and her colleagues at Kenyon College has found that over the last several years, there has been a steep increase in the pervasiveness of images in magazines that show young women in highly sexual ways. In the media, women are viewed as sex toys and captured in compromising positions. The hypersexualization of women in the media has a powerful effect on young girls. Girls grow up with an unrealistic body images. In addition, girls are turning to increasingly provocative clothing and using makeup earlier to imitate the women they seen in the media. Girls grow up trying to change themselves, not realizing that God already made them beautiful and perfect. Young men also gain a misconstrued perception of women. Rather than respecting and honoring the women in their lives, young men growing up believing that girls owe them something. In conclusion, the degradation of sex in the media is distorting normal relationship patterns for both

The audience for the magazine titled, I Surveyed More Than 1,000 People to Find Out How Having a Working Mom Really Affects Kids, written by Pamela Lenehan (2016), is both scholarly and general. Lenehan shows she did research by providing statistics, which is scholarly. In addition, the magazine is also for a general audience because the amount of complex vocabulary is limited so that everyone is able to understand it. The information provided is primary in nature. In other words, Lenehan describes her own research and findings. She also gives general background information on this specific topic. Additionally, the page gives three links to other magazine articles related to this topic: 1) Gayle King: How to Let Go of Working Mom Guilt by Gayle

perceived identity is reinforced.” (329). To understand how a woman is viewed socially, this paper analyzes representations of the female figure on the covers of magazines, specifically. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle and Marie Claire, were analyzed as a whole in the quest to understand how this phenomenon, composed by several genres, organizes and spreads the hegemonic female representation. First, it will be argued that magazines shape identity by selling the image of the perfect

Al., 2013, p.152). Magazines are notorious for influencing girlhood with their catchy article titles, fashion advice, and celebrity endorsers. Girls use magazines to look to their favorite, role-model celebrity for fashion and sexuality advice. Cory, age 12, claimed she was a fan of Miley Cyrus, and noticed how she and other girls buy certain things because their favorites celebrities have them as well. This is an example of how the pervasive and powerful marketing to girls presents them with the possibility of “being” their favorite celebrity by adopting their style (Jackson et al., 2013). These are but a few girls out of millions who recognize the media’s advertising tactics, and it does not improve from

In “Low-Cut Shirts and High-Heeled Shoes: Increased Sexualization Across Time in Magazine Depictions of Girls”, Kaitlin Graff, Sarah Murnen, and Anna Krause cite a report stating that “women were underrepresented compared to men, and when they were depicted it was often in a sexualized manner.” (xxxxxx). In a study conducted by the researchers, it was discovered that hypersexualization of young girls was becoming more and more present:

I open up the “hottest” teen magazines on the market; Allure, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and Teen Vogue are a few at the top. As I flip through the magazine this holiday season I see pages of clothes that only the rich can afford, pictures of half-naked people draped over each other, articles about horoscopes and editorials talking about which teen star is the sexiest. Fashion, makeup, men, sex, celebrities, and exercising are the most popular topics I see as I peruse these magazines. These popular magazines take no time to tell me how beautiful I am, but only tell me the hundreds of things I need to do to improve. They tell me that I need more new, expensive makeup to look like a movie star. These magazines teach me how to seduce a man, but