Essay about Men’s Magazine Analysis

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be for a certain age, race, and sometimes even a certain gender. Pop culture has influenced the minority groups and shed light to women 's rights or so it was thought. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards a particular gender. What is interesting is it shows a false image of the opposite sex to the audience being portrayed toward their preferences. It is the image the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell their products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows commercials brings gender norms that produce the ideas of what a man’s man and a woman’s woman which is why he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

Large advertising agencies have evolved pseudo-scientific methods through experience, research and intuition that yield a demographic profile of the target audience, who are the most important predictors of purchasing behavior.

Body image is an important concept in many adolescent and young adult minds. To have a positive body image is to know that you are beautiful. To be beautiful is to reach the standards of beauty in society. However, society is constantly changing those standards as time goes by. Many young men and women strive to reach the positive, even if it means their health, money, and mind. They have the media, such as magazines to thank for these wonderful standards.

The definition of masculinity; Is the fact of being a man or having qualities considered typical of a man.

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be aimed toward certain age, race, along with certain gender groups. Pop culture has influenced minority groups and shed light on women 's rights or so it may seem. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards male and female audiences. Interestingly enough these tv ads deliver a false image of the opposite sex to the audience catering to their preferences. It is the image of what the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows how commercials bring gender norms that produce the stigmas of a man’s man and a woman’s woman, which makes it apparent that he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

What seems to be the most attentive layout of the ad is the rock star side of the man in the image. The rock star has long black hair, black makeup around his eyes, no shirt, lipstick kiss prints all over his body, stud necklace and bracelets, as well as a huge fictional guitar with three necks on it. One of the necks is a normal six string guitar, the second is a twelve string guitar, and the most unbelievable of the three is a saxophone. Hanging on one of the necks of the guitar is a girl’s bra. This part of the advertisement is the most important to the value and attraction of the ad. Since the ad is in a pop/rock culture magazine, this would be an obvious attention getter that would stop many of the readers of this magazine.

Masculinity has changed and evolved since the beginning of human creation. Males have had to adhere to the social norms of their time to survive without undue persecution. In the beginning of the 19th century, there was a shift in the way men could attain manhood. It was no longer easy for a man to enter into manhood with straightforward expectations and rituals. The state of manhood became difficult to obtain because of its precarious nature. During the same period, the industrial revolution was in full bloom giving birth to mass information outlets like newspapers, magazines, and advertisement: media. This set a prevailing state where boys and men alike could gain material on how to become or be men

People Magazine’s audience comprises of mostly women, and the articles and advertisements within the magazine prove this. Such types of passages consist primarily of gossip, however, there are some informational reads in the magazine. One advertisement in the September 18 issue of this year is a safety message from Tide. While the advertisement is a safety message, it is obviously still trying to sell the product: Tide PODS. The target audience of this advertisement is more specific than People Magazine; instead of only targeting women, Tide narrows its audience down to parents. Tide's advertisement uses some pathos, but it heavily draws its appeals from ethos.

Specifically, a content analysis and survey research was conducted dealing with how television commercials and magazine advertisements targeted towards males ultimately affect female body image and behavior.

The four advertisements chosen represented separate, and distinctive, themes. The first advertisement, for anti-wrinkle cream, utilized a bandwagon approach and a sense of the ideal retirement life. The second advertisement, for hygiene experts, suggests utilizing the fear of uncleanliness to sell the services. The third advertisement, for Camel cigarettes, brought a sense of nostalgia as I remembered spending time, as a child, with my oldest brother prior to his passing. To summarize, it embodied the ideal picture of a manly outdoorsman. The fourth, and final, advertisement focused on food and choices. Specifically, one pizza offered two distinctly unique flavors.

Victimization for women in America is real. Women are victimized by their husbands, boyfriends, colleagues, boss’, and in some cases their parents.They are shunned if they don’t physically fit into the mold of the “ideal American woman”. Women are expected to live up to these ridiculous standards of what their bodies should look like. Americans are starting to realize that this is wrong. Women should be accepted and celebrated no matter what they look like physically. Some women are told if they are themselves then they will be alone and never married. Men are now being blamed for making women feel as though they aren’t good enough and convincing them to conform to their standards. But, are American men being victimized too? In the article “How men really feel about their bodies” Spiker explains that men of certain body types are criticized also. “Look at the standards we have to measure up to: If we’re fat, we’re labeled as beer-guzzling couch potatoes. Too thin and we’re deemed wimpy.” (72). Men are just as self-conscious about their bodies as women are.

At the break of the day I wake up before the sun has even settled itself back into the sky, I repeat my dreary morning routine, and I go somewhere. I go somewhere by myself, quite alone, maybe in my car, maybe just for a walk around the neighborhood. While I’m out on my walk or after I’ve driven somewhere and gotten out of my car (that seriously needs a run through the car wash), I become aware. I become vividly aware of all the people around me and feel unsafe, I feel unsafe in my own neighborhood because I heard a woman was held at gunpoint not far from here, I feel unsafe because I’ve binge watched Criminal Minds and I know how easy it is for unsuspecting women who feel safe in public, at stores and in parking lots, to be abducted.

Today in modern society, we are driven by social forces. Not only do we strive for human approval and companionship, we also thrive on social media. The media plays such a pivotal role in what we buy, eat, wear, etc. that we are conditioning ourselves to fit the mold for the “perfect” or “ideal” body type. This social construct has been a pressing issue for many years regarding the female physique, but not as much has been said on behalf of men. When confronted with appearance based advertisements, men are more likely to experience muscle dissatisfaction, weight disparities, and anger and/or anxiety toward showing their body in public. This paper will address these facets of the media’s effect on male body image as well as presenting what has been done to address this quietly debilitating issue.

Almost everyone is exposed to advertisements when they are children. Ads are everywhere and they make people feel a certain way towards what they are trying to sell even if the people involved feel unaffected. Ads are supposed to do this and can make their audience feel happy, but there is a chance that they will do the opposite. Many ads make men feel like they are not strong or tough enough. A study done on the effects of media images from magazines on the body and self-Esteem said, “Men’s Health and GQ both focus primarily on men’s bodies and send very overt messages about what men should look like. Therefore, it may be very easy for men who read these magazines to feel as though they do not measure up” (Hobza, Cody L., et al. 168). Ads in magazines or on tv don’t usually show men crying or talking about their emotions with their friends because that is something men are not supposed to do; instead ads show them being strong, tough, and emotionally stable.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the extent to which women are presented as sex objects in magazines. Previous research by Stankiewic and Rosselli (2008) resulted in 51.80% of advertisements in magazines that featured women, and portrayed them as sex objects. The particular way in which objectification is defined, and thus the resulting rates at which women are portrayed as objects, had varied by study. The objectification of women in advertisements also varied by magazine type.