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Women 's Portrayal Of Women Essay

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The portrayal of women in media has never quite aligned with the reality of how women view themselves. Magazine covers are dominated with perfect women, who rarely range in skin diversity or physical appearance in general. They all adorn the same beautiful flowing hair, with the same small dainty facial feature, the similar waist lines, and wear the same form-fitting clothes that accentuate either their real curves or photoshopped bodies. The insincerity of it all, is when you realize that these ideal women are depicted in every culture approximately the same way. For my project, my research question was centered on the idea of how does the Latina magazine portray Latin women on their covers. I looked at the physical attributes of the female celebrities on the cover and at the less obvious features, such as how the celebrity made eye contact or their facial expression. Overall the physical characteristics of the female, I coded using manifest coding; and the nuance characteristics, I coded as latent coding. I wanted to explore not only the superficial portrayal of the Latin women but also the meaning behind the picture. Conducting an analysis of female depiction on magazine covers can only be done through the method of content analysis. The technique of content analysis is define as “‘any technique for making inferences by systematic and objective identifying special characteristics of messages’” (Berg 1989:106). In other words, I would analyze the content of the magazine

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