Cover Work: Representation

MM50

1) This article is about the female gaze and some factual information about the female audience. This article also talks about how the media portray women in adverts and what is considered acceptable. This covers topics such as size-ism, The Plus Size Model, and advertising and how they are presented as previously mentioned.

2) The film that has sparked this recent debate on body image and female representation is "A Perfect 14"

3) The male gaze is mentioned as limited as it is only affected by heterosexual men as they look at objectified women. However, the female gaze is similar as it objectifies men but isn't as strong.

4) I think there should be a change in the representation on both men and women. This is especially significant with perfume adverts as they present these products as "sex magnets" even though the only affect that it has is improve someone's scent. They probably don't feature size 14 women as they may want to try and attract a male audience in particular ways such as objectifying women to pleasure a male audience which would support Mulvey's Theory of the Male Gaze.

5) The film is about women wanting to become models and how being a "Plus Size" isn't appealing. So therefore they are trying to change that by trying to make sure that potential models aren't demotivated because of their appearance. This also talks about how beauty should be defined.

MM51

1) The Introduction talks about a definition of representation and how it is a retelling of text or images but from the perspective of the content creator.

Representations and the mass media: This talks about the process that takes place when the mass media are trying to represent the topic. There is also the mention of the "gatekeeper" who wants to keep this general image of the topic throughout.  

The how, who and why of representation: This talks about the questions that producers consider before constructing their version of the topic. As well as the values that are being represented for when they create the content for their audience.

Another approach to ideology - the work of Stuart Hall: This talks about Stuart hall's ideas and how the audience would judge the characters on a cover or piece of print from their own experiences.

Representations and new media: This talks about how modern technology has been used to represent people. This could include social media such as Facebook. The comments that internet personalities make would be based on their interests and their audience so that they could construct an image of themselves to their audience. 

An example - representing national identity in old and new media: Old media platforms such as Newspapers have a fixated representation on the topic that they are talking about. However, new media are more liberated with what they talk about as they can spread their opinions on topics online.

2) I'm aware of how I represent myself in the media as I don't want bad interpretations of me in the view of the public. I also make concious choices of what i like as I don't want to look like a troubled teenager but rather have a representation that defines me as a civilized person.

3) Some could argue that institutions are powerful as they would represent a topic in their view for their audiences to look at and agree upon. However there can be some influence of audience with their choice of text for their media. This is evidenced with the paper below as a majority of elderly men would read tabloid news papers.

However the audience can be powerful as they could express their opinions on topics that they may find important. This would be evidenced with twitter and how people can express their opinions to their followers with hash-tags that they may use which correlate to the topic.