Year 12 cover work: Representation

MM50

1. The female gaze article is about research that suggests advertising campaigns are dominated by heterosexual Caucasian size 0 to 2 models. It also states that representations of women in advertising is too white and exclusively under size 6. However, the brand 'Dove' banned size 0 models and have started to use a wider range of women with different sized bodies.
2. The film that has sparked this recent debate on body image and female representation is called 'A Perfect 14' and looks at three women that challenges the idea of beauty and what is beautiful and normal. Therefore, reject what women should look like.
3. The 'female gaze' differs from the 'male gaze' as Mulvey suggests the 'male gaze' is when women are portrayed for the benefit of men and that women are presented for men to look at as sex objects. Whereas the 'female gaze' is about females looking at other females and feeling that they should conform to this ideal body type.
4. In my opinion, the media should carry out more representations of 'real' women as nowadays young people are influenced by the mass media and should know that being a size 0 is not what you should aspire to be or what is seen as beautiful or normal. Healthy women should be represented more in media as that is what young people should inspire to be like and the media should make more of an effort in doing so.
5. 'A Perfect 14' is trying to get a clear message across to all females and males that you should be comfortable in your own skin and love your body no matter what the size or weight. It is also trying to inform people about what goes on in the modelling industry and the fact that there is weightism. 

MM51

• Introduction- talks about how representations are always, in some way, filtered through someone's point of view. It also states how a person, places, objects or ideas being represented in a media text have been mediated by the act of representation.
• Representations and the media- states that images we see in the media have been mediated by someone else's point of view and that representations go through a process of  the photographer, picture editor and news editor and its 'gatekeepers'.
• The how, who and why of representations- We must always consider who is creating the image and for what purpose. The producer considers four things: 
  
  

  
  

  -the expectations and needs of the target audience

  -the limitations provided by genre codes 

  -the type of narrative they wish to create 

  -their institutional remit. 
  
  
  Roland Barthes talks about the idea of 'naturalisation' and how the media have chosen certain things and used certain things purposely, however the audience believe it is natural and normal. 
• Another approach to ideology - the work of Stuart Hall-Stuart Halls critique is known as the 'Encoding/Decoding Model.' Hall believes that the audience do not passively accept the ideology of texts but instead social and cultural experiences effect their interpretations. There is a relationship between the reader/viewer and the text. 
• An example - representing national identity in old and new media- Old media also constructs a view to their audience. For example, in 2014, during the world cup, The Sun sent a free newspaper to millions of homes, representing it's own concept of England. The whole paper was about 'English Identity' and was a positive approach to the monarchy. The new media, was able to highlight peoples voices and their rejection towards the tabloid.

I use social media sites regularly. For example, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr etc. When I do post things online I do deliberate and think about what I am actually posting and think about do I want present myself in this way. However, I do not give it much thought as if I want to post something I usually just post it.

In my opinion, I think its a bit of both. The media institutions obviously have the power to put whatever they want in lets say, a newspaper article, Rupert Murdoch is a prime example of a dominate figure in the media. According to the hypodermic syringe model, we as an audience are passive. However, I think that the audience has a significant impact on whats in the media as they only produce what we want to hear. If they didnt do so things like newspapers and magazines would go out of business as no one would want to read them.