It could be argued that makeup are products that are almost exclusively targeting women, and the advertising of makeup could create an image of how women should look. This study investigates how two cosmetic brands, Maybelline and CoverGirl, are advertising makeup in social media and what this conveys about gender and beauty. The study is approached from Fairclough’s (1995) three dimensional model while considering strategies of advertising and gender discourse. Through a textual analysis, it was found that although the brands want to transmit an emotion of confidence to women, the advertisements still display and communicate gender in stereotypical ways.

It has become increasingly more common to promote cosmetic surgery on social media with the help of influencers. A debate about the phenomenon has recently been evoked in Swedish media, where concepts such as power and responsibility are often discussed. The study “Influencers, the ideals and the sponsored cosmetic surgeries” aims to shed light on how power relations and responsibility is portrayed in connection with influencers' marketing of cosmetic surgeries. By analyzing content from a documentary made by SVT, we have been able to distinguish different social actors who are assigned specific roles, where the documentary genre has an impact on how the content is presented which can have effects on the audience. The study's theoretical framework is based on theories of habitus, field and capital as well as the framing theory. The analysis is based on the method multimodal critical discourse analysis, where we have used analysis tools such as lexical choices, attributes and stage environment and social actors as well as Fairclough's three-dimensional model. In the result, we distinguished five distinctive discursive themes, where the result showed discourses about influencers as actors with power who are partially taking responsibility, although influencers being portrayed as victims were most prominent in the documentary. The discourse about society as a collective, platforms and clinics as actors with power was portrayed from a more critical perspective where a big part of the responsibility was placed on those actors, and not on the influencers promoting the surgeries. Another conclusion of the study is that the creators of the documentary have a big role in shaping the portrayals of the actors and the discourses in the documentary.

Marketing is crucial to the success of any company, and in line with an increased emphasis on sustainability, many companies now include sustainability issues in their communications. The clothing company Lindex's campaign ”Reinvent the Model” aims to reshape the female ideal and promote diversity in their marketing. They do this, among other things, by including different skin colors, ages and bodytypes in the marketing. The study ”Advertising for what, clothes or bodies?” examines Lindex's campaign and its portrayal of beauty ideals. Through a qualitative multimodal critical discourse analysis, based on Fairclough's three-dimensionalmodel, the campaign is analyzed with a focus on lexical choices, denotation, connotation, interdiscursivity, ideology and hegemony. The concepts of discourse andcommodified feminism also form the basis of the study's theoretical perspective. The results show that Lindex portrays beauty ideals as problematic and negative. The campaign mixes marketing, body positive, feminist and documentary discourses to challenge prevailing beauty ideals within the fashion industry. The body positive and feminist discourse is emphasized by ordinary women sharing their experiences around beauty ideals. Quotes in the campaign create a negative view of the female body as bodily flaws are discussed. The hegemonic view of beauty ideals is questioned in the campaign, but the result of making a comprehensive campaign about women's appearance means that the female body continues to be scrutinized and used as akind of marketing material. The conclusion is that, from an ideologically critical perspective, the campaign partially challenges the hegemonic view of beauty but at the same time maintains and commodifies norms around the female body.

How do magazines that target the Black community represent Black/African American female beauty within a society that pushes a Eurocentric beauty ideal? Are these publications affected by the dominant ideal, do they resist the ideal with their own Afrocentric beauty standards, or do they find some type of compromise between the two? In this thesis, I propose that these publications present a compromise between Eurocentric and Afrocentric ideals but to the detriment of Black/African American women. To investigate my research questions, I conducted a content analysis of the advertisements in three periods of time, 1968, 1988, and 2008, in three lifestyle /news magazines that target the Black community: Jet, Essence, and Ebony. I looked at the beauty ideals represented in all three magazines by focusing on the hair type, skin color, and body shape and size of the Black/African American women portrayed. In addition I examined the historical context that supported the creation of these publications and these specific gendered and raced representations.Through a compromise between society’s dominant Eurocentric beauty ideal and an alternative Afrocentric ideal, these magazines participated in a trade-off, in which features and aesthetics of both communities were represented by Black women in advertisements. While the typical interpretation of this analysis might focus solely on the positive attributes of these representations, I argue that these representations are harmful to Black female readers because they circumscribe what constitutes Black female beauty while at the same time reinforcing negative ideas about physical attributes that are deemed “too Black” by the dominant ideals of a Eurocentric society.

How do magazines that target the Black community represent Black/African American female beauty within a society that pushes a Eurocentric beauty ideal? Are these publications affected by the dominant ideal, do they resist the ideal with their own Afrocentric beauty standards, or do they find some type of compromise between the two? In this thesis, I propose that these publications present a compromise between Eurocentric and Afrocentric ideals but to the detriment of Black/African American women. To investigate my research questions, I conducted a content analysis of the advertisements in three periods of time, 1968, 1988, and 2008, in three lifestyle /news magazines that target the Black community: Jet, Essence, and Ebony. I looked at the beauty ideals represented in all three magazines by focusing on the hair type, skin color, and body shape and size of the Black/African American women portrayed. In addition I examined the historical context that supported the creation of these publications and these specific gendered and raced representations.Through a compromise between society’s dominant Eurocentric beauty ideal and an alternative Afrocentric ideal, these magazines participated in a trade-off, in which features and aesthetics of both communities were represented by Black women in advertisements. While the typical interpretation of this analysis might focus solely on the positive attributes of these representations, I argue that these representations are harmful to Black female readers because they circumscribe what constitutes Black female beauty while at the same time reinforcing negative ideas about physical attributes that are deemed “too Black” by the dominant ideals of a Eurocentric society.

This study examines intersectionality, white privilege and essentialism in Toni Morrison’s stories The Bluest Eye and “Recitatif”. Moreover, intersectional markers are taken into consideration to analyze how the characters are advantaged or disadvantaged in the white dominant society of the two novels. Additionally, white privilege is compared to the lack of privilege that the black characters experience and how that further affects them is discussed. Furthermore, the issues that critical race theorists acknowledge with the essentialized approach in movements for social justice will be connected to Morrison’s stories. More specifically, the tendency to overlook intersectionality when essentializing women’s experiences will be connected to how the realities of Morrison’s multidimensional female characters cannot be generalized. In addition, the negative effects white standards of beauty have on the black female characters in The Bluest Eye are examined. It is concluded that black female subjectivity makes the reader better understand the intersectional experiences of the characters and this subjectivity also makes white privilege visible in the stories. Additionally, in “Recitatif”, where the reader does not know the specific race of the characters, conclusions can be made about how race and class intersect by considering historical aspects and how signs of white privilege show up in the story. Although, more important than deciding the race of Morrison’s characters, is for the reader to acknowledge the challenge she creates of considering intersectionality in the story.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka och diskutera huruvida influencers påverkar människor när det kommer till skönhetsideal. Undersökningen syftar till att öka förståelsen för vilka faktorer som kan ligga bakom att personer överväger eller beslutar sig för att göra ett skönhetsingrepp. Studien syftar även till att undersöka på vilket sätt influencers påverkar skönhetsidealet. Studien utgår ifrån följande tre frågeställningar:  På vilken plattform förekommer mest hets kring skönhet? Hur motiverar influencers och privatpersoner skönhetsingrepp? På vilket sätt påverkar influencers skönhetsidealet? För att besvara studiens frågeställningar gjordes en kvantitativ undersökning i form av en enkät med ett kvalitativt moent, som sedan kombinerades med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av fyra utvalda influencers och deras content på sociala medier. Det övergripande resultatet visar en relativt enig bild av att influencers bär ett visst ansvar över vilket skönhetsideal de förmedlar och att det i sin tur påverkar människors val och strävan efter skönhetsingrepp. Ur enkätstudiens resultat framkom att respondenterna upplever att det råder mest hets kring skönhetsideal på plattformen Instagram. / The purpose of this study is to examine and discuss whether influencers have an effect on people when it comes to beauty ideals. The research aims to increase understanding of the factors tat may contribute to individuals considering or deciding to undergo cosmetic procedures. The study also aims to explore in what way influencers affect the beauty ideal. The study is based on the following questions: On which platform does beauty pressure occur the most? How do influencers and individuals justify cosmetic procedures? In what way do influencers affect the beauty ideal? To answer the research questions, a quantitative study was conducted using a survey, which was then combined with a qualitative content analysis of four selected influencers content on social media. The overall result shows how a relatively unanimous view that influencers bear a certain responsibility for the beauty ideals they convey and that it, in turn, affects people's choices and pursuit of cosmetic procedures. From the result of the survey, it emerged that respondents perceive that there is the most pressure regarding beauty ideals on the platform Instagram.

Though Sylvia Plath’s poems and novel undergo frequent scholarly research, her short fiction is often overlooked. Plath’s journals influenced her short fiction writing, and her stories reflected Plath’s lived experiences. Plath’s short fiction, like her other works, explore themes of identity and detachment. Each of her protagonists exist in a personal limbo, and they strive to find their identities and to fit the roles in which they occupy. This thesis focuses on “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom,” stories from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and additional research from scholarly journals and biographies, with comparisons to identity struggles shown in The Bell Jar and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. I found the catalysts for their identity crises stem from observations surrounding femininity, societal roles, and psychological wellness. Furthermore, this research shows Plath’s subjective writing habits and highlights her protagonists’ commonalities throughout her writing career.

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