<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: Vecko-Revyn, A study of how a women’s youth-magazine speaks to its readers, the content of the articles and interviews and the papers definition of femininity during the years1984-2004. (Vecko-Revyn En studie av en ungdomstidnings tilltal till läsaren, dess reportage och intervjuer samt definition av kvinnlighet under en period av 20 år.)</p><p>Number of pages: 63</p><p>Author: Anna Widén</p><p>Tutor: Göran Svensson</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies C</p><p>Period: Spring 2006</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University</p><p>Purpose/aim: The purpose is to see how the women´s youth-magazine Vecko-Revyn speaks to its readers, what the content of the articles are with a special view at the articles that contains interviews and articles with the theme sex and relationships. The study will also see how the magazine Vecko-Revyn defines femininity and how that difference through the years. The investigation will study those different subjects over a timeperiod of 20 years, 1984 – 2004.</p><p>Material/method: The study is done with a combined qualitative and quantitative text analysis using five numbers of the magazine Vecko-Revyn from each of the years 1984, 1994 and 2004.</p><p>Main results: The magazine Vecko-Revyn has a very open text to it’s readers. The articles have become shorter during the years. 1984 the articles where long and had an intellectual language. 2004 the magazine is down to very small articles. The main subjects that the magazine talks about in 1984 are the relation to the opposite sex and the liberty of women. 1994 the magazine is mostly about sex in all its forms and 2004 it has turned its main attention to the way you as a young person shall look to become successful.</p><p>The paper has had a very distinguished women-profile during 1984 when womanhood and the fact that you as a reader (and a women) shall take care of your own business was one of the magazines main priorities. 1994 the reader and the magazine has one common enemy – the opposite sex. This disappears thru the years and in 2004 the magazine is not interested at all in a feminist discourse.</p><p>Keywords: Vecko-Revyn, youth, women’s magazine, women, media, femininity, text analysis.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Title: FASHIONING THE FEMALE -</p><p>An Analysis of the “Fashionable Woman” in ELLE Magazine - Now and Then</p><p>Number of pages: 57 (including diagrams and figures, excluding enclosures)</p><p>Author: Heidi Marie Nömm</p><p>Tutor: Ylva Ekström</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies D Level, Master Thesis</p><p>Period: Spring term 2007</p><p>University: Uppsala University Division of Media and Communication Department of Information Science</p><p>Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how fashion can function as a communication channel and how the modern Swedish woman is represented in ELLE magazine within two different fashion decades, in 1992 and 2007.</p><p>Material: Swedish ELLE magazines No. 1-4 1992 and No. 1-4 2007.</p><p>Method: A complementary combination of quantitative content analysis, semiotics and critical discourse analysis.</p><p>Main results: A number of differences, as well as similarities can be recognised between the fashions of 1992 and 2007. The latter one is characterised by women looking serious, sometimes even austere while 1992 shows often happy women. The fashion styles are much more casual, colourful and more accessorised by jewellery etc. in 1992, while the clothing in 2007 is often tight, body hugging and reveals more skin. Concerning ethnicity, 2007 only shows white women, often very feminine and wearing mostly dresses and rarely pants, whereas 1992 is characterised by ELLE’s effort to show a more multicultural and diversified picture of the female. The semiotic analysis has lead to the conclusions that women in 1992 were more natural and “real” whereas the female picture ELLE is presenting often has fictional or unnatural elements. The fashion styles often seem un-wearable in 2007, however also rather artistic. The woman of 2007 is living a more expensive and extravagant lifestyle than in 1992 where women were more of en depicted “average”.</p><p>Keywords: Fashion, communication, representation, lifestyle, cultural studies,feminism, ELLE magazine, femininity.</p>

I denna uppsats analyseras de två tidningarna Glamour och King Magazine för att se till hurgenusrepresentationen syns på dess omslag och om det finns några eventuella likheter ochskillnader mellan en tidning riktad till kvinnor (Glamour) och en tidning riktad till män(King).Syftet med analysen är att se till de olika budskapen för genusrepresentation samtidigt somsyftet är att undersöka de olika stereotyper som finns kring män och kvinnor i dagenssamhälle och jämföra dessa mot omslagen för tidningarna.Studien innehåller teorier från bland annat R.W Connell och hans föreställningar kring blandannat den hegemoniska maskuliniteten, men också övriga teorier kring genusrepresentationfrån personer som bland annat Gunilla Jarlbro, Eva-Lena Hedvall och David Gauntlett.Studien bygger i sin analys på en retorisk modell med fokus på omslagens kompositionmellan bland annat text och bild.Resultatet visar på en stereotypifiering av män och kvinnor för tidningsomslagen, där kvinnorförefaller som underordnade i sin representation medan männen besitter stor makt vilket visarsig i form av en jämförelse. Detta överensstämmer med teorierna kring de olika ideal somförekommer kring män och kvinnor.

ABSTRACT Title: FASHIONING THE FEMALE - An Analysis of the “Fashionable Woman” in ELLE Magazine - Now and Then Number of pages: 57 (including diagrams and figures, excluding enclosures) Author: Heidi Marie Nömm Tutor: Ylva Ekström Course: Media and Communication Studies D Level, Master Thesis Period: Spring term 2007 University: Uppsala University Division of Media and Communication Department of Information Science Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how fashion can function as a communication channel and how the modern Swedish woman is represented in ELLE magazine within two different fashion decades, in 1992 and 2007. Material: Swedish ELLE magazines No. 1-4 1992 and No. 1-4 2007. Method: A complementary combination of quantitative content analysis, semiotics and critical discourse analysis. Main results: A number of differences, as well as similarities can be recognised between the fashions of 1992 and 2007. The latter one is characterised by women looking serious, sometimes even austere while 1992 shows often happy women. The fashion styles are much more casual, colourful and more accessorised by jewellery etc. in 1992, while the clothing in 2007 is often tight, body hugging and reveals more skin. Concerning ethnicity, 2007 only shows white women, often very feminine and wearing mostly dresses and rarely pants, whereas 1992 is characterised by ELLE’s effort to show a more multicultural and diversified picture of the female. The semiotic analysis has lead to the conclusions that women in 1992 were more natural and “real” whereas the female picture ELLE is presenting often has fictional or unnatural elements. The fashion styles often seem un-wearable in 2007, however also rather artistic. The woman of 2007 is living a more expensive and extravagant lifestyle than in 1992 where women were more of en depicted “average”. Keywords: Fashion, communication, representation, lifestyle, cultural studies,feminism, ELLE magazine, femininity.

Abstract Title: Vecko-Revyn, A study of how a women’s youth-magazine speaks to its readers, the content of the articles and interviews and the papers definition of femininity during the years1984-2004. (Vecko-Revyn En studie av en ungdomstidnings tilltal till läsaren, dess reportage och intervjuer samt definition av kvinnlighet under en period av 20 år.) Number of pages: 63 Author: Anna Widén Tutor: Göran Svensson Course: Media and Communication Studies C Period: Spring 2006 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/aim: The purpose is to see how the women´s youth-magazine Vecko-Revyn speaks to its readers, what the content of the articles are with a special view at the articles that contains interviews and articles with the theme sex and relationships. The study will also see how the magazine Vecko-Revyn defines femininity and how that difference through the years. The investigation will study those different subjects over a timeperiod of 20 years, 1984 – 2004. Material/method: The study is done with a combined qualitative and quantitative text analysis using five numbers of the magazine Vecko-Revyn from each of the years 1984, 1994 and 2004. Main results: The magazine Vecko-Revyn has a very open text to it’s readers. The articles have become shorter during the years. 1984 the articles where long and had an intellectual language. 2004 the magazine is down to very small articles. The main subjects that the magazine talks about in 1984 are the relation to the opposite sex and the liberty of women. 1994 the magazine is mostly about sex in all its forms and 2004 it has turned its main attention to the way you as a young person shall look to become successful. The paper has had a very distinguished women-profile during 1984 when womanhood and the fact that you as a reader (and a women) shall take care of your own business was one of the magazines main priorities. 1994 the reader and the magazine has one common enemy – the opposite sex. This disappears thru the years and in 2004 the magazine is not interested at all in a feminist discourse. Keywords: Vecko-Revyn, youth, women’s magazine, women, media, femininity, text analysis.

Lifestyle magazines portray women in different manners and have an influence on how media consumers create self-images. The importance of knowing how different visual representation of the female acts out in magazines with large target audiences is therefore of weight for the magazines’ readers to understand. This thesis analyze how the two lifestyle magazines ELLE and LOVE portrays women in images and how they in turn create ideal images of women. The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative analysis of 5 images from each magazine that represents the magazines artistic styles. The theories used in this study are semiotic image analysis and visual text analysis viewed from a gender- and discourse perspective. The conclusion of this thesis is that ELLE portrays women as strong, happy and feminine, with at tendency towards androgyny, while LOVE describes women as inferior and sexual objects constructed for the male gaze. The magazines, which belong to a classic- respectively a post-modern genre within lifestyle magazines, thereby switch places with each other and becomes each other’s counterparts.

Mot bakgrund av att medier kan definieras som en socialiseringsfaktor samt att sexualitet är ett ämne som ofta vädras i olika medier är syftet med den här kvalitativa studien att undersöka hur livsstilsmagasin, i sina texter, skildrar sexualitet och då närmare bestämt kvinnors sexualitet. Kvinnors sexualitet undersöks av den anledningen att kvinnor under 1800-talet drabbades av en avsexualisering, det vill säga deras sexualitet förminskades i förhållande till männens, vilket sannolikt påverkar samhället än idag.                       Studien har tre frågeställningar där den första rör huruvida denna avsexualisering präglar livsstilsmagasin. Den andra frågeställningen undersöker vilka ord som används i livsstilsmagasinen för att beskriva det kvinnliga könsorganet. Den tredje frågeställningen har fokus på hur stor del av innehållet i livsstilsmagasinen som präglas av sexualitet, på ett direkt eller indirekt sätt. Ur ett medie- och kommunikationsvetenskapligt perspektiv lutar sig studien mot ett teoretiskt ramverk kring mediers påverkan, då främst hur unga människor påverkas, samt agenda setting. Jenny Kitzingers forskning har en central roll. Ur ett sociologiskt och sexologiskt perspektiv kretsar det teoretiska ramverket kring Gisela Helmius definitioner av samhällelig sexualsyn samt Gayle Rubins sexhierarki. De metoder som använts är huvudsakligen en kritisk diskursanalys med fokus på texternas konstruktivistiska funktion samt en mindre kvantitativ analys som ger svar på hur stor del av medieinnehållet som berör sexualitet. Empirin grundas på elva stycken livsstilsmagasin riktade till unga kvinnor.                       Av analysen framkommer att cirka nio procent av innehållet i de undersökta tidningarna berör sexualitet i någon form. Det framkommer också att de undersökta tidningarna är präglade av den restriktiva sexualsyn som råder i Sverige, vilken sannolikt delvis är ett resultat av ovan nämnda avsexualisering. Detta yttrar sig främst i ett befästande av den rådande kärleksideologin där sexualiteten endast får röra sig inom kärlekens, heterosexualitetens och tvåsamhetens ramar. Det framkom också att de undersökta tidningarna bidrar till ett osynliggörande av det kvinnliga sexuella könet. / Given that the media can be defined as a socialization factor and that sexuality is a topic that is often aired in various media, the purpose of this qualitative analysis is to examine how the media portrays sexuality and more specifically women's sexuality. The reason for examining women's sexuality is that women during the 17th century were constrained in their sexuality compared to men, and this constraint most likely has made an inprint on society to this day. This study poses three questions, the first concerns if the desexualisation of women characterizes the lifestyle magazines today. The second question examines which words that are used in lifestyle magazines to describe the female genitalia. The third question focuses on to which extent the media content in lifestyle magasines is characterized, directly or indirectly, by sexuality. From a media and communications perspective the study has a theoretical framework based on agenda setting and how media is able to influence its users, the young users in particular. The research done by Jenny Kitzinger plays a central part. From a sociological and a sexological perspective the theoretical framework revolves around Gisela Helmius' definitions on ideas of sexuality in society and Gayle Rubin's hierarchical valuation of sex acts. The methods that have been used are a critical discourse analysis which examines the constructivist function of the texts and a smaller quantitative analysis to examine to which extent the media content concerns sexuality. The empirical data is based on eleven lifestyle magazines aimed at young women. The analysis reveals that nine percent of the content in the examined magazines concerns sexuality in some way. It also reveals that the examined magazines are characterized by the idea of a restrictive sexuality which prevails in Sweden, which problably is a result of the above mentioned desexualisation. This manifests primarily in the consolidation of the prevailing ideology of love, where sexuality only is allowed within a framework of love, heterosexuality and monogamy. The magazines also contribute to making invisible the female sexual genitalia.

This study re-evaluates the Consciousness Scale originally formulated by Pingree et al. in 1976. The element of assumed power was added to the Consciousness Scale, which was then used to evaluate 516 magazine advertisements from 1999 to determine if the Consciousness Scale still accurately evaluates sexism in media. A set of advertisements was culled which had contradictory Consciousness Scale and power ratings. The set was evaluated, revealing common themes, which created difficulty in coding these modern images. The study revealed that while the Consciousness Scale can still provide a valuable tool in evaluating media images, the change in the social dynamic of women as well as minorities and how advertisers portray them must be taken into account. The element of power as well as a more nuanced reading of each level of the Consciousness Scale creates a more modern and complex evaluation of gender images in the media.

Media are powerful agents of socialization; mediated images affect individual and group behavior as well as inter-group attitudes. In the case of the Hispanic/Latino community in the U.S., frequently underrepresented and stereotyped in mainstream media, identity politics and perspectives of self-representation are complicated by the vast diversity of this membership. This project analyzed the current discourse on Hispanic/Latino ethnic identity proposed by Latina magazine and its social standing in relation to the mainstream culture. A quantitative content analysis that compared Latina’s visual portrayals of women to the female portrayals found in the mainstream magazine Glamour suggested that Latina constructed a homogenized and non-conflictive identity for Hispanic/Latino women; an identity that supports U.S. dominant discourses on ethnicity and race and is subjugated to marketing practices.

Vår uppsats är gjord utifrån kritisk diskursanalys (CDA) och syftar till att undersöka hur den kvinnliga identiteten skapas genom det språkbruk och de diskursiva praktiker som används av tidningen Egoboost Magazine. Det empiriska material som uppsatsen bygger på är ledarsidorna ur åtta nummer av tidningen. I uppsatsen så granskar vi hur tidningen på ledarsidan, via språkbruk och bilder, gestaltar kvinnan och hur de genom denna gestaltning bygger upp en kvinnlig identitet. Studien är grundad i Yvonne Hirdmans (2003) genuskontrakt och identitetssynen som vi funnit finns inom både diskursteori och genusteori.