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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Title: “Solo has got a little sister! – A study how the form and content differ between the magazines Solo and Solo G</p><p>(Solo har fått en lillasyster! – En studie om hur formen och innehållet skiljer sig emellan tidningarna Solo och Solo G)</p><p>Number of pages: 37 pages</p><p>Author: Johanna Laurell</p><p>Tutor: Göran Svensson</p><p>Course: Media and communication studies C</p><p>Period: Autumn term 2005</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Departement of Information Science, Uppsala University.</p><p>Pupose/Aim: This essay aims to investigate how the form and content in the magazine Solo G, which direct to a younger target group, differ from the magazine Solo which directs to an older target group. In this analyse of form and content have I also chose to study how the magazine present femininity and how this affect the female identity.</p><p>Material/Method: The material consists of 4 magazines from Solo and Solo G during 2005. A qualitative text analysis has then been used as a method of analysing the material.</p><p>Main results: Solo G focuses a lot more on celebrities than Solo. Solo G uses the celebrities as role models to the youth to look up to. There is also a difference how the magazines talk to their readers. Solo directs to their readers and they try to analyse their behaviour. Solo G focuses on celebrities and tells to their readers to look as them and to behave like they behave. Both magazines are mainly about female beauty, sex and how women should loose weight.</p><p>Keywords: Women magazines, identity, identification, and femininity</p>

Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2006. / "Submitted to Department of English and Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-263)

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This essay focuses on female identity formation in patriarchal society in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Both authors portray female characters who struggle with the normative gender identity. As the novels represent different eras and locations, the two characters examined in this essay, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe and Plath’s Esther Greenwood, have very little in common on the surface. However, both authors deliver similar feminist social criticism concerning the negative impact of patriarchal norms on female identity formation. This study analyzes some of these external constraints, or norms, and aims to prove that the two female characters’ ideas of womanhood and identity collide in a similar manner with those norms. Schachter’s study on identity constraints in identity formation and Sanchez and Crocker’s research on gender ideals work as the theoretical background in the study. The negative influence on Lily’s and Esther’s identity formation is similar since both characters live under a symbolical bell jar, unable to form their identity according to their own preferences. Patriarchal conventions remain a constant constraint and the two women keep struggling to find a balance between their own ideas and those of their societies. Both Lily and Esther grow to understand their own traits, desires and abilities in their respective stories, but fail to reach their preferred identity. Their resistance to adapt to gender conventions helps them to form a stronger identity, but it is an identity that remains profoundly and negatively influenced by the patriarchal norms of their societies.

This essay focuses on the character of Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. From a gender perspective it discusses Lily's striving to exceed her socially constructed position as a woman by attempting to be an artist. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were supposed to be housewives rather than artists. This ideology of femininity held women back from achieving anything outside the home, and forced women to attempt to escape their femininity in order to pursue their dreams. This essay discusses Lily's efforts to escape her femininity by attempting to transcend her body and by striving to achieve an androgynous mind.

Abstract: Title: “Solo has got a little sister! – A study how the form and content differ between the magazines Solo and Solo G (Solo har fått en lillasyster! – En studie om hur formen och innehållet skiljer sig emellan tidningarna Solo och Solo G) Number of pages: 37 pages Author: Johanna Laurell Tutor: Göran Svensson Course: Media and communication studies C Period: Autumn term 2005 University: Division of Media and Communication, Departement of Information Science, Uppsala University. Pupose/Aim: This essay aims to investigate how the form and content in the magazine Solo G, which direct to a younger target group, differ from the magazine Solo which directs to an older target group. In this analyse of form and content have I also chose to study how the magazine present femininity and how this affect the female identity. Material/Method: The material consists of 4 magazines from Solo and Solo G during 2005. A qualitative text analysis has then been used as a method of analysing the material. Main results: Solo G focuses a lot more on celebrities than Solo. Solo G uses the celebrities as role models to the youth to look up to. There is also a difference how the magazines talk to their readers. Solo directs to their readers and they try to analyse their behaviour. Solo G focuses on celebrities and tells to their readers to look as them and to behave like they behave. Both magazines are mainly about female beauty, sex and how women should loose weight. Keywords: Women magazines, identity, identification, and femininity

Everybody has seen advertisements in his/her life even if this person is never watching television or listening to radio. However, an average person watches television 1 to 4 hours per day. In these hours of watching television, there is a big probability that this person will see an advertisement. But how does he/she react to this advertisement? There are probabilities of reacting positively or negatively or indifferently. Culture is one of the significant aspects that can determine the reaction of the viewer. The purpose of this master thesis is to understand the influence of the cultural background on consumers when they see a man or a woman appearing on advertisements. This study can be used by managers as a part of their considerations they should have when deciding communication strategies. Moreover, it can bring further understandings for students who are interested on culture and advertising. The main question I wanted to answer with this research is “How masculinity and femininity of a culture is influencing the consumers’ responses on the gender appearance in television advertisements”? In order to accomplish this goal, I used a quantitative and a deductive scientific method. The empirical data were collected by distributing questionnaires to 40 students of Umea University. The questionnaires are given in order to find out how consumers are affected by culture towards advertisements. The theoretical framework is actually divided in two parts. The first part is presenting some definitions, components, layers and dimensions of culture combined with masculinity and femininity. The second part is presenting advertising and gender where someone can see how to manage an advertising communication and which strategy to follow. After the theoretical framework, the empirical results of this study are presented. In the analysis of the empirical data I found out that the masculinity-femininity level of the country a person comes from does not affect his/her reactions towards the genders appearance in advertisements. This can be a result either of the size or homogeneity of the sample either of the personality aspect or the subculture belonging of the person. So it can be said that the personality and the subculture belonging of people may be some factors that influence their reactions towards advertisements. However, what was proved by this research is that a person’s reactions towards advertisements can be influenced by the fact that this person is a man or a woman. At the end of the study some suggestions are given to marketers such as to define who the target group of the advertising communication is and then develop the appropriate strategy. Moreover, suggestions are given to future researchers such as to conduct the same study but with a bigger sample.

How we smell is important to a lot of people, as indicated by the high spending on perfumes. Most perfumes are categorized as feminine or masculine, and this gender categorization is an important factor when people purchase perfumes. This thesis explores odor perception and perfume preference when the person sniffing the perfume does not know the commercial gender categorization. Three psychophysical experiments were conducted, in which the participants scaled the femininity and masculinity of the perfumes, indicated preferences, and gender categorized the perfumes. The perfumes were presented both in glass bottles and when applied on human skin. Results of three experiments indicate that female and male participants (20–30 years old) preferred the same perfumes, both for themselves and for their potential partners. The preferred perfumes tended to be “unisex,” that is, perceived as neither strongly feminine nor strongly masculine. The participants did not succeed well in identifying the commercial gender categorizations of the perfumes, and they did not succeed in guessing the gender of the human when the perfumes were applied on human skin. The commercial gender associations of the perfumes only corresponded to how they were perceived in the case of extremely feminine or extremely masculine perfumes. I conclude that the gender categorizations of most perfumes are not related to how they are actually perceived. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defence the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript.</p>