Paper Magazine: Media Analysis

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The media object I have chosen is the Paper Magazine’s cover photo of winter 2014 issue featuring 34 year old famous reality TV star, model, actress, businesswomen and entrepreneur named Kim Kardashian. Paper Magazine is an independent New York City based magazine which focuses on pop culture, fashion, art, music and film. There were a lot of cover of other models and famous celebrities like Katy Perry, Fergie and Mariah Carey. And many of these photo covers were captured by a famous French contemporary photographer and designer, Jean Paul Goude. He re-created his most famous shot for the winter 2014 issue of Paper Magazine which was based on his 1976 shot of a black woman Carolina Beaumont which was referred to as the “Champagne Incident”. …show more content…

In the article Yes, Those Kim Kardashian Photos Are About Race by Bethonie Butler, Kierna Mayo, who is the vice president of digital content for Ebony, discussed about Kim Kardashian’s photo-shoot saying “Kardashian has been able to capitalize on her body in a way that black women historically have not”. He gave an example back in 1990’s about hip hop music videos where clad dancers were underpaid and exploited and that black women’s bodies especially their rear ends have been used for commerce and conversation for a very long …show more content…

The idea of Kim Kardashian being able to pose nude photos is related to the idea of ideology. According to Dick Hebdige, ideology has dominant effect which has the interest of dominant groups in society. This idea is also related to hegemony which refers to the dominance effect where certain social groups have the authority over subgroups where Dick Hebdige defined hegemony in his article the meaning of style “a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert “total social authority” over other subordinate groups” (Dick Hebdige, 150). Kim in this case, was able to produce the dominant effect, which is spreading her nude photos to the public. She has the power over the public even though she knows she will get way too many criticism but still she did what she felt was right.
In comparison to some of other Kim Kardashian’s photo-shoots such as the Playboy shots, when Kim posed some nude images, she was actually uncomfortable with the idea being nude. The images featured with strings of pearls covered up some of her body parts. And by looking at the Paper Magazine photos, she does have pearls again but this time on her neck and with the body parts she tried to keep covered in the previous shots, she is using it now to break the

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