Representation Of Women In The Media Analysis

In the beginning of 2016 a small national row happened about Suitsupply advertisements, featuring sexualized women's bodies as gigantic playgrounds for miniature men in suits to slide off.1 An extensive back and forth of opinion pieces and guerrilla style feminist activism followed, with subsequent opinion pieces about the appropriateness and effectiveness of said activism. It is clear that media and feminism often meet each other, whether it is a meeting of conflict, academic curiosity, activism, or the use of media to spread feminist messages. Rosalind Gill wrote a book about gender and the media and summarized the development of the field in her introduction. In this feedback paper I will discuss what the author identifies as three prominent

The new scale of media resulted in a constant bombardment of representations of women. However, the second wave feminist movement's first engagement with the media was largely based on the coverage of their protests. Others were concerned with the invisibility of women in media and the lack of opportunities for women working in the media. Activists and academics then turned their attention to the way in which women were represented, which they argued was often in a patronizing, demeaning, or sexualized manner. From there on the field started analyzing the representation of women in media in a more methodological manner, distinguishing between different types of representation (i.e. the housewife, the stupid woman, women as decoration) and counting how often these occurred. The introduction of semiotics and ideological analysis into this field of study allowed for more complex analysis. These studies pointed out that representation is not just one image that is being presented, it is rather a complex combination of different signs that produce meaning, although this meaning might differ substantially across consumers of the

It is a laudable effort by Rosalind Gill to summarize this in one chapter, considering it is a large and diverse field spanning over 40 years. The chapter is a great introduction for those trying to get an initial sense of the field. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about women's pleasure from media and forms of women's media. Even though I have taken the LUC class 'Gender, Media & Conflict', I have not thought about this angle very substantially nor have I heard it discussed a lot before. Building on that, I experience the tension between feminist principles and 'unfeminist' enjoyment from sexist media in daily life myself. I think this is an important discussion to have, and I think it is very valuable that Gill included this in her chapter. Another convincing part for me was the discussion of different use of media among the genders and sexes. Although this is a brief discussion, I think the role media fulfills in the lives of men and women is an interesting topic of study, because it both illuminates and influences gender