Media Studies - Magazines (GQ + The Gentlewoman)

Masthead

Name of Magazine

Mostly will stay the same but colour may differ with each editions

Brand Identity

Sell line

“Briton's No.1” etc

Coverlines

Teases for content and features

Straplines

Most important articles/festures

“Puffs” or “Blurbs"

Blocks of text or images to attach readers to offers inside the magazine

Main image

Dominates the page, often an actor or celebrity

Advertiser and Editor Relationship

Advertisers have a lot of power over the editors in magazines as the need the sales

→ e.g. Loaded being pressured to have more woman on the covers by advertisers to compete with FHM

Metrosexual

-Coined by Mark Simpson

-A man who cares heavily about their appearance, mainly focusing on fashion and skincare

Spornosexual

-Coined by Mark Thompson to explain that changes he has seen in the ways men behave

-A type of Metrosexual (combines the words ‘porn’, ‘sport’ and ‘metrosexual’) who cares more about fitness than fashion or skincare

GQ’s Demographics and Psychographics

-Social Grades A, B and C1

-Apsirers and Succeeders

-White

-Men

-20-44 years old

GQ readership stats:

-212,000 monthly print readership

-2 million monthly unique users online

-More than 2 million social media followers

Average GQ reader income yearly

£138K

Average GQ reader money spent on fashion annually

£7.7K

Common representations of masculinity

-Hetrosexual

-Able-bodied

-Healthy

-Problem solvers

-Ambitous

-Self-confident

-Well dressed and fashionable (but not flamboyant), often wearing blues, dark browns, greys and blacks.

Hypermasculinity

Exaggeration of male stereotypical behaviour and attributes

Instrumental bodies

Social discourse which endorses the importance of values linked to external beauty

Representing Men, MacKinnon 2003

Men are increasingly and unapologetically objectified, both in terms of erotic spectacle and as targets of advertising for products beyond cars and beer

Men in the mirror, Edwards 1997

The sexual objectification of men has increased in the media

Homogenous body

Dominant depictions of maleness in physical terms, linked to power, strength and youth

Joseph Gelfer

Preciously, masculinity was mostly presented in one of two ways: either a glamorous James Bond-style masculinity that attracted “the ladies”, or a buffoon-style masculinity that was firmly under widely thumb.

Gelfer suggests that there are five stages of masculinity - how people perceive and understand what it means to be a man.

Stage 1: “unconscious masculinity” - traditional view of men

Stage 2: “conscious masculinity” - as above by deliberate

Stage 3: “critical masculinities” - feminist: socially constructed

Stage 4: “multiple masculinities” - anyone can be anything

Stage 5: “beyond masculinities” - it doesn't exist