REPRESENTATION - VOGUE

How does the representation of women link to context?

Women’s magazines became very popular in the post war period and in the 1960s, sales of women’s magazines reached 12 million copies per week

While this was a period for great change for women, many magazines and adverts continued to perpetuate narrow and stereotypical ideas about gender

How does the article ‘Money’ represent women?

The article ‘money reveals some key legal constraints on women in the 1960s

It highlights women’s freedom in the summer, helping uplift women.

Featuring a working female expert on finance would have been quite unusual in the 1960s

An article about women making investments and having financial power challenges the historical context when women were often financially controlled by their husbands

Apply Stuart Halls theory to the front cover of Vogue.

The exotic nature of her image may reflect Stuart Halls ideas about the use of Middle Eastern stereotypes.

Representing ethnic minorities as ‘other’

How does the ‘Cutex’ advert represent women?

The Cutex advert denotes a woman with bare shoulders which suggests nudity.

The shade names have connotation of nudity, suggesting that showing flesh and beings sexualised is important for women

It is very reflective of the way women were, and often still represented

The words “alluring” and “beguiling” connote that a woman’s role is to attract others visually

How does the Imperial Leather advert create representations?

The image on this advert clearly reflects the stereotype that women are maternal and domestic

The woman’s facial expression show women as emotional, caring and loving

Women are signified as needing to be ‘soft’ which may mean delicate or weak

How does the article ‘picnics’ create representations?

These pages show women as passive and domestic

The passivity of the women in many articles, fails to reflect the growing power of some women in the 1960s.

These pages include references to royalty, Lords etc which gives high representation of the upper classes

The upper class are represented as a utopia, idealised as being aspirational role models

How are ethnic minorities represented in Vogue?

White models are often pictured in jewels and expensive clothes, representing them as high status

White ethnic appearance is normalised, with darker ethnicities being under represented in the range of ‘nude tones’ Cutex products

The lack of minority models, and make up aimed at darker skinned readers, reflects the less inclusive nature of Britain in the 60s