Media Magazine Reading Task

MM50

1. The article is about how most media platforms use Caucasian women size 0-2, whilst the average woman is a size 14. The brand 'Dove' banned size 0 models and have started to use a wider range of women with different sized bodies. Body image experts accuse the 'media machine' for destroying illusions and those impossible body images, which have a negative impact on women and their self confidence. The idea of having the perfect body is linked to Mulvey's 'female gaze.'
2. The film which has sparked the debate on female body image and female representation is called 'A Perfect 14.' It is a documentary which challenges the idea of beauty and what is beautiful and normal, rejecting the traditional concept of what the conventional woman should look like. 
3. The 'female gaze' differs from the 'male gaze' as the women are also looking at the women and are consuming the image. Whilst, with the 'male gaze,' men simply look at women and the women are very passive however it works both ways with the 'female gaze.' It also causes a decline in self-confidence as women consume images of beautiful, intangible women, which causes a great deal of anxiety as they do not feel adequate enough. 
4. I believe 'real' women should appear more in the media, especially on TV. We always see these celebrities as size 0, with defined cheekbones and literally no fat, which is seriously unhealthy and produces a negative impact on both young people and elder people as they don't feel adequate enough in their own body. Healthy women should be shown, not size 0-2 but the average sized ones in order to promote the right body image and also a healthy one. 
5. 'A Perfect 14' is trying to get across the message that you should feel comfortable in your own body and not feel as though you should achieve an impossible body image. The main character of the documentary is diagnosed with cancer, which provides an emotional identification with the character. The whole film positively shows plus size models and the reality of what really is beautiful.

MM51

Representations are always mediated by someone else's point of view and they carry their particular views or values so they are ideological. An understanding of representation therefore aids us to identify the way media products create ideological meaning. 

Media producers create the thing being seen by an audience in a particular way, in order to get their point and their vision across, therefore some representations are positive and some are negative. The images are controlled by the controller and can be photoshopped and edited in order to create a different impression on the photo. It can be used positively to support the person or negatively to publicly humiliate the person. 

We must always consider who is creating the image and for what purpose. The producer considers 4 things: 

• the expectations and needs of the target audience
• the limitations provided by genre codes 
• the type of narrative they wish to create 
• their institutional remit. 

Roland Barthes talks about the idea of 'naturalisation' and how the media have chosen certain things and used certain things purposely, however the audience believe it is natural and normal. Barthes also says 'the silencing of difference' which means if something seems natural there is no point in questioning it. 

Stuart Hall devised the 'Encoding/Decoding Model.' Hall believes that the audience do not passively accept the ideology of texts but instead social and cultural experiences effect their interpretations. There is a relationship between the reader/viewer and the text. Some people may accept the intended meaning, however Hall thinks that others may only partially accept it, which is called the 'negotiated meaning.' He also says other people may completely disagree with the reading and this is called the 'oppositional meaning.' 

New media now makes it possible for people to share themselves online and can engage in an act of self-representation. When people post images and thoughts they are able to construct themselves and show the world what they want them to see and read about themselves. In different groups we may construct ourselves in different ways in order to relate to that specific online group. Furthermore, people who are from a minority also get to self-represent themselves in the same way as anyone else, which provides a voice for everyone. 

Old media also constructs a view to their audience. The example is during the 2014 World Cup, The Sun sent a free newspaper to millions of homes, representing it's own concept of England. The whole paper was about 'English Identity' and was a positive approach to the monarchy. The new media, social media, was able to highlight peoples voices and their rejection towards the tabloid. The new media offered people to voice their views and opinions about the traditional old media. 

I am not exactly a fanatic when it comes to social media, however when there is a particularly interesting moment in my life and a picture that I really like, I do occasionally post on Instagram. When I do post, I do go through that construction process in my head, I have to think about whether or not I like the picture, whether I want to present myself in this particular way or not and then the caption underneath. To be honest, it doesn't take too much thought, I don't really spend hours thinking about it, if I want to post something online I usually just do, I don't really go through a tedious, long winded process - just a simple one. 

I think institutions definitely have more power as the audience are passively receiving the text or the different broadcast. They are fully in control of what we see and I believe the audience choose whether or not they want to see it or not, even though this shows some self-control, I believe the media is such a large institution that it almost controls the world. Everywhere we go, we consume media; books, TV, social media. There are a vast amount of different platforms and we do it so subconsciously now that the institutions have become so powerful. For example, the cinema, the social event is fun and interesting but we go with our friends or family to consume media, we don't go to talk for 2 hours, instead we consume media for that time. This shows the power of the media and how we don't even realise we are controlled by it everyday. Our news, comes from the media, everything we need day to day is the media. We choose whether we want to consume that media but I still feel as though we are powerless as we have become slaves to the media generation.