Choose Two Media Products (TV Show, Film, Magazine, Book) ✓ Solved

Choose two media products (TV show, film, magazine, book, we

Choose two media products (TV show, film, magazine, book, web site) directed at audiences of roughly the same age and socioeconomic status, but different genders (may include transgender). Choose an analytical framework discussed in the readings and apply it to compare the presentation of and assumptions about gender in the two products. Both products should be of the same medium. Assignments should be around 5 pages in length, and must include citations and a reference list. Please use APA format.

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Comparing Gender Representations in Vogue and GQ Using Hegemonic Masculinity

This paper applies Connell's framework of hegemonic masculinity, supplemented by visual framing and postfeminist media perspectives, to compare gender representations in two magazines directed at similar age and socioeconomic audiences but oriented to different genders: Vogue (predominantly female readership) and GQ (predominantly male readership). Primary examples are drawn from the September 2019 issues of each magazine as representative samples (Vogue, 2019; GQ, 2019).

Theoretical Framework

Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity explains how cultural norms authorize particular forms of masculinity as dominant, shaping both male and female roles and expectations (Connell, 1995). Complementary perspectives on visual representation and advertising (Goffman, 1979) and postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2004) help interpret photographic composition, textual framing, and consumerist meanings in the magazines. Framing theory (Entman, 1993) guides analysis of which features are emphasized and how interpretive cues are provided.

Audience and Medium

Vogue and GQ are both glossy, advertising-driven fashion magazines targeting young-to-middle-aged adults with discretionary income, often urban and professionally employed. Although their audiences overlap demographically in age and socioeconomic status, their editorial strategies and visual languages are gender-differentiated, making them suitable for a comparative study that holds medium and audience profile roughly constant while varying gender orientation.

Visual and Textual Strategies

Vogue’s imagery foregrounds the female body, beauty routines, style labor, and an array of consumer practices tied to self-surveillance and appearance management (Bordo, 1993; Vogue, 2019). Cover stars and fashion spreads emphasize femininity as an aesthetic project: poses and camera angles often fragment the body, focus on faces and limbs, and invite visual consumption. Goffman’s (1979) analysis of gender advertisements is evident in the coded body displays and ritualized poses that signal gender roles.

GQ’s presentation focuses on male aspiration through competence, status, and lifestyle consumption—watches, suits, cars, and grooming products (GQ, 2019). The male subject is frequently shot to convey agency, authority, and mastery (low-angle shots, full-body compositions). Where Vogue constructs desirability through beauty and sexual allure, GQ constructs desirability through professional success, sexual confidence, and curated masculinity.

Hegemonic Masculinity and Magazine Logic

Using Connell’s framework, GQ promotes a hegemonic masculine ideal that valorizes autonomy, competence, and public authority (Connell, 1995). Its visuals and features often present men as actors in public spheres—career, adventure, sexual conquest—normalizing a standard that other masculinities are measured against. GQ’s editorials and how-to features further naturalize the alignment between status goods and masculine worth (Kimmel, 2008).

Vogue, while centered on women’s experience, participates in sustaining gender hierarchies by encoding femininity as aesthetic labor that often serves as accompaniment to male-centered social structures (Bordo, 1993; McRobbie, 2004). The magazine’s coverage of empowerment can coexist with an emphasis on appearance and consumption, a tension central to postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007). Thus, although Vogue appears to center women, it reproduces gendered expectations that complement hegemonic masculinity rather than dismantle it.

Advertising and Consumer Roles

Advertisements in both magazines reinforce differentiated consumer identities. GQ ads sell technologies, suits, and luxury items that index power and professional success, positioning the male reader as active purchaser whose consumption secures status (Entman, 1993). Vogue ads market beauty, fashion, and lifestyle services tied to self-optimization, presenting the female reader as an active consumer too—but one whose purchases are primarily about appearance and social capital in gendered ways (Bordo, 1993).

These advertising conventions map onto hegemonic norms: male consumption is framed as instrumentally linked to social dominance, female consumption as tied to bodily management and desirability. Both magazines invite readers to perform idealized gender roles through consumption, thereby sustaining broader cultural scripts.

Intersectional Considerations and Limits

While hegemonic masculinity is a useful lens, it must be combined with attention to race, class, and sexuality. Both magazines selectively include diverse bodies, but representation often aligns diversity with marketable novelty rather than structural inclusion. Connell’s model allows for multiple masculinities, and magazine content occasionally acknowledges alternative masculinities or female agency; yet the structural weight of hegemonic norms persists (Connell, 1995; Gill, 2007).

Conclusion

Applying Connell’s hegemonic masculinity alongside visual-advertising analyses reveals how Vogue and GQ—magazines with similar audiences and socioeconomic targets—produce gendered subjectivities tailored to different genders. GQ articulates an aspirational, agentive masculinity tied to status and authority; Vogue constructs an aspirational femininity tied to beauty, aesthetic labor, and commodified selfhood. Both reproduce and naturalize gendered hierarchies through imagery, framing, and advertising, showing how media targeted to different genders can serve complementary ideological roles within broader gender systems (Goffman, 1979; Bordo, 1993; Gill, 2007).

Future research could analyze multiple issues across time, and include reader responses or circulation data to measure how editorial strategies interact with audience identity formation.

References

• Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. University of California Press.
• Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18.
• Goffman, E. (1979). Gender Advertisements. Harper & Row.
• Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166.
• McRobbie, A. (2004). Post-feminism and popular culture. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), 255–264.
• Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press.
• Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.
• Kimmel, M. S. (2008). Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men. Harper.
• Vogue. (2019, September). Vogue (U.S.), September 2019 issue. Condé Nast.
• GQ. (2019, September). GQ (U.S.), September 2019 issue. Condé Nast.