Gender Discourses for Youth: Critical Analysis

Gender Discourses for Youth: Critical Analysis

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to outline the particular "Gender Discourses" in young men in the magazine "X the magazine". The magazine is dominated by males in visual and text representation. This magazine has extreme sport discourse where males are represented as courageous and enduring. I think the males are portrayed in a more traditional way, they are shown more stereotypical which is more likely appealing for readers. In these types of magazines males are highly regarded for their extreme talents whereas women are capable of performing the same extreme skills but still mostly only portrayed for their sexual appeal. Compared to the amount men exposure women are unnoticeable but still magazine still sells. This all shows that males are physically competitive and tougher the sport the more of a man you are.

Method

I basically conducted my research by flipping through each page of the X the magazine and took note on what was on each page, while highlighting the gender discourses. The method used to deconstruct was basically setting up a table (see appendices) which had the following headings Page, Genre, Image/Text, Representation of gender, invited reading and personal reading. For each page I looked at what kind of environment the person was in, their actions and the text if there was and analysed these into the headings of the table. Then soon after analysing the page I was able to define the invited reading from the pictures and text.

Results

(data table in appendices)

The couple of pictures and a text of Jamie Reyes a female is the only information based on a woman throughout the whole magazine, which I find very sexist. In the couple of pictures she is skateboarding with her vibrant skill and the article is just as respectful. Although she does not seem to have the whole page based on her. Below her article is a cut off showing a couple images of Christian Taillefer on his snow bike (see appendices). The pictures below have nothing to do with Jamie and skating altogether, its just a random photos almost as if she doesn't deserve her own page . It shows that even when women are not shown as sex objects they are still downgraded in some way