essay all together. needs editing and finishing.

How is the female ideology and mindset represented differently through websites, focussing on Vogue and FHM.

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The representation of the female ideology varies due to the type of audience the text is targeted at. However audiences can often be passive and not notice the ideology that is being sold to them. In my research project I will be exploring this through various theories including Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze, Hypodermic Needle and the active and passive audience theories. One aim of this project is to find out about gender roles in the 21^st century, how they have changed and are represented through my chosen texts Vogue and FHM websites. They have contrasting target audiences so the representation of woman will be differing and allow me to explore objectification and the mindset of the women representated in my two chosen texts. I will also look into the use of photoshopping and manipulating the female form to give further ideologies to the audience and discuss the effect of creating a so called Hyper-reality.

                  Photoshop is a tool used in every day media to change the way something or someone looks. It has been used greatly in advertising and gives a false portrayal to the audience of how a person looks and how they should look.  Both Vogue and FHM use Photoshop to edit the pictures they put up on their website however they do it in a very different way.

FHM and other glamour photography organisations have been accused of promoting an unrealistic image of females through the use of Photoshop. They make women have perfect, flawless skin with bright eyes, skinny waist but large breasts. FHM will do this because it attracts the audience the company most desires.

Vogue has a different target audience of young to middle-aged females and the website tends to just include very thin models or celebrities. A large issue recently showing the use of Photoshop in vogue is when Lady Gaga did the front cover of the magazine that was also put on the official website along with a video of the shoot. The real images on the video are extremely different to the published front cover, where Lady Gaga appears taller and thinner with an extremely tiny waist where in reality this isn’t the case.

            Hyper-reality is a part of the Post modernism theory that circles around society today. This states that nothing is original; we are copying copes and viewing a fake reality. The use of Photoshop backs this theory as when we are looking at these manipulated images, they are fake, the females in the image do not look like this so the pure reality has been lost as a passive audience would just assume that is actually what the women look like and aspire to be like them.

         An ideology is a set of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class or culture. Where as, gender ideology refers to the attitudes regarding the roles and responsibilities of women and men in society. In the ever-modernizing society, men and women should have equal rights. However women still have the cliché of being a housewife who should spend their time in the kitchen or cleaning and ‘catering’ to their partners needs and wants.

The FHM website I feel follows this stereotype as all the woman are sexualized and are featured because of the way they look, which is to satisfy the mans male gaze. Laura Mulvey is a theorist who introduced the Male Gaze theory in her essay called ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.’ It states that women are used as objects in film as the camera is controlled as if it were the eyes of a heterosexual man. I believe this is present in all media texts today. FHM prove this again as all images are women looking sexy or improper, and they do this to attract their target audience of Men in their 20’s as they associate that age with sexual exploration and a change of lifestyle. This gives females the ideology that they should all look and pose seductively like the women on the website in order to interest men.

Vogue follows the ideology of women being their own person and not owned or controlled by a man. It is full of articles and pictures supporting the strength of independence in women and not being sexualized. Instead the Vogue website follows another stereotype of women being shoppers and spending all their money on looking good. It gives information on the latest fashion trends and where you can buy certain ‘must need’ items of the season etc. This gives the ideology to the audience that all women should follow the latest fashions and be wearing them in order to look good and therefore attract a man.

Both websites, Vogue and FHM portray similar ideas of the ‘perfect woman’. All the models are slim and do not represent a normal woman. The average size of a westernized woman is a size 14, where as Vogue and FHM have models who are a size 4, 6 or 8 which are in the minority of the population.