In this essay I intend to discuss the representation of gender through the dominant ideology of what the male and female bodies should look like. Men’s health is a magazine about how to be a healthy, muscular man. Tomb Raider is a coded video game about a young women who needs to overcome challenges to unlock new levels to play further into the game. I plan to argue my opinions with the help of a YouTube video by feminist frequency and another article by Lauren haul about body image.

Both of the materials negatively stereotype males and females. First of all we see this by the iconic sign of Vin Deiseal on the front cover of the Men’s Health magazine. He is portraying a strong muscular man giving the reader the message that if you want to be healthy and have good health you need to have large muscles and ‘blast body fat’ however this quote is both radical and reactionary as it is good to not have too much body fat and become obese but its radical as no man needs to have vast amounts of muscle to make them ‘slay’ and be desired by women. Likewise in Tomb Raider the iconic sign of Lara Croft shows a miss representation of what the female body should look like. The main image of Lara Croft is negatively stereotyped as she is viewed to have a tiny waist and large breast ‘Gard accidentally increased her breast size by 150 percent,’ this shows the male designer has the control on how he designs his character and when the game was first created Lara Croft was supposedly ament to have a positively stereotyped figure which would complement her positively stereotyped character however the ‘creative team insisted it was maintained.’ As this made the game more popular and they knew the game would sell better as it would attract more young male consumers who would be fantasied by this image and so intern want to play the game.

In both texts both images have extremely revealing clothes on, which suggests they both are the main focus of there texts and this is why you want to buy the game or magazine. Lara has tiny shorts and a little crop top and Vin Deiseal has an extremely tight top on to allow the audience to see his vast amounts of muscle and by them being able to see it the reader believes that they will be able to become like that if they buy this product. However this is a radical idea and thought as no one will be able to develop that amount of muscle from buying a magazine but that is what the company want you to believe. Both characters are standing in an unrealistic way which would clearly be uncomfortable so that the consumer can see more of their body features for example Vin Diesels arms bent outwards to show his large muscles and Lara Croft twisted round so that her bottom and breast are on display at the same time this is frustrating as a 2019 audience as we believe men and women are more than just their body image and that they have more to them then ‘big boobs or large, muscles.

In conclusion I believe both these texts are unsupportive of how the male and female body should be displayed and they both are representing negative stereotypes that make men and women believe they should be certain ways as the media is telling them to be this way as it will satisfy the opposite gender.

References

Lara Croft Article