GENDER AS A PERFORMANCE

“Gender as an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” means that the actions deemed appropriate for men and women have been released and presented to produce a social impression that keeps and authenticates a “natural” gender binary. Butler is basically saying we associate these different themes with the genders, such as girls wearing pink, only exist because as humans, we collectively agree it exists; it is a social construct. Butler’s theory is interesting to take into consideration when looking at print media products as it allows us to pick up on common themes such as women being shown as objects and men being shown as the alpha gender. This is strictly not a representation of gender identities but rather simulations of them that we all choose to accept and conform by: they are signifiers without a stable signified: these are essentially hyper-realities: images that refer only to other images as gender functions as a simulacrum, an image without an original.“Oh..” is a magazine that celebrates authenticity and empowerment within feminism shown by its front covers that solely present women and only women and their articles that celebrate women for being the modern day feminists they are, for example, in issue 35 of “Oh..” magazine (Oh Comely at the time), they did an interview with Amali De Alwis, the CEO of Girls Code First and celebrating her as a woman of colour who is encouraging other females to start coding and join the male dominated technology industry. Set up by three women who used to work for a popular publishing conglomerate, they felt that they could set up a magazine that constructs a representation of femininity with its focus on creativity and quirkiness.“Oh..” uses a, what some may consider, feminine colour palette with pink pastels contrasted with deep navy and crimson hues which is used to attract females, due to the stereotype contraptions with pinks tones as a feminine colour and therefore reflects their target audience of women. The magazine also has a large title written in a handwritten style giving the maize a more homely and do it yourself feel and making it have a unique element to it, again reflecting it target audience of unique, quirky feminists. Some people may like to view themselves with this interpellated opinion and aesthetic if they don’t feel the same in real life as they may tend to feel too shy to speak up about these feminist issues due to toxic masculinity considering the idea of talking about issues that happen with other females as “bad” and “repetitive”, and these experiences are evident through how little these common issues amongst other females are spoken about in schools or offices, therefore finding these niche magazines as a interpelleted reflection of themselves and a safe haven for them to rant these issues and celebrate how they aren’t alone.As “Oh..” is a magazine focused on feminism, the absence of men throughout the magazine’s issues are a very prominent thing showing the radicalism of the magazine and acts as a stand up towards these patriarchal publishing conglomerates. A third wave feminist theorist that can really feel for this “standing up to the patriarchy” is bell hooks. Bell hooks talks about multicultural intersectionality where how general political concepts are always intertwined and intersect with feminist concepts, these general concepts can be topics such as sex, identity, age etc. “Black feminists have pointed out the differences between black and white womens experiences, cultural representations and interests” (2016:346), a.k.a. Arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around power relationships between black and white women. Feminism will always be somehow linked to these topics. Van Zoonen, another third wave feminist theorist, also talks about a similar theory on how cultural hegemony and interpellation are also heavily related to feminism, with the oppresion of women whether it be their right to vote, the gender pay gap around the world, or even sexual harrassment towards women in the work place. In a post-colonial context, women have always carried the double burden of being colonised by imperial powers and dominated by colonial men.In contrast to “Oh..” magazine, “Men’s Health” magazine gives off a completely different feel with its big blocky blue, gray and black text and typeface that conforms to the dominant male ideology of how we as a society associate these strong, bold colours with men. “Men’s Health” is very different in comparison with “Oh..” in not only terms of topic theme throughout the magazines, but also in terms of publishing companies, “Oh..” is owned by an independent press company in London called “Iceberg Press” who publish only one other magazine as well as “Oh..”, “The Simple Things”, whereas “Men’s Health” is published by Hearst Magazines, a subsidiary owned by the very popular and patriarchal based media conglomerate named Hearst Corporation. Hearst Corporation owns cable companies across the US such as ESPN, History, and other big branded magazines such as ELLE, COSMOPOLITAN, BAZAAR, so therefore they can reach their targeted male audience with ease, actually reaching a circulation of 1.5 million people a year. This can be heavily linked to Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ theory as Chomsky proposed that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, this means that the more power a company has, the more prone other institutions such as government organisations are to falling under the control of the said company due to them being able to control most mass media communications. With Hearst Corporations owning a majority of popular US media outlets, this makes them viable and able to use manipulatory consent techniques. An example can be how Hearst Corporations have links with ‘The Establishment’, William Randolph Hearst III is the chairperson of Hearst Corporations and inheritor of the Hearst family fortune being estimated at $24.5 billion net worth. With that amount of money, this means that William is bound to have other connections to the establishment as he is an inheritor to a big percentage of the world’s wealth. As Iceberg Press are an independent company, they don’t get as big of a reach to their targeted audience as Hearst Magazines has been able to, especially with having “Oh..”’s targeted demographic as a very niche audience (modern day feminists) and it’s circulation reach is estimated at 25,000 physical issue readers. Even though niche audiences tend to be a small minority of society, they can hold great value for indie brands and their success because the audience members are often more engaged, active and responsive and shows how development in new technology means indie companies such as Iceberg Press can also use the internet to communicate and target audiences.

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