Institution

Owned by Iceberg press (small company) – Went bankrupt during COVID- didn’t make digital copies of the magazine because of their intense views towards print dying – goes against Hesmondhalgh.

Radical magazine – goes with Curran and Seaton saying massive companies make repetitive products to make money. They don’t appeal to a large audience, as demonstrated by a study which revealed 98% of their readers were female and the average age of their readers was 27. This means that they have to secure that audience with repetitive ideas in order to sell their products.

Language

Barthes – Enigma code on front cover as the dominant signifier is posing for the camera, however is not sexualised or appeals to “Male Gaze” by Mulvey as the model is wearing natural makeup and has short hair. Could confuse the reader and build a sense of anticipation so the people buy it and read on.

Oh Comely features wildly varying design choices, with many photographs heavily deferring from traditional magazine designs. Neale depicts genre as a “corpus” or repertoire of both innovative and predictable elements. When I apply these ideas to Oh Comely I see a plethora of innovative elements which do not follow common conventions of magazines, such as small text with big gaps and indexical images of women portrayed in a very humble and self-aware manner.

Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposition can be linked to the CSP in that a clear distinction between the magazine’s view on women and men – males are not even mentioned or shown in any way which shows the nature of their product and makes it abundantly clear that men have no place intervening in the ideas given from Oh Comely.

Representation

Refers to women in a positive, powerful and independent fashion with words like “strong”, “wisdom” which heavily links to the idea of gender performance by Butler and the work of Van Zoonen, who both say that gender is not a matter of biology and can be played out and negotiated, with Butler creating the idea of gender performance. This links heavily to the extract containing a body positivity blogger, who is dressed in revealing clothes however is not using this portrayal to appeal to men, but to empower women, suggesting that their bodies are their own. This heavily contrasts Men’s Health in that it strongly suggests that if you are a man, you need to follow the conventions laid out in the magazine.

Audience

Gerbner – Cultivation theory – Accepting media – fuelled viewpoints as the norm – allows opinion leaders and powerful people who control the media to spread their agenda, often about cultural minorities. Not in this magazine – as there is a page which gives a positive representation of African/Middle Eastern women campaigning about FGM that is not to do with poverty, terrorism, war.

Stuart Hall’s theory of preferred reading goes against Oh Comely in my opinion, as the messages conveyed in the magazine are so wildly different when compared with the vast amount of magazines out there, to the point that I don’t even think there is a definite dominant reading for people to accept or reject. This heavily contrasts Men’s Health in that in the other CSP a dominant reading is incredibly easy to establish and compare your own views to.