I believe that oh comely does challenge the social and cultural contexts in which it was created. For example the magazine goes against Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, the model that the magazine uses for it’s front cover is not wearing revealing clothing
Iceberg Press is completely different to Hearst UK – the publisher of Men’s Health and subsidiary of global conglomerate Hearst. It publishes just two magazines: Oh Comely and The Simple Things
patrick tembo – C.E.O. – Iceberg Media
Read it with a cup of tea or a toddy. It inspires people to be creative, talk to their neighbours and explore new things
1 Oh Comely is a magazine that makes people smile, full of quiet moments and stories
2 it makes people feel better about themselves the way they are
3 launched in 2010
4 publishes 6 issues a year
5 laust issue was September 2021 due to the pandemic
6 owned by ice berg press
7 CEO if iceberg press is Patrick Tembo
Representation of women
Judith Butlers idea of the male gaze isn’t shown in oh comely due to women being fully clothed and photography shots being medium close up therefore you cannot see their figure.
The women wear barely any make up to show and suggest natural beauty.
Social Media Reach: 100,000 Readers Per Issue: 25,000 Average Age of reader: 27 Sold through independents, WHSmith and international outlets
More people see oh comely digitally
What audience pleasures are offered by Oh Comely?
Surveillance- Knowledge of many new topics and awareness of amazing people who have accomplished great things.
Diversion- The style of the magazine and the thought gone into the photography and presentation of the magazine makes it one that can be enjoyable just by looking at it.
pages 14-15
Fahma mohammed at age 14 figured out she had the female genital malutation. she commited to ending FGM and has now got a campaign todo so.
the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons
Megan Jayne Crabbe promoted self love and body positivity.
Plus sized model
Stuart hall applied
dominant – agree with what she says and does
negotiated – may understand her point of view but not agree
oppositional- don’t like or agree with her actions or point of view
narrative – levi strauss said in every narritive in media like books or fuilms there are two opposing characters like hero and villain etc.
genre- steve neale said genres must all bhe similar in any way
Semiotics- interpretations of underlying meanings such as emojis. things like signs meanings and codes.
The school of life video “how to be a man” presents the cool man and the warm man this links to Gauntlets motion that identity is fluid and negotiated. Although this is not a theory we can see examples of the cool man and the warm man in men’s health.
For instance on page 50-51 you can see images of Vin Diesel being big and muscular which was coincided with Quotes of vin Diesel being soft and sensitive showing a negotiated identity as he is a sensitive person but looks as though he doesn’t care and is strong with little care.
Media products often challenge the social and cultural contexts in which they are created.
To what extent does an analysis of the Close Study Product Oh Comely support this view? [25 marks]
Oh Comely takes a radical stance on the social and cultural contexts in which it’s created. This can be seen through the way it opposes the male gaze theory. This theory, brought into fruition by Laura Mulvey in her paper Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, suggests that there is a sexualised way of looking at people that empowers men and objectifies women. Oh Comely, however, contrasts this view with the women featured in the magazine wearing appropriate clothes and pictured in natural poses, unlike the majority of reactionary magazines, in which the women wear revealing clothes and display their bodies to attract the male gaze.
spreading body positivity. “my beauty ripples”. talk about self loveCEO of a tech company- normally a ‘man’s job’ “It shouldn’t just be a boys club”
Question: Media products often challenge the social and cultural contexts in which they are created.
The women in general are dressed appropriately unless there is specific reason to not be. An example of this is the page of the plus size model, Megan, who is promoting body positivity. They present a radical representation of women in the sense that on the front cover, the woman is wearing natural makeup, unlike most magazine front covers where the woman is posed in a lot of makeup and displaying her body to attract the ‘male gaze’.
The front cover also entails words such as ‘power’, ‘hard-won’ and ‘strong’ which is oppositional to the ‘normal’ woman as it is stereotypically the men who are labelled as ‘strong’ and ‘powerful’ rather than women.
The woman on the front cover is being humanised rather than objectified which applies to Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in the sense that it goes against her thesis and completely contradicts her ideas. The magazine doesn’t allow any application of the male gaze. The only thing that could be connected to ‘the male gaze’ is the fact that she is a female model who is the dominant signifier on the page and she is posing.
Links to Butler’s theory as it questions the belief that certain gendered behaviours are natural. She also created the theory of performance which links to this CSP in the way that the women in the magazine use their gender to feed the audience ideas about confidence and body positivity. It could be argued that these women could be over-exaggerating their beliefs to encourage others to agree with their optimistic view of life.
Oh Comely is owned by Iceberg press (Lisa Sykes) and was launched in 2010. It is a mindful magazine with a fresh perspective. It constructs a representation of femininity with its focus on creativity and quirkiness. The focus is on women as artists, entrepreneurs, athletes and musicians and female empowerment is a major theme. The absence of men as part of the representation of masculinity in Oh Comely magazine.
Typically, Women’s magazines often use content that focuses mainly on appearance, whether that be makeup, weight or clothes.
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.
Owned by Iceberg Press – an independent media organisation that just has a few members of staff.
Front cover- woman dressed more conserved with a mid shot angle and short her contrasting to the stereotypical voyeurism presented when representing females in the media countering the male gaze, Laura Mulvey.
A syntagm of indexical signs throughout the words in conjunction with the picture not conveying to stereotypical portrayal of women convey a semantic field of strength and power, for example the adjectives “strong” and “wise” create a counterstereotype to the weak and vulnerable traditional representation that has been exploited throughout media.
Oh, Comely is an independent media organisation that targets affluent young women who wanted a “stylishly presented” alternative to the cheap aesthetic of mainstream magazines, the magazine explores things that conglomerates usually divert attention from, such as Gauntlets idea of identity such as some androgynous style choices on the front cover model, such as the clothing that doesn’t exploit the models body for sales and profit attracted by the male gaze.
The magazine includes a diverse range of religion, race and age: Gerbners theory on mainstreaming suggests the excessive consumption of media products the more you will conform to the medias ideologies, therefore by promoting a range of diversity throughout Oh Comely’s magazine’s they’re recreating the dominant reading (via theory of preferred reading by Stewart hall) that has been mass presented throughout media as reactionary stereotypes to create a common enemy in the media (common enemy via Habermas’s five filters of mass media). Gerbners can also be used to show representation throughout the magazine, he argues that nothing has a representation until the media represents it to try and create a fixed meaning to which the audience can argue against; for example people being perceived as trouble makers from repeated stereotypes of them represented in the media- we can see how Oh Comely tries to oppose the reactionary representations that have been displayed in the media and recreate them as strong. An example is page 15 where someone from Somalia wearing a headscarf (which is represented in western media as “terrorists”) is surrounded by a syntagm of signs such as the iconic signs of colour that have high connotations to positivity and a semantic field of strength through words such as “unstoppable force” and personal pronouns to extenuate her achievements to redesign the stereotype into a counterstereotype- a person of power and positivity. The capitalised “Sister” creates a group identity towards the target audience, a group- a sisterhood where readers come together and create.
“the words and pictures weren’t always trying to sell stuff, didn’t portray perfection, didn’t tell people what to do and made them feel better, not worse.”
first published in 2010 with only 6 issues a year.
the averages age of 27 · 98% female readers ABC1 demographic
ABC1 – a consumer from one of the three higher social and economic groups, which consist of people who have more education and better-paid jobs than those in other groups:
Challenging social and cultural contexts:
the woman throughout the magazine are presented in a radicle way it can be argued because they aren’t being sexualised as a way to sell the magazine (Mulvey)
they are dressed in casual clothing and natural make up
representation of plus size women with the article from Megan Jane Crabbe
tires to push the idea that women can work in tech and be CEOs of companies in a patriarchal society.
takes a radicle stance
Stuart Hall applied: article from Megan Jane Crabbe
dominant readings – agree with what she is saying and understand the importance of her message
negotiated readings – they may understand her message about body image but may have differing views on her argument and may disagree
oppositional readings – may completely disagree with what she is saying and not understand her message and why it is important.
