Liesbet Van Zoonen hypothesizes that gender is constructed through discourse and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context. the idea that the display of a woman's body as objects to be looked at, at its core is an element of western patriarchal culture. the idea that in mainstream culture, the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body as a spectacle differ from those that are used to objectify the female figure. When looking at the set text of the 25th anniversary edition big issue we see clearly that it addresses the theorists hypothesis by discussing the differences in the male and female experiance. this is evident primerely within the Grayson Perry interveiw section so i will be mostly discussing that.
Firstly we are given this acomponying image van Zoonen would pick up on this being a direct commenmt on her theory. It putrs a very obvious man in the position of a woman with all the usual sexualising visual codes such as bare legs, high healed shoes to exentuate the legs and makeup to make the indevidual appear weak. the colours also serve to make them seen cuite or childlike in a way. This contredicts the traditional oilly muscular representation of your rugged male model. it could be said that the makup or the amount of it is a comment on the overuse of it in traditional sociaty. The gaudy yellow background is in contrast to the general asthetic of these pages that is usualy plain white to draw attention to the model like in a page 3, or is black to connote a bad girl image.
Another example of applying these female codes would be in the mags use of popular pop group the 1974 star Brandon Urie. he seems particiuarly feminine and weak, a code sometimes used to make females seem cute with his thin stick like figure, this and his light skintone is in contrast to the vainy, bulked, defined, oilly muscular, tanned up gods who usualy dominate mens fashion, this overall goes to disprove van zoonen slightly by saying these roblems also exist for men, not just females. This however could be seen as a deliberate attempt from urie to subvert gender norms, even tho in doing this seemingly nobel act he appears to be doing some dammage to womens rights and rep by perpetuating the idea of this is how the femmenin should be seen.
An instance that the big issue could be guilty of perpotrating the things Van Zoonen denounses could be this image of a woman of colour who presumably used to sell the big issue. The use of the short red dress would leave her arms exposed and exentuate the figure of the body. The colour red conotes red lips and lust or desier, bringing up potential sexual feelings. Problematically, this is the only black woman in the mag so the fact they let it slip in this case is troubling as to racial bias, although its probably nothing too big. What i find to be so interesting about this is that the article and context surrounding the image is about empowerment of the homeless so the mere fact that they indivertibly did this speaks to how engrained it is into our culture that when representing a woman, sexiness is a visual signifier for aspiration.
An interesting example of how males are constructed potentially could be relevant to Van Zoonen. The codes for rep of men are always if not most of the time scruffy, bearded, or homeless. In fact 90 percent of the homeless people in this issue are male, therfore this could bve an interesting way to see how they veiw them compared to the more glamerous looking women prevalent in the rest of the mag.
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