Imagination And Absence

This thesis focuses on the gender representation of Chinese women's magazine andthe reception process, using Nuyou (Women's Friend) and Cosmopolitan as the mainresearch objects. The two leading research methods in this thesis are text analysisand ethnography.Based on the research experience in feminist studies, there is a brief bibliographicstudy on the feminism and genre, feminist media studies, methodologies of women'smagazines and feminist media studies in China. There is also an overview of genderrepresentation in the history of Chinese women's magazines.In the textual study of Chinese women's magazines, content analysis and qualitativeresearch are both applied for analyzing women's images. The conclusion is: there isabsence and imagination in gender representations of Chinese women's magazines inthree layers: gender, class and ethnicity. Furthermore, this study explores theideology and social construction behind the absence and imagination. The myth ofnew "middle class", consumer society and "petty bourgeoisie" phenomenon are alsodiscussed.In the ethnography study of women's magazine readers, eight groups are selected forinterviewing and focus group discussion. According to the analysis in NationalAudience of David Morley, this research also reached a conclusion of three differentreading types of women's magazine: dominant, negotiating and opposite reading.The participant observation and focus group interview makes another conclusion: thereading of women's magazines has absence and imagination as well. On the onehand, the meaning and reading function is absent in the magazines;on the other hand,the magazine reading is actually meeting the imaginary consumption of femalereaders and creates them a private space for female readers. In a sense, the "onedimensional women" has appeared in the gender cultural industry all over the world.