The Research Of The Male Image In Female Journals

With the enhancement of women’s status in China and the return of female voice andself-consciousness, women’s magazines have occupied half of periodicals market.Apart from awaking women’s self-awareness, they start to observe men with prudenteyes. Targeting at the male image showed in women’s magazines, the paper is to applytheories like feminism and gender stereotypes to analyzing the formation of maleimage.Using content analysis method, the study chooses the " Women of China " magazinefrom2002-2011as the sample; in the meantime, reports involving male image aredivided into figure reports and event reports. By measuring men’s age, occupation,education level, personality, family roles and behavior deeds, the study concludes thatmale image in women’s magazines have an extreme stereotypical tendency. Men inthe figure reports are utopian ones, which have career success, family happiness, andrespect women; on the contrary, those in event reports mostly have negative image,described as betrayer, no sense of responsibility, oppressing women. Overall, thewomen’s magazines fail to show men objectively and comprehensively.It is found that the feminist thoughts and the magazines ’position as female discourseplatform make them focus on defending women’s rights. As a result, in event reports,the magazines often stand in the women’s position, constructing a negative men imageand expressing their criticism of traditional patriarchy. However, women’s magazinesalso accept the stereotype image of men made by traditional patriarchy, combiningwith the idea of feminism to construct an ideal men model. This paper points that,though based on feminism theory, women’s magazines fail to jump out of the barriersof traditional patriarchal thinking. For the description of gender, they are still subjectto the double impact of feminism and traditional patriarchy, and this is precisely thecause of extreme stereotypical tendency of male image that showed in the women’smagazines.