An Analysis On The Media Image Of "3S Lady"

In August2007, the Ministry of Education and the National Language Committee jointly issued the Language Situation in China2006report,"3S Lady" as a new Chinese vocabulary popped into the public vision, As time went by, and the concept of "3S Lady" became richer as well. It gradually means a high education, high income, and high age of single female. This image became the focus of mass media, and been constantly stereotyped and demonized by the agenda setting and image construction.This paper chooses media image of "3S Lady" as research object, and launched the thorough analysis to it from the perspectives of communications, social psychology, cultural studies and psychology etc. The paper firstly gives the concept of "3S Lady", discusses this phenomenon under the environment of the development of society, points out that the main factors of "3S Lady" group are the development of urbanization, the changes of marriage law, mate gradient and diversification of marriage view.Then, using the agenda-setting of the communication theory as the main analytical tool, combined with the traditional newspaper The Beijing News, People Website and TV dramas as samples, to validate the image construction of the "3S Lady". Through specific studies of news reports from2006to2011, this paper finds out that "3S Lady" has become an important topic in the mass media. In fact,"3S Lady" was widely reported by the mass media and given priority agenda which related to them. Imperceptibly, their image popped into public’s eyes. At last, the paper summarizes three types of images which have been constructed by mass media, those are "material","critical" and "waiting for MR.RIGHT".Furthermore, under the frame of communication and sociology, the author re-examine the deviations about the image of "3S Lady" which constructed by the media. From the perspective of communication, using the cultural power and discourse resources, mass media forms a public impression of the"3S Lady" through a variety of special cases, and eventually accumulates into a stereotype. In the television hit shows, the media, by virtue of their unique technical advantages, makes "3S Lady" into the "male gaze", obviously in a more circuitous and covert way. And in a variety of online forums, the"3S Lady" is given the label of "moral turpitude" by the male users. From the sociological perspective,"3S Lady" is named by patriarchal culture, it hints strong patriarchal ideology. In this ideology, the value of female is simply measured by her marriage. In addition, the main reason of the excessive coverage of "3S Lady" is the patriarchal ideology which is trying to get "3S Lady" return to the social norms of male discourse. Though the "left men" have a larger scale than "3S Lady" in real life, it turns out the blind spots of media coverage due to the dominant position of the male culture.Finally, back to the context of media, the image of "3S Lady" which mass media constructed is far different from its social connotations. This deviation is not only cause to the resistance of "3S Lady", also led to the crisis of young women’s self-perception. Due to the commercial nature, the mass media often stimulates the public eye just for the purpose of profits. However the mass media must face to their social responsibilities, report the phenomenon of "3S Lady" in a balanced and objective way, so as to promote gender equality and social development.