Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Communications - Mass Media, grade: 94%, Communication University of China (Institute of Communication Studies), course: Theories of Communication, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine and criticize the representation of female body image by mass media. For decades the bodies of women have been tailored to highlight products and services by advertisers and owners of the media as a means of generating capital gains. This tailoring, has led to what many have come to accept as the ‘ideal image of beauty’ that every woman should endeavor to achieve. This paper continues the discussion on a topic that is widely and frequently discussed. The theoretical framework that this paper employs is based on one of the most applauded theory in communication studies; The Political Economy of Communication and Media theory, which was first coined by Dallas William Smythe. This theory is pertinent to understand the presence of the commercial forces behind creating and maintaining this ideal body image, particularly by advertisers in mass media. The form of mass media that this paper concentrates on is women’s magazine, with specific focus on advertisements regarding beauty and cosmetic products/services. Additionally, case studies in the US and China are used to depict the influence mass media representation of female body image on women.

This intriguing book applies Critical Discourse Analysis to a range of South Asian women’s lifestyle magazines, exposing the disconnection between the magazines’ representations of South Asian women and the lived realities of the target audience. The author challenges the notion that discourses of freedom and choice employed by women’s magazines are emancipatory, demonstrating instead that the version of feminism on offer is a commodified form which accords with the commercial aims of the publications. McLoughlin demonstrates that whilst British magazines present women in the East as the exotic and culturally superior ‘Other’, women in India are encouraged to emulate Western women to signify their engagement with globalization and modernity. She uses data from focus groups carried out in both countries to illustrate the interpretive frameworks and multivocality of participants’ attitudes, experiences and beliefs. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and researchers of Language and Linguistics, Women’s Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies.

The Media and Body Image draws together literature from sociology, gender studies, and psychology; brings together new empirical work on both media representations and audience responses; and offers a broad discussion of this topic in the context of socio-cultural change, gender politics, and self-identity.

This edited volume provides new perspectives on how shame is experienced and transformed within digital worlds and Industry 4.0. The editors and authors discuss how individuals and organisations can constructively transform shame at work, in professional and private contexts, and with regard to socio-cultural lifestyle changes, founded in digitalisation and Industry 4.0. The contributions in this volume enable researchers and practitioners alike to unlock the topic of shame and its specifics in the highly dynamic and rapidly changing times to explore this emotion in depth in connection with remote workplaces, home office, automated realities and smart systems, or digitalised life- and working styles. By employing transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives, the volume further discusses shame in the context of new lifestyles, religion, gender, sexual suppression, mental illness, and the nature of citizenship. Researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of industrial and organisational psychology, positive psychology, organisational studies, future studies, health and occupational science and therapy, emotion sciences, management, leadership and human resources will find the contributions highly topical, insightful and applicable to practice. Fresh, timely, thought-provoking with each turn of the page, this impressive volume explores shame in today’s world. Moving beyond the simple “guilt is good; shame is bad” perspective, authors from diverse disciplines examine adaptive and maladaptive aspects of shame in the context of contemporary issues (e.g., social media use, COVID-19) via multiple cultural and social lenses. Aptly named, Shame 4.0 is a treasure trove of rich ideas ripe for empirical study – a blueprint for the next generation of research on this complex and ubiquitous emotion. Bravo! --June Tangney, PhD, University Professor and Professor of Psychology, George Mason University, USA Uncovering Shame - To a much greater extent than other emotions like anger, grief, and fear, until recently most shame in modern societies has been hidden from sight. The text you see in this book is one of the steps that is being taken to make it more visible and therefore controllable. -- Thomas Scheff, Prof. Emeritus Department of Sociology, UCSB, Santa Bararbara, Ca.

Fully revised and updated, Body Image 4th Edition provides a comprehensive summary of research on body image in men, women, and children drawing together research findings from the fields of psychology, sociology, and gender studies. The new edition presents all the latest research on body image including work on technology and body image, interventions to reduce body dissatisfaction, and links between body image, BMI, and clothing availability. Including data from interviews and focus groups with men, women, and children who have spoken about body image and its impact on the rest of their lives, the book explores a range of important contemporary issues, including the effects of social media and selfie-taking on body image, the work of activists and academics who are trying to change how the fashion industry presents women’s bodies, and new work investigating impacts of whole-body scanning technology and game-play avatars on appearance concern. Reflecting the direction of research on body image from a range of disciplines since the previous edition, the book also includes an increased focus on body image in men, looking at studies on pressures to be more muscular and toned, and evaluating the possible impacts on health-related behaviours such as exercise and body-related drug use. The only sole-authored text in the field, and integrating work from several disciplines, this is essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, sociology, computing science, sport and exercise science, and gender studies, with an interest in reducing body dissatisfaction in men, women and children.

Challenging Images of Women and the Media: Reinventing Women's Lives, edited by Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell, collects fifteen articles addressing the status of women through an examination of depictions of women in the media. This in-depth study shows how mixed messages from the media muddle attempts at breaking the "glass screen," causing women to constantly question their role in global culture. With cake ads followed by diet commercials, the media's depiction of women is both confusing and contradictory. While more and more women have begun to contribute to the media as respected anchors, talk show hosts, and commentators, these portrayals are often counteracted by music videos and reality television shows such as Jersey Shore. This collection seeks to analyze these depictions and their effects on women and culture. The contributors to this anthology hail from such diverse locations as Japan, Australia, Pakistan, India, China, Bulgaria, and the United States. With this global focus, Challenging Images of Women in the Media scrutinizes issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality through a study of gendered media portrayals. By challenging the status quo of media images, the contributors to this essential volume invite a dialogue about women's lives.

Women's lives have changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century: reduced fertility and the removal of formal barriers to their participation in education, work and public life are just some examples. At the same time, women are under-represented in many areas, are paid significantly less than men, continue to experience domestic violence and to bear the larger part of the burden in the domestic division of labour. Women in 2000 may have many more choices and opportunities than they had a hundred years ago, but genuine equality between men and women remains elusive. This unique, illustrated history discusses a wide range of topics organised into four parts: the life course - the experience of girlhood, marriage and the ageing process; the nature of women's work, both paid and unpaid; consumption, culture and transgression; and citizenship and the state.

This timely and thought-provoking collection explores the ways in which psychological science interacts with and addresses gender across varied subdisciplines in the field, from a feminist viewpoint. A particular aim of this volume is to move the conversation of gender in psychology beyond a difference-only paradigm. Veteran and emerging feminist scholars survey the handling of sex and gender issues across psychology, and describe how feminist perspectives and methodologies can and should be applied to enhance the field itself, but also in the service of social justice in the various cultures of corporations, academia, and the global stage. Contributions span theoretical advances, latest empirical findings, and real-world advocacy, with instructive and illuminating first-person accounts detailing challenges and rewards of feminist scholarship and practice in psychology. Throughout the volume, chapters document a dynamic field in its evolution from the traditional, two-dimensional study of gender-based differences to concerted multidisciplinary approaches, to cutting edge feminist theoretical and methodological advances such as intersectionality to understand gender in context. The volume is divided into three distinct sections. The first covers current theory and research in psychological science that considers gender beyond a difference-only paradigm. Then, leading feminist scholars reflect upon their own experiences in their respective subdisciplines. Finally, the third section explores innovative best practices and applications for feminist psychological science. Highlights of the coverage: • Beyond difference: Gender as a quality of social settings. • Adventures in feminist health psychology: Teaching about and conducting feminist psychological science. • Mind the thigh gap? Bringing feminist psychological science to the masses. • Feminist psychologists and institutional change in universities. With its stimulating compilation of theories, research, and applications, Feminist Perspectives On Building A Better Psychological Science of Gender is one of the most forward-thinking and innovative treatments of the field in recent years. It is a significant and important text for all psychologists, women’s and gender studies specialists, social science researchers, and all those interested in using evidence-based psychological science to create a more just and equitable world.

This is an open access book. The 4th International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange (ICLACE 2023) will be held on May 19–21, 2023 in Hangzhou, China. Culture includes language, which is a special cultural phenomenon. For culture, most scholars agree that it mainly includes two aspects: material culture and spiritual culture. Specific examples to show cultural phenomena will be of great benefit to our understanding. Some examples of material culture are listed here: Indian women wear saris, Japanese like to eat sashimi, and Chinese like to shake hands when meeting each other. These are various manifestations of material culture in different nations. Language is the mode of transmission of culture. Language is one of the most important ways of thinking and cultural exchange of human beings, which is actually the manifestation of the formation and transmission of culture. Because of thinking, human beings gradually create culture in the continuous social practice, and then spread their national culture to each other in the continuous language exchange. Since ancient times, art and culture have been going hand in hand and complementing each other. On the one hand, art is an important connotation and component of culture, and the progress of art is the driving force of cultural development. On the other hand, culture is the source and content of art, and the prosperity of culture is the key to improve the level of art. On the other hand, culture is the source and content of art, and the prosperity of culture is the key to improving the level of art. Therefore, whether it is culture or art, it is not only a symbol of an era, a representation of people’s life style, but also a guide to the direction of social development. The relationship between language, art and cultural communication is a hot topic for many scholars to study at present. Therefore, an academic conference is set up for authors to discuss related research issues and exchange new ideas, hoping that scholars can burst out more excellent and valuable ideas in this conference. ICLACE 2023 is to bring together innovative academics and industrial experts in the field of Literature, Art and Cultural Exchange research to a common forum. The primary goal of the conference is to provide a platform for scientists, scholars, and engineers from all over the world to present ongoing research activities, fostering the research and business relations and promoting scientific information interchange and cooperation between all the participants.

Scholarly engagement with the magazine form has, in the last two decades, produced a substantial amount of valuable research. Authored by leading academic authorities in the study of magazines, the chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Magazine Research not only create an architecture to organize and archive the developing field of magazine research, but also suggest new avenues of future investigation. Each of 33 chapters surveys the last 20 years of scholarship in its subject area, identifying the major research themes, theoretical developments and interpretive breakthroughs. Exploration of the digital challenges and opportunities which currently face the magazine world are woven throughout, offering readers a deeper understanding of the magazine form, as well as of the sociocultural realities it both mirrors and influences. The book includes six sections: -Methodologies and structures presents theories and models for magazine research in an evolving, global context. -Magazine publishing: the people and the work introduces the roles and practices of those involved in the editorial and business sides of magazine publishing. -Magazines as textual communication surveys the field of contemporary magazines across a range of theoretical perspectives, subjects, genre and format questions. -Magazines as visual communication explores cover design, photography, illustrations and interactivity. -Pedagogical and curricular perspectives offers insights on undergraduate and graduate teaching topics in magazine research. -The future of the magazine form speculates on the changing nature of magazine research via its environmental effects, audience, and transforming platforms.