So after class, I have something that I was thinking about that I would like to share. I think it is unfair to look at these magazines as examples of negative hegemonic influences in our society. I don't think they are a main, or even secondary, perpetuator of negative body images in our culture. They are way to over the top and unrealistic to make people feel guilty about their bodies. In my mind they are manuals. If I opened the magazine and saw flabby individuals lifting tiny amounts of weight, I would not pay any credence to the advice I offered. The advertisements play to the audience that is most likely to be reading the magazine - men that are looking to improve their bodies. Therefore, it makes sense that most of the advertisements are of a nature that will help those individuals reach their goals.
The only concession I can make is that the sexual enhancement ads most definitely enforce hegemonic masculinity. There really is not any excuse for those, it's pretty obvious that the advertisers are trying desperately to appeal a target audience of a pretty creepy individuals.
However, those ads are secondary. Of the magazine I searched through, 72% are for dietary supplements that help provide the body with the nutrients it needs to grow. How the ads are constructed is just marketing; those companies emphasize transformation and make the reader feel inferior simply to sell product. Pretty much every ad agency is guilty of these same crimes.
I was walking through a store the other day and picked up a magazine entitled "Truckin," just to see if it contained pictures full of normal trucks. It did not. It was full of crazy trucks, cars, and other things. All the pictures in there were of automobiles that no average everyday person would own, much less drive to work. It was not full of the typical trucks that we see on the road; it was full of tricked out, bright, flashy trucks. There might be articles in that magazine about normal trucks, but the ads and pictures were of something completely unrealistic to the average person. Just like the pictures of the men in Muscle and Fitness or Flex.
I can see the analogy you are making between the 'excessive' bodies of muscle-building males and the 'tricked-out' trucks. And maybe there really is no harm in advertising bodies that for many men may be unobtainable. But I definitely see harm in women's magazines that send mixed messages about obtaining an ideal body on one hand, and trying to have a positive self-image. If you think about the extremes of 'megarexia' (feeling that you can never be big enough) and 'anorexia' (feeling that you can never be small enough), both are issues of extremes. I cannot help but think that such extremes may be fueled by some of the magazines we saw in class.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Matt's comparison of trucks and the men in "Flex" style magazines. No one is going to buy a magazine that features average looking men and women when those men and women are the "product" that is being sold. However, I think that the extremes of "Flex" and "Muscle and Fitness" are unnecessary. The men in "Men's Fitness" are much more realistic looking, while remaining muscular and non-average. They are what one could realistically achieve using the techniques in the magazine without the use of steroids. And while we as adults can look at those men and seperate ourselves from an unrealistic image, I don't think it is easy for youth to do so. I have to admit that as a teenager I would buy "Muscle and Fitness" to learn how to exercise and having always been skinny (119 my senior year, thankfully I have gained some weight!) it made me feel somewhat ineferior that I knew I could never be as muscular regardless of how much I trained.
ReplyDeleteHi Matt, I definitely agree with you and that was something that I was thinking about throughout our discussion as far as the audience elicited by Muscle and Fitness magazines. I don't think it is average, every day people picking up these magazines. It is the men that are interested in body building, weight lifting, supplements, etc. And I would hope that the majority of that audience know that the men on the pages of these magazines are unnatural and for the most part very unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteShape on the other hand is a magazine that I think a very general population of women read. I think we should be careful in looking at these two magazines as one in the same as far as textual analysis is concerned. I read one of your comments on Kallie's blog about there being a middle ground- something between obesity and anorexia. I thought it was good you brought that up. There needs to be a push on healthy lifestyles emphasizing not just being thin, but the healthful aspects of exercise such as cardiovascular health, prevention of diabetes, high cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.