Feminism

As a perspective for looking at media texts, feminists would see most media output as being the product of a patriarchal or male dominated order, aimed at dis-em-powering women. Feminism was the response to society's assumptions that women should be subservient to men; until the emergence of feminism women were treated almost as objects, passive agents in a male world.

Laura Mulvey created a theory called the 'Male Gaze', these two magazine's Rolling Stone and Q, which show Lily Allen and Megan Fox in revealing or no clothes. This leads to assumption that this will make men buy the magazines, by just what is on the front cover of them 'objectification'.



Megan Fox on the front cover of Rolling Stone.



Lily Allen on the front cover of Q.

Mulvey argues that people look at things in two different ways,

• Voyeurism- turning the represental figure into an object so that it becomes increasingly beautiful.
• Fetishism- Cult of the female movie star, celebrated for her looks but considered an object and often treated as one.

Beth Ditto on the front cover of NME.

NME completely went in the opposite direction to objectification, and shot the cover which shows that these magazines should be about the music that the people actually make, not about the gorgeous women involved. Also Megan Fox is not even a music artist, she is completely just a figure on the front of the magazine to make it sell more widely.