I am going to discuss my music magazine from my Foundation Portfolio in terms of representation of young, females from the indie subculture. Representation is the way in which the media interprets a part of reality through the viewpoint of a director and his/her own ideologies. As it currently stands, the general stereotype of young women through the eyes of the media present them as naive, innocent, vulnerable and as the inferior sex as opposed to men, where they are often portrayed as sexual objects. On the other hand, young women can also commonly be portrayed as over-sexualised, but depending on location, may also be 'labelled' as 'sluts', 'chavs' etc.
I really wanted to challenge this conventional representation of women in my music magazine, as I, being a young female, wanted to see this as a chance to portray this particular group of people as role models, as opposed to the sexual objects they are often portrayed to be on the front of magazine covers. This is popularly argued by Laura Mulvey, who states that attractive female figures are used because they look desirable, and this is what attracts the attention of male audiences, as editing often focuses on the skinny, yet curvy figure of a woman, as well as how she is styled and clothed to make them look more revealing. However, looking at music magazines in general - no matter what the genre - it is much more common to see male figures take the lead on the front cover as they become inspirational figures for the audience along with appealing to the female demographic, 'the female gaze'. Thus, this is what initially sparked my interest in having a female model for my front cover as it was so different to anything else already on the market. However, instead of picking a female who had the 'typical' 'model-look' to them, as previously described, I wanted someone who was of a similar demographic as my target audience - someone who they could identify and find self-reflection within. I made my female model wear minimal make-up as I didn't want the images to entirely focus on someone who could be depicted as 'perfect' whilst I wanted to represent to my target audience that it is ok to have imperfections. Additionally, I chose very simple clothing which would not suggest any particular brand to my target audience as I did not want to associate the idea that young women should aspire for a dream of unconditional wealth and materialistic goods. Unlike in popular examples such as 'Top Of The Pops' or 'Billboard' magazines, I also didn't want to sexualise my model, which has quite frequently been seen with the likes of Katy Perry, Madonna or Rihanna in such magazines, where they are styled to wear tight-fitting, skin-revealing clothes and pose in enticing manners, as an attempt, again, to attract the male majority. My model was fully-clothed with only the lower-half of the arms exposed, with a pose which suggested strength and power to female readers, with my model smiling and holding her guitar close to her.
Other examples I analysed such as 'NME' and 'Q' also often focused the image purely on the face of the cover-star, focusing particularly on hair and makeup. I felt by doing so I would have something to hide, whilst by showing the full body of my model, I would know that my readers are able to fully identify the person, whilst examples of close-up shots of the face would suggest the magazine is trying to beautify the star without giving audiences a chance to make a judgement based on the star as a whole - personality included.
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