Women’s Studies J111:  Women in Culture
Response 7 & 8
Due 8 December 2000

Your last assignment (with the exception of the research paper) is due on Friday, December 8.  This double response will be worth 50 points total.  The response should be about 1000-2000 words, and should be posted in the digital drop box (be sure to use send file, by the way, not add file) by midnight on Friday, 8 December.

For this response, you’ll need the magazines that yea so many weeks ago I asked you to buy, remember?  Since that was really quite some time ago—here’s that message:  For this assignment, we'll be looking at groups of magazines—you'll need one magazine that's geared towards a general readership (like Time or Newsweek), one that's geared predominately towards a female readership (like Women's Day or Cosmopolitan, and one that's geared towards a predominately male readership (like Sports Illustrated or Men's Journal. You don't have to buy these magazines, although I would recommend it if you possibly can, since it would make your work easier. If you're strapped for cash, though, you can use the periodicals collection of your local public library (which will probably have more variety in popular magazines than most academic libraries).

Now, flip through your magazines, just looking at the advertising.  What conclusions can you draw about women and men’s roles in the culture based on seeing advertising marketed towards both gender specific groups and towards non-gender-specific groups?  Think about some of the following questions:

• What images do you see in these magazines of women and men?
• What environments do they appear in?
• What roles appear to be considered appropriate for people of both gender?
• What other people are they with?
• What is their race and ethnicity?
• What products are marketed mostly towards men?  Towards women?