The Politics of Gender and Advertising Photography in Moroccan Women Magazines: A Case Study of Citadine, Femme du Maroc and Lalla Fatima

Abstract

Media can be considered as a way of transmitting information all over the world. Nowadays, media have become a dominant feature in our everyday life and we have become passive receivers. The power of media made it impossible for the audience to react and as long as our needs are fulfilled no one asks for more. Stuart Hall, in this effect, came with what he calls the ‘’ideological effect’’ to suggest ‘’how individuals receive and use media.’’1 He suggests that advertisements should be constructed depending on the culture of the place of diffusion. In that way the audience may identify with the ad and understand the message sent.2 The visual material that the media provide us with may have a great effect on our perception of things which can result in a fragmentation of our beliefs and personal values. Words used by the media organization convey so different messages that the audience finds itself obliged to decode them to have the right to belong to the mediatic world ; likewise, the images that the media use have not the same effect on everyone of us as they are seen as symbols meaning differently depending on the given situation. Now we know that media have a heavy impact on who we are and who we want to be depending on the images transmitted and the messages conveyed ; and we know that we are, either by consent or not, confronted to many kinds of mediatic communication that make of us passive consumers easy to control and then easy to be changeable in front of any tempting image offered by the media ; and more importantly know what the concept of gender means, we are going to link these elements suggesting that while masculinity is seen as the fact of being man, femininity is seen as a series of stereotypical images defining the role of the woman in the past.3 Images play nowadays a very important role in the understanding of ourselves and that of those surrounding us. Everything we do or do not depend on images we encounter every now and then. To go deeper into the subject we should bear in mind that any image, either presented in magazines, newspapers, or television, carries with it a message to the viewer. But the decoding of this ‘’symbolic message’’ as Michael Forrest explains, remains associated with the social environment we live in yet, constructed in a way to be understood as wished.4 Turning our attention to a more specific kind of images, we will try to tackle the gendered image relying in its understanding on this bounding of the image considering it linguistically as a sign and the object of representation considering it as a discourse. As Forrester meticulously explains, the image that is presented, no matter where, targets someone. A message is sent through the image from a person to another even if it is done implicitly. Forrester concludes his statement by describing the image as being ‘’a sign trying to pretend it isn’t a sign.’’5 Methodology of Research Selection of Advertisements In this study, almost a total of 25 magazine advertisements are coded from three different women's magazines. 1 or 2 magazine ads coded from each of the three magazines, which include Citadine, Femme du Maroc, and Lalla Fatima. Since Citadine magazine launched by Moroccan press group Caractéres in 1996, and 3David Gauntlett, Media, Gender and Identity : An Introduction, (London and New York : Routledge, 2002), p. 9-10. 4Michael Forrester, Psychology of the Image, (London : Routledge, 2000), p.8. 5Ibid., p.11

the king Mohamed VI ascended to the throne in 1999, in addition to the new family code which is appeared in 2003, I choose to deal with magazines form 1996 till 2010. Coding System The coding system looks at many different aspects of the advertisement. The categories that are coded include percent of face shown, gaze, expression, body pose, weight, body part focus, degree of clothing, type of clothing, product type, and whether or not the ad is seen as respectful towards women. Questionnaire In my thesis Iam going to deal with questionnaire in order to enhance and support the analysis that I have tackled. Approach The aim of this research is to show how media control our perception of gender and the techniques used for that purpose. It is to show the audience’s involvement in the construction of gender stereotypes. To reach this aim, this research has been divided into four parts. The first part is devoted to the different theories that would simplify the understanding of gender in relation to media. Different theories are dealt with and explained from media and its representation including magazine ads of men and women and their role in constructing the gender misconception to their role in asserting one’s identity stopping over the different techniques of advertisement. The three other parts are analytical in which pictures and advertisements of women in the second part, of men in the third part, and the last part will deal with the data obtained in the quetionnnaires and the analysis of the findings.