Gender and the Media
1. Edition November 2006
304 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Written in a clear and accessible style, with lots of examples from
Anglo-American media, Gender and the Media offers a critical
introduction to the study of gender in the media, and an up-to-date
assessment of the key issues and debates.
Eschewing a straightforwardly positive or negative assessment
the book explores the contradictory character of contemporary
gender representations, where confident expressions of girl power
sit alongside reports of epidemic levels of anorexia among young
women, moral panics about the impact on men of idealized
representations of the 'six-pack', but near silence about the
pervasive re-sexualization of women's bodies, along with a growing
use of irony and playfulness that render critique extremely
difficult.
The book looks in depth at five areas of media - talk shows,
magazines, news, advertising, and contemporary screen and paperback
romances - to examine how representations of women and men are
changing in the twenty-first century, partly in response to
feminist, queer and anti-racist critique.
Gender and the Media is also concerned with the
theoretical tools available for analysing representations. A range
of approaches from semiotics to postcolonial theory are discussed,
and Gill asks how useful notions such as objectification, backlash,
and positive images are for making sense of gender in today's
Western media. Finally, Gender and the Media also raises
questions about cultural politics - namely, what forms of critique
and intervention are effective at a moment when ironic quotation
marks seem to protect much media content from criticism and when
much media content - from Sex and the City to revenge adverts - can
be labelled postfeminist.
This is a book that will be of particular interest to students
and scholars in gender and media studies, as well as those in
sociology and cultural studies more generally.
1. Gender and the Media
2. Analysing Gender in Media Texts
3. Advertising and Postfeminism
4. News, Gender and Journalism
5. Talk Shows
6. Gender in Magazines
7. Postfeminist Romance
empirical research projects provides an excellent and up-to-date
account of the relationship of gender to and with the media."
Sociology
"This book is extremely well written, which adds to its
excellence as a text that combines an expert synthesis of the
literature and Gill's own insightful analysis. Gill's book is
suitable as a core text for any media studies, cultural studies and
gender studies course as an update of Van Zoonen's 1994 text, since
it contains an analysis of a diverse body of work made suitable for
undergraduate level thanks to Gill's accessible writing
style."
Gender and Education
"Brilliant - a must-read for all media educators."
Newsletter of the Media Education Association
"Gender and the Media is excellent throughout and
confronts the reader with an embarras de richesse of
insights."
Feminism and Psychology
"Gender and the Media is a lively and stimulating read
and works as an excellent introduction for students in the field of
media and gender studies. It is also a grown-up book that moves
beyond the current feminist preoccupation with 'girls', to a
renewed focus on 'women' in their infinite variety. I strongly
recommend it."
European Journal of Women?s Studies
"A new masterpiece in the field of feminist media studies.
Gender and the Media sheds new light on where we have been,
and where we are going. It will be a staple of all media studies
and women's studies classes for at least the next decade."
Andrea Press, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
"This is a thorough, lucid study which includes a good deal of
new and original material, presenting it with admirable theoretical
fluency yet in a clear and student-friendly way."
Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths College
"Rosalind Gill's book is an invaluable contribution to the field
of gender and media research. Well written and engaging, it offers
an overview of contemporary representations of gender, a sense of
the main theoretical and methodological approaches at issue and a
grounding in the cultural politics of the field."
Cynthia Carter, Cardiff University
Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at the Centre
for Cultural, Media and Creative Industries Research at King's
College London