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Competing Femininities: the Construction of Teen Femininities in Magazine Adverts

2012; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1755-9944

Victoria Cann,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

This paper uses semiotic analysis to identify the ways in which teen femininities are constructed and represented in adverts targeted at teenage girls. It proposes that the relationship between youth and femininity is one that is highly complex, uncovering the differing and often conflicting femininities within advertising aimed at young females. It highlights the ways in which adverts (re)construct teen femininity as a shifting and contradictory identity, one that is distinct from more traditional femininities. It also reflects upon the ways in which postfeminist discourses inform these constructions of femininity in the cultural context of girlhood. By using semiotic analysis, it illuminates the subtleties in the representations of teen femininities within advertisements by Tampax, Charlie Perfume, and Nintendo, encouraging further use of semiotics within contemporary academic study as a means of interrogating nuanced systems of meaning within cultural girlhoods.