The construction of women and men in a fashion magazine : A qualitative study from a gender perspective

The aim of this study was to examine how men and women were portrayed in a fashion magazine through time. Magazines convey pictures of gender through both text and image, which subconsciously affects us in the daily life. The study examines a total of 17 reportages from the year 2008 and 2018. A critical discourse analysis constitutes the study’s methodological framework, combined with a semiotic analysis. After I separately examined men and women in the fashion magazine Damernas värld, I compared them to get a result of how the magazine portrayed the genders in different ways. The differences were relatively big in how the magazine portrayed women in 2008 and 2018. There were also a noticeable difference in how the magazine portrayed men in the different periods. The results show that the way women were portrayed in 2008, were similar to how the magazine portrayed men in 2018. There were also similarities in the portrayal of men in 2008 to women in 2018. The result indicates that the magazine followed existing cultural gender norms in 2008, but has taken a different path in 2018