Sex, gender and ads : analysing visual images and their social effects

Our paper aims to identify the visual strategies by which heterosexist discourses are (re)produced in display ads published in women’s magazines, in ways which may be transformative as well as reproductive of the western hetero-gendered hegemonic order. The visual workings are approached from a social semiotic point of view, and analysed according Kress and van Leeuwen’s system of analysis (1996)