Horan och madonnan
En kvalitativ analys över kvinnans gestaltning i moderna livsstilsmagasins personporträtt
GenderSemioticsDiscourseLifestyle magazineImageELLELOVEGenusSemiotikDiskursLivsstilsmagasinBildELLELOVE
Lifestyle magazines portray women in different manners and have an influence on how media consumers create self-images. The importance of knowing how different visual representation of the female acts out in magazines with large target audiences is therefore of weight for the magazines? readers to understand. This thesis analyze how the two lifestyle magazines ELLE and LOVE portrays women in images and how they in turn create ideal images of women.The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative analysis of 5 images from each magazine that represents the magazines artistic styles. The theories used in this study are semiotic image analysis and visual text analysis viewed from a gender- and discourse perspective.The conclusion of this thesis is that ELLE portrays women as strong, happy and feminine, with at tendency towards androgyny, while LOVE describes women as inferior and sexual objects constructed for the male gaze. The magazines, which belong to a classic- respectively a post-modern genre within lifestyle magazines, thereby switch places with each other and becomes each other?s counterparts.