How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender and sexualisationDue to the feminine, girly nature of my magazine, it is targeted at only girls which someone may say is a bad idea as it restricts the amount of people who will purchase it but I disagree as I think that a lot of other magazines are also gender specific and therefore there is enough of an audience for the genre and style of magazine to sell.

Also, I believe that the celebrity persona is the thing that attracts my audience to the magazine not necessarily the gender of them. My magazine features a female cover model, female names within article cover lines and female secondary leads to advertise articles etc…

My cover artist, Nicki Minaj, is well known as being a powerful, dominant and strong female role model- she is a part of YMCMB- a record label of predominantly male artists yet she has made a real name for herself and girls respect that as she is a strong female role model. My target audience will relate to Nicki Minaj because of seeing her on television, music channels, the internet etc and will look up to her as she has made it big recently.

In an interview with Nicki commented on her sexual image stating,

"I made a conscious decision to try to tone down the sexiness, I want people—especially young girls—to know that in life, nothing is going to be based on sex appeal. You’ve got to have something else to go with that.”

This is an important representation with my magazine because as my target audience goes as young as 8 years old, I didn’t want my model to be sexualised and to give off the wrong impression to young girls.

Age

The age represented by my magazine is young, new, up and coming artists due to the genre of the magazine- Pop.

Artists who are in the public eye and in the charts – contemporary artists – are included in my magazine as they make it fresh and up to date which is what my target audience want to read.

This differs majorly from the age represented in magazines such as NME, Rolling Stones or Kerrang (indie/rock magazines) as having an older man such as Sting or Mick Jagger on the cover would be the ‘cooler’ option whereas having Cher or an older pop singer on the cover of my magazine wouldn’t have the ‘legendary’ look which NME would achieve. By having an older artist as the model, it would just make my magazine look dated.

I have represented my target audience through the clothing which I have chosen to dress my models in. For example, Nicki Minaj’s pink flowing dress and jewelled corset top represents typical ‘princess’ type dress up clothing which younger girls love to wear but it is not a fashion statement- it is a representation of Nicki’s personality.

The clothing I chose for Tulisa’s ‘Star Style’ is more like the clothing which girls would love to wear and buy as it is fashionable and worn by celebrities therefore shown as ‘the in thing’.

ClassMy magazine represents middle class as although my magazine is not overpriced, to purchase a magazine you still need to have that ‘extra’ money because realistically, that £2.40 could be spent on food etc therefore it has to be spare cash that’s not desperately needed for necessities- the person purchasing it would have to go without. For the younger girls, this would be the parents and for the teenagers, their own money. The £2.40 price matches well with my questionnaire results as I know that my target audience would be willing to pay it. The subscription offer on the contents page also represents the social group I target as it offers the discounted price which appeals to a younger audience.

The Pop celebrities such as Nicki Minaj which are included in my magazine are represented as being almost ‘classless’. This is because the clothes they wear are so extravagant and over the top (due to their lifestyles- photo shoots and the media) they are impossible to judge in terms of status and class as their clothes are not a representation of what they earn or what they are portraying, but more of their music and making a statement- Nicki Minaj’s clothes are often very fantasy like- they are not fashionable or to be copied.

In contrast to this, artist Tulisa Contostavlos was often portrayed as slightly ‘chavvy’ as she was born into an extremely low class working background and has worked her way up the class scale from starting in band N-Dubz to becoming solo artist and judge on The X-Factor. She would now be considered as upper class as she has a lot of money and fame which is a good representation to have for younger girl readers of my magazine as they can see what working hard can do and that it is possible to come out of poverty and do well.

Ethnicity

I have expressed ethnic diversity by using a mixed race model as my cover image but also including Caucasian models for other articles. This is so that my magazine represents and attracts people from all different ethnic backgrounds although, predominantly, my target audience is white middle class girls as it would be marketed and distributed in a mainly white area- Britain.

Many mixed race artists are popular in the charts at the moment and this is shown through the dominant placement of Nicki Minaj on my cover page- this is very different from years ago when only white women were associated with pop music.