Unnamed men and available women: connecting the popular, the personal and the political in racialised hyperheterosexual representations of women in South African magazines
OUTPUT TYPE: Conference or seminar papers
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2008
TITLE AUTHOR(S): N.Sanger
KEYWORDS: GENDER EQUALITY, MAGAZINES, MEDIA SECTOR, WOMEN
DEPARTMENT: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES)
Intranet: HSRC Library: shelf number 5154
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/5529
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/5529
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2008
TITLE AUTHOR(S): N.Sanger
KEYWORDS: GENDER EQUALITY, MAGAZINES, MEDIA SECTOR, WOMEN
DEPARTMENT: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES)
Intranet: HSRC Library: shelf number 5154
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/5529
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/5529
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
The aim of this presentation is to reflect on the linkages between the popular, the personal and the political. I do this through interrogating the ways that compulsory heteropatriarchy establishes women's representation as hyperheterosexual for an unnamed and unmarked, but clearly, masculine audience in a select group of mainstream magazines. Using a feminist methodology foregrounding the intersectionalities between gender, race and sexuality, I argue that hyperheterofeminine performances are racialised with few exceptions, white femininities are presented as normative, and black femininities as 'other' and exotic. If heteronormativity and white normalcy determines women's representation in the media, a space which relies on repetition in order to establish normativity in the popular imagination, then the struggle for women's bodily integrity, freedom and equality, needs to be more aggressively pursued in the current South African climate.-
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