South African Magazine Research Articles

Uitbeelding van die vroulike rol in advertensies in Suid-Afrikaanse vrouelydskrifte

In South Africa there is growing concern regarding the manner in which women are portrayed in advertisements. Up to now no studies have been undertaken in support or otherwise of this concern. However, theories of mass communications support the fact that advertising is powerful enough to prescribe and reflect the existing values and norms of the society. Advertising is also a form of communication of persuasion and influence. By means of techniques of persuasion, views and behaviour can be influenced in a direction determined by the initiator. These techniques determined include typecasting, an important element of the study which was under taken. The purpose of the study was to determine the manner in which South African women are portrayed in South African women's magazines. For this purpose it was necessary to review the role of women in Western Society and to determine which historical factors had influenced this role. The hypotheses for the analysis were derived from literature and research relating to the portrayal of women in American advertising, and from South African seminar material and a few articles on this subject which could be located. The most significant finding is that women in South-African magazine advertisements are depicted relatively free from stereotyped images and traditional ideas. This reflects the fact that marketers and advertisers have accepted the changing values and norms relating to the role of women.

Roles portrayed by children in South African magazine advertising

This paper summarizes the findings of four studies executed from 1983 to 2003 todetermine how marketers in South Africa portray children in magazine advertisements.This longitudinal study reports on aspects such as the incidence of child models in theadvertisements, the roles they depict and whether there are differences as to the wayin which marketers use children from different races in the same advertisements. Aconceptual framework or marketing communications model is presented to illustratehow marketers can use the child as a substitute communicator in various roles to conveythe firm’s advertising message. The relevance of the findings for South African marketersis highlighted and suggestions for further research are proposed.

Female gender representation in selected South African magazines

Background: There has been an increase in the number of women’s magazines in South Africa, which also contributes to the country’s economic growth and development.Objective: Magazines serve as a source of entertainment and information and they cater for readers interested in learning more about what features in society and even globally, which underscores the importance of quality and gender-sensitive material. The portrayal of females in magazines surfaced as a source of interest in the light of women’s liberation and gender equity.Method/Results: The purpose of this study was to explore the language and content of selected South African women’s magazines. The objectives were to determine how language and content are used to represent females in selected South African women’s magazines; and determine the professional editors’, journalists’ and readers’ perceptions of the representation of females in the selected English women’s magazines.Conclusion: A qualitative case study design was used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from the selected participants. The corpus spanned three professional journalists and nine readers, including seven females and five males, purposefully selected, who participated. The data collected through interviews were analysed and thematically discussed. Readers’ reception aesthetics were used, in conjunction with feminist literary criticism, as theoretical lenses.Contribution: The study found that sexualisation and objectification continue especially in advertisements, but that much progress has been made in magazines to represent women as powerful and significant.

“Africa's First Woman Press Photographer”: Mabel Cetu's Photographs in Zonk!

“Africa's First Woman Press Photographer”: Mabel Cetu's Photographs in <i>Zonk!</i>

Technologies of Visibility

Technologies of Visibility

Rise and #Fall: The unsuspended revolution

Abstract This article utilizes a multimodal media analysis similar to Parker that takes place on three levels: (1) it connects an interview completed by professor Habib in a 2014 issue of the South African magazine publication Destiny Man, (2) with the events captured in photography of the 2015 #FeesMustFall protest as well as (3) the events recorded an Internet documentary entitled Decolonising Wits. This critical analysis utilizes a psychosocial perspective showing strong links between these events that led to the proliferation of decolonization in South African academic institutions as a result. The #FeesMustFall protests at Wits University is seen as a response to the inegalitarian modes of discourse present in the analysed interview, and the selected scenes of real events in the documentary film. This article includes direct quotes from that written interview, photography from the #Feesmustfall events, and links to specific scenes in the documentary film in order to provide a multimodal approach to analysing psychosocial politics in the media.

Destiny overshadowed: masculine representations and feminist implications in a South African men’s magazine

ABSTRACT This article offers a multimodal discourse analysis of the representation of masculinity and its relation to femininity in Destiny Man, a popular South African magazine for men. The approach taken looked at the content in the magazine and identified themes that were present in most of the issues. Through the lens of hegemonic masculinity and feminism, discursive practices that Destiny Man employs when discussing issues of gender relations are explored. Furthermore, these discursive practices are also considered in the context of race in post-apartheid South Africa. To understand how women are spoken about and represented in the man-targeted magazine, three articles and five images published in the eight 2014 issues were analysed using a multimodal text analysis (Lindy). We conclude that the discourses presented in the magazine tend to portray women as needy, emotionally dependent and possessing limited agency in relationships. We argue that these portrayals have implications for man/woman relations in contemporary South Africa and require a rethinking in order to advance both feminist and masculinity studies.

Against the law: Arthur Maimane’s pioneering hard-boiled black detective fiction in Drum Magazine

ABSTRACTThis article sets out to re-examine, and recover, South Africa’s first hard-boiled crime fiction created by a black writer: Arthur Maimane’s crime stories published in Drum magazine in 1953. Maimane wrote a series of stories about a black PI, styled on the American hard-boiled genre for Drum, a popular South African magazine aimed at a black audience, known for its borrowing from American popular culture. Mamaine’s fiction has been widely dismissed by generations of Drum critics, as “derivative” “imitation.” Repositioning the stories within the broader context of crime fiction suggests quite a different reading. Maimane’s stories reveal how tensions between the genre and laws in apartheid South Africa resulted in radical alterations to the hard boiled formula. Since Maimane’s stories precede Chester Himes’s African-American novels, they should be recognized as a pioneering example of black crime fiction that demonstrates the relationship between race and genre.

The Modern Girl and the Lady: Negotiating Modern Womanhood in a South African Magazine, 1910–1920

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of how the definition of the ideal ‘modern’ woman changed in South Africa for white middle- and upper-class women. Many of the changes in the definition of the ideal woman were appropriated from Britain, but the definition also differed. In general, these differences have been overlooked by academia as there is a prevailing assumption that South African women’s views on gender either reflected British trends or differed only in terms of the suffrage movement and racial views. I argue that studying popular magazines and literature at the time will provide a clearer indication of how women negotiated their roles as these are polyphonic texts that do not merely reflect one author’s view. Using an intertextual approach this study looks at a popular magazine from the time, the South African Lady’s Pictorial and Home Journal, as well as several of the South African novels reviewed in the magazine to trace the conversation over the period in question. Through discourse analysis, major trends and changes in those trends have been identified to show how white English-speaking women defined womanhood at a time when there were great changes and challenges to gender norms.

Visual Representations of Black Hair in Relaxer Advertisements: The Extent to Which It Shapes Black Women’s Hair Preferences and Attitudes towards Hair Alteration

This article focuses on how the black body, particularly black women’s hair, is represented in advertisements for hair relaxers published in True Love, a South African magazine directed at black women. Using qualitative visual semiotic analysis, this article focuses on the process of dehumanisation through visual representation by paying attention to hair, a highly politicised subject in South Africa. In addition, using pre-group questionnaires and focus-group interviews, the article examines to what extent the images possibly shape hair styling practices of black female readers, aged between 18 and 45, who live in urban areas in South Africa.

The fathers of Destiny: Representations of fatherhood in a popular South African magazine

This study utilised textual analysis to characterise the representation of fatherhood in the eight issues of Destiny Man magazine published in 2014. Stories that pertained to fatherhood and that were related to aspects of contemporary family construction, work, and identity formation were included for detailed text analysis. Our findings suggest that fatherhood is defined by access to wealth, and is inextricably linked to features of modern-day neoliberal capitalism with its bias towards wealth accumulation and economic standards of identity. Additionally, matters such as race and origin seem to be the primary classification criteria when it comes to self-identification as a father figure. From these data, we conclude that the notion of fatherhood is fluid; it changes continuously depending on the social class position of the incumbent male.

A Zambian Town in Colonial Zimbabwe: The 1964 “Wangi Kolia” Strike

AbstractIn March 1964 the entire African labour force at Wankie Colliery, “Wangi Kolia”, in Southern Rhodesia went on strike. Situated about eighty miles south-east of the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, central Africa’s only large coalmine played a pivotal role in the region’s political economy. Described byDrum, the famous South African magazine, as a “bitter underpaid place”, the colliery’s black labour force was largely drawn from outside colonial Zimbabwe. While some workers came from Angola, Tanganyika (Tanzania), and Nyasaland (Malawi), the great majority were from Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Less than one-quarter came from Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) itself. Although poor-quality food rations in lieu of wages played an important role in precipitating female-led industrial action, it also occurred against a backdrop of intense struggle against exploitation over an extended period of time. As significant was the fact that it happened within a context of regional instability and sweeping political changes, with the independence of Zambia already impending. This late colonial conjuncture sheds light on the region’s entangled dynamics of gender, race, and class.

Running Like a Man, Sitting Like a Girl: Visual Enthymeme and the Case of Caster Semenya

Much attention has been given to the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old South African athlete subjected to “sex testing” during the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but far less attention has been given to Semenya's rhetorical response to the media's scrutiny of her body. This essay explores how Semenya's portrait on the cover of You, a prominent South African magazine, employs a visual rhetoric that functions as an enthymeme. I argue that while Semenya hailed audiences to view her as an authentic, feminine self, her visual enthymeme was constrained by medical conceptions of gender. By investigating the Semenya case, I analyze how female athletic bodies are displayed, disciplined, and reinscribed into sexist and racist discourses about gendered athleticism.

Through the looking-glass: Exploring the wonderland of ‘other’ female portrayals in advertising

Research on gender portrayals in advertising are prolific and mostly focus on stereotypical roles. However, there is no previous research report analysing portrayals that fall into the ‘other’ category of female roles. This article aims to provide an outline of female role portrayals in advertising and, importantly, to examine the ‘other’ role category for new portrayals. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on samples of South African magazine and television advertisements. The findings indicate that the stereotypical decorative role was prevalent in magazine advertisements, while in television advertisements the product user was the person most often featured. A detailed analysis of the ‘other’ category in both media revealed four new role portrayals. These roles represent a different view of the modern woman and may be used to differentiate effectively those brands in the media that are cluttered with advertising messages. The research provides directions for future content-analytic studies on the topic of female portrayals in advertising.

Female role portrayal in South African magazine advertisements

Even though women actually fulfil many roles in real life, advertisements targeting femaleconsumers are often accused of depicting women in traditionally stereotypical roles. The purposeof this article is to analyse the visual elements of the roles portrayed by female models in SouthAfrican magazine advertisements. The study on which this article is based has made a uniquecontribution by investigating not only the relationship between the roles portrayed and the ethnicityof the female models, but also the relationship between the product categories advertised andthe ethnicity of the female models. A total of 258 full-page and double-page advertisements weresampled from two issues of nine consumer magazines published in South Africa. The research,using content analysis, found that female models were predominantly portrayed as consumersand as the decorative focal points in advertisements advertising apparel, accessories andpersonal care products. A significant relationship was moreover identified between the productcategories advertised and the ethnicity of the female models

The use of sexual controversy in South African advertising: A pragmatic analysis

This article is based on an investigation of printed South African advertisements in which sexual controversy is deliberately used as a strategy to draw attention. The dataset is a collection of Afrikaans- and English-medium advertisements selected from popular South African magazines published between 2000 and 2010. The purpose of the research is to offer an insight into the nature of controversy as a mechanism in the South African media and to categorise the dataset primarily by means of a pragmatic analysis to identify the implied marketing message. Controversy in the advertisements was associated with themes related to sex, such as nudity, sexism, health and safety issues, and indecent language usage. The research investigated the exploitation of pragmatic instruments, in order to evoke controversy in advertisements, such as the transgression of the conditions governing conversation according to Grice's (1989) Co-operative Principle and the maxims of conversation. A study of controversial advertising may offer a deeper understanding of modern society. As expected, the results indicate that sex still sells and that sexual controversy is by no means fixed or age and culturally bound. Moreover, the character of the advertisements is nowadays very often an intellectual game which requires the target market's cognitive involvement and inter-textual knowledge.

Reunion of Christendom or Ecumenism? Relations between Catholics and Protestants Before Vatican II in the South African Magazine The Southern Cross

The present article examines the relations between Catholics and Protestants in South Africa prior to the Second Vatican Council. It is based on a collection of forty-eight articles dealing with 'non-Catholics' in the weekly Catholic newspaper The Southern Cross between 1949 and 1951. This period was chosen on account of its proximity to the foundation of the World Council of Churches in August 1948 in Amsterdam. After Pope Pius XII's call for the reunion of the church in his radio-message of Christmas 1949 and the release of Ecclesia catholica, the belated response of the Roman Curia to the establishment of the ecumenical movement, subtle changes started to affect Catholic attitudes towards Protestantism in South Africa. More news on the Protestant churches was reported to signal that the Pope's ideal of unity was not beyond reach. The holding of ecumenical gatherings was authorised, with the proviso that no doctrinal compromise should ever be made. The Catholic Church remained a fortress, convinced as it was of being the only recipient of Jesus Christ's promise of redemption, but occasions of dialogue with members of other churches started to multiply. They paved the way for Vatican II's ecumenical breakthrough a decade later.

New women, old messages? Constructions of femininities, race and hypersexualised bodies in selected South African magazines, 2003–2006

This article discusses the ways in which racialised femininities are differently presented as hyper(hetero)sexual in three South African magazines targeting female readers – Femina, Fair Lady and True Love – between 2003 and 2006. I argue that the bodily work women are expected to perform is determined by constructs of race, where women are advised to regulate and control their physical bodies as a means of maintaining (hetero)sexual desirability or becoming (hetero)sexually desirable. I discuss how the racist portrayal of black womanhood in magazine advertisements that target white female readers of Femina and Fair Lady are sexualised in ways that define the black female body as alluring and exotic. My discussion reveals that the privileging of white heterofemininity in all three magazines as normative and ideal, simultaneously defines black women as the embodiment of a racialised (hetero)sexuality – at times mediated by essentialist ideas of Africa – which echoes racist colonial discourse and defines black women as essentially different.

On Not Winning the Nobel Prize

Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of EducationVolume 107, Issue 2 p. 45-50 On Not Winning the Nobel Prize Doris Lessing, Doris LessingSearch for more papers by this author Doris Lessing, Doris LessingSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 December 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7984.2008.00162.xCitations: 2 Doris Lessing grew up in Zimbabwe and dropped out of high school at age 13 to pursue her love of writing. At 15, she published two stories in South African magazines. In 1949, she moved to London and published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing. Noted for her deeply autobiographical fiction, Lessing was named to the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize in 2005 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. She has announced that her 2008 novel, Alfred and Emily, will be her last. This selection is excerpted from Lessing's Nobel acceptance speech which was delivered on December 7, 2007. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation, 2007. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume107, Issue2October 2008Pages 45-50 RelatedInformation

‘There's got to be a man in there’: reading intersections between gender, race and sexuality in South African magazines

The aim of this article is to interrogate the ways that compulsory heteropatriarchy establishes women's representation as hyper(hetero)sexual in a select group of South African mainstream magazines. In men's magazines targeting both black and white male readers, women are depicted as objects for an unnamed and unmarked, but clearly, masculine audience. In contrast, women's magazines with a dominant white female readership, sexualize black femininities for the consumption of white female readers in ways reminiscent of white male colonial obsession with black bodies. Using a feminist methodology foregrounding the intersectionalities between gender, race and sexuality, I argue that hyper(hetero)feminine performances are racialized with few exceptions – white femininities are depicted as normative, and black femininities as different and exotic. If heteronormativity and white normalcy determines women's representation in the popular 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 post‐colonial South African climate.