Female gaze reseach

1) What is the article about?
 Research shows that advertising campaigns for a female audience are dominated by heterosexual Caucasian size 0 to 2 models. Naomi and Dane say that the representations of women are nearly too white are exclusively under  size 6.The article is about women represented in the media. It talks about women's weight and how the perfect sizes are between 0 and 2. It also talks about women modelling and how they are used for men to gaze at hence the reason why its called the 'female gaze'.

2) What is the name of the film that has sparked this recent debate on body image and female representation?


3) How does the 'female gaze' in this article differ from the 'male gaze' of Laura Mulvey's theory?
Laura Mulvey's theory is that male appearance in the media is for female consumption and for them to look at them due to their attractiveness as well as it  portraying the fact that some males are just there to be gazed at by the females such as men being topless in an advert. This differs from the article as the articles talk about how women are used for men to look at whereas, Mulvey's 'male gaze' says that men are  portrayed in the media for women to look at such as men being topless in an advert.

4) What is your own opinion of the representation of women in advertising? Should the media carry more representation of 'real' women? Why does the media not currently feature size 14 women if that is the average size of a British woman?
In my opinion, i think that the representation of women in the media should be banned. This is because women are being exploited as they are portrayed as seductive characters. In most adverts, such as perfume adverts, women are seen wearing hardly any clothing as well as seen kissing males. The media should carry out the representation of 'real' women as women will be portrayed as themselves and not who people want them to be. This will make us realise that the role of women in society is not to be seen as a 'male gaze' and in turn we (mainly males) will have respect for females. Also, women of the size 14 are not seen in the media, this could be due to that women want to be below the size of 14 as they want the perfect bodies and so women sizes 0-2 are being portrayed.

5) Summary of the film
The film is about trying to show misconception that the world have of models, which is that to be beautiful you must be skinny and replace it with the idea that that weight does not determine beauty. It portrays how society is sued to seeing very thin models in magazines but when fatter models are used the public believe that it doesn't show off the product in a good way purely because of the overweight model. The film is trying to change the typical model from being underweight to a more realistic weight and trying to persuade the world it is okay to be a plus size.