Media Guardian 100

Media Guardian 100 is an “annual guide to the most powerful people in television, radio, newspapers, magazines, digital media, media business, advertising, marketing and PR.


The panellist are Andrew Zein, he is the vice-president in the international television production unit of Warner Bros. Christian Payne is the social technologist, freelance mobile media maker, photographer and logger. Farah Ramzan Golant is the chief executive of advertising agency AMV BBDO. Luke Johnson is the founder of Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm he started 10 years ago. Oona King is head of diversity at Channel 4 and was previously senior policy adviser to Gordon Brown on equalities and diversity. Jane Martinson is the editor of Media Guardian. She has previously been associate City editor, writing a weekly interview for the business pages; media business editor; City news editor; and US business correspondent based in New York. John Plunkett writes about radio, among many other things, for Media Guardian and edits its diary column, media monkey. Steve Busfield is the head of media and technology across the Guardian, the Observer and guardian.co.uk. lastly, Veronica Wadley was editor of the London Evening Standard from 2002 to 2009. She was previously deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.

There are 10 females in the top 100. I have listed them below, I have also listed the companies that they work for along with their roles within the company.

1) Jay Hunt (No 12 in top 100)
Company:BBC 1
Role: controller

2) Rebekah brooks (No. 16 in top 100)
Company: News international
Role: chef executive

3) Elisabeth Murdoch (No. 18 in top 100)
Company: Shine group
Role: chairman and chied executive

4) Helen Boaden (No. 21 in top 100)
Company: BBC news
Role: director

5) Dame Marjorie Scardino (No. 25 in top 100)
Company: Pearson
Role: Chief executive

6) Tessa Ross (No. 34 in top 100)
Company: Channel 4
Role: controller of film and drama

7) Dame Gail Rebuck (No. 36 in top 100)
Company: Random House
Role: Chairman and chief executive

8) Roisin Donnelly (No. 42 in top 100)
Company: Procter & Gamble UK and Ireland
Role: Corporate marketing director

9) Jana Bennett (No. 45 in top 100)
Company: BBC
Role: Director of vision

10) Cilla snowball (No. 50 in top 100)
Company: AMV Group
Role: Chairman and chief

Analysis of advert: repersenting female in a ngative way

The following advert connotes that all women are vein about their image however the male males are not. For example, as the female is walking past she is idolised to be attractive however the males are shown to be nerds drooling over the female. The female is able to grab all of the male attention by her sexual figure and have the male gazing at her. This connotes that female only have power over male through using their body as an sex object.

Males are known to have a fetish for bums and boobies, a close up is shown to attract the male’s attention; reason being this has been done is because males stereotypically known to be perverts. In the advert they are shown being under control by the female as she walks past. The advert shows that female are nothing but a sex object to males.

The female is represented as a ‘slut’ with her tight mini skirt and top allowing her to reveal her arms, legs and over exaggerate the size of her bum to come out. This connotes that all females are slutty and how they reveal them self's just to get attention.

At the end of the advert, the female steps into the elevator and smiles at the males that are gazing at her, this connotes that females are nothing but just a slight tease and a flirt. Once the door closes, her belly is exposed as her cloths rips to revealing that she was sucking her stomach in at all time, this shows the extreme measurements that females go through in order to gain male attention and that the only way they can gain control of male is through their body.

On the other hand, the advert also connotes that female has ugly side to them which puts men off. The advert also brings out the awareness of obesity upon women and how they are all concerned about their health and figure and the extreme measurements they will take in order to present themselves as a glamorous model.

Questions

1. What sort of images of women and men dominated advertising pre-1970s? Why was this?

The housewife Image was still common in the 60’s and 70’s even though after the 50’s this image started to decline. This is because this was the Feminist era.

2. How did the advertising of the 1970’s continue to perpetuate the stereotype of women, despite depicting women in a greater range of roles?

Though this was the feminist era, and woman were demanding more rights, men were still pretty much superior as they still are and women were and are in the subordinate group. The term sexism, started to run through peoples vocabulary and the charm of the woman was the sexuality of her. It was a “Retro-sexism as a social and stylistic”.

3. Can Gaye Tuchman’s quote regarding under-representation and the ‘symbolic annihilation of women’ still be applied in 21st Century advertising? If so, how?

I believe there is no complete symbolic annihilation of women in the media however, there is under representation of women in today’s media. The dominant and stereotypical representation of women today is of being the sex object and fulfilling the male needs by sexually satisfying them. Very rarely do we see any form of a positive representation of women. I also strongly agree with Mulvey’s theory that we are looking from the male gaze, as almost all adverts show us how males would represent women in adverts.

4. Do you agree that adverts, such as those for the 1990’s Boots No. 7, ‘It’s not make-up. Its ammunition.’ campaign, are post-feminist (thereby representing women as better than men?). Explain your answer.

Though the slogan is trying to present women in a powerful light, as if their makeup is ‘ammunition’ and has the power to kill, the connotations behind it are still the same as any other advert. It’s trying to say ‘If looks could kill’, as if the only strong aspect of the woman is her Makeup, not even her natural self. It’s also very much a femme fatale philosophy that the woman can seduce a man with ‘deadly’ looks and can kill them too.

5. Is the representation of women by the media accountable for the results of a survey in which ‘women were up to ten times more likely than men to be unhappy with their body image’?

Yes the media is responsible for the responses in the survey. The media portrays a ‘perfect’ image of women, which real women try to achieve. Posters of air brushed models represent what a woman should look like, but no one looks like that in reality, however even knowing that women still try to achieve that look, and when they fail they feel unhappy with the way they look.

6. Is the contemporary representation of men in advertising perhaps also a negative one where they too are treated as sex objects?

Recent adverts do also objectify men but not as much as women are in adverts. We have adverts like Lynx where both the men and the women are objectified but it’s always the woman chasing after the man, dominating the male gender and overtly objectifying the female gender.