Synopses & Reviews
This volume represents a fundamental change in how we conceptualize the mediation of gender, sex, and sexualities. It brings together a collection of new research that includes, but also extends beyond, comparisons between woman/man, into considerations of more complex and fluid notions of sex and identity.
Each of the five themes in the collection opens with an authoritative, overview essay that provides a historical overview of the research and scholarship in the particular thematic, giving context to the articles that follow. Ranging across a number of different media, including print, television, and the Internet, this collection explores the ways in which, on the one hand, popular media are complicit in the stereotypical reproduction of sex and gender “norms” and, on the other, the ways in which we are increasingly becoming architects and chroniclers of our differently constituted selves.
The volume showcases new research at the cutting edge of media and communication practice and theory, offering genuinely novel insights into the complex set of relations that exists between gender, sex, sexualities, and the media.
Review
“This is a highly exciting and inspiring handbook. Contributors use queer theory and different aspects of feminist and feminist media theory to cover the diverse articulations of gender within nationally specific and generic media contexts. Brilliantly collected and presented.”
- Liesbet van Zoonen, Loughborough University
Review
"For instructors looking to expand their students’ knowledge of sexuality and gender beyond simple categorical and inflexible definitions, The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and the Media, edited by Karen Ross, is a gift made even more attractive in that the concepts are explored within the context of many students’ favorite topic: media. Additionally, this volume is a treasure for researchers and theorists looking for a current and diverse collection of original research within this body of knowledge. Key strengths of the text include the clarity of the overall organization, the appealing and thoughtful overview chapters at the beginning of each section, and the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches utilized by the authors." (Sex Roles, 1 February 2013)
Synopsis
The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media offers original insights into the complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media, and in doing so, showcases new research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory.
- Brings together a collection of new, cutting-edge research exploring a number of different facets of the broad relationship between gender and media
- Moves beyond associating gender with man/woman and instead considers the relationship between the construction of gender norms, biological sex and the mediation of sex and sexuality
- Offers genuinely new insights into the complicated and complex set of relations which exist between gender, sex, sexualities and the media
- Essay topics range from the continuing sexism of TV advertising to ways in which the internet is facilitating the (re)invention of our sexual selves.
About the Author
Karen Ross is Professor of Media and Public Communication at the University of Liverpool. She has written extensively on the relationships between women and media and between the media and the public. Her recent publications include Women and Media: International Perspectives (with Carolyn Byerly, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), Women and Media: A Critical Introduction (with Carolyn Byerly, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), Rethinking Media Education: Critical Pedagogy and Identity Politics (edited with Anita Nowak and Sue Abel, 2007), Gendered Media (2009), and The Media and the Public (with Stephen Coleman, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). She is the founding editor of the ICA/Wiley-Blackwell journal Communication, Culture & Critique.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xix
Editor’s Introduction xx
Part I Mediated Women 1
1 The Geography of Women and Media Scholarship 3
Carolyn M. Byerly
2 Chilean Women in Changing Times: Media Images and Social Understandings 20
Claudia Bucciferro
3 The Girls of Parliament: A Historical Analysis of the Press Coverage of Female Politicians in Bulgaria 35
Elza Ibroscheva and Maria Stover
4 Gossip Blogs and ‘Baby Bumps’: The New Visual Spectacle of Female Celebrity in Gossip Media 53
Erin Meyers
5 Fanfiction and Webnovelas: The Digital Reading and Writing of Brazilian Adolescent Girls 71
Ilana Eleá
6 Virtually Blonde: Blonde Jokes in the Global Age and Postfeminist Discourse 88
Limor Shifman and Dafna Lemish
Part II Rugged Masculinity and Other Fables 105
7 Men, Masculinities, and the Cave Man 107
Jeffery P. Dennis
8 Rhetorical Masculinity: Authoritative Utterance and the Male Protagonist 118
Stuart Price
9 Conan the Blueprint: The Construction of Masculine Prototypes in Genre Films 135
Guido Ipsen
10 Save the Cheerleader, Save the Males: Resurgent Protective Paternalism in Popular Film and Television after 9/11 157
Sarah Godfrey and Hannah Hamad
11 Fucking Vito: Masculinity and Sexuality in The Sopranos 174
Lynne Hibberd
12 Studio5ive.com: Selling Cosmetics to Men and Reconstructing Masculine Identity 189
Claire Harrison
Part III Queering the Pitch 205
13 No Hard Feelings: Reflexivity and Queer Affect in the New Media Landscape 207
Katherine Sender
14 The L Word: Producing Identities through Irony 226
Julie Scanlon
15 Andro- phobia?: When Gender Queer is too Queer for L Word Audiences 241
Rebecca Kern
16 Questioning Queer Audiences: Exploring Diversity in Lesbian and Gay Men’s Media Uses and Readings 260
Alexander Dhoest and Nele Simons
17 ‘In Touch’ with the Female Body: Cinema, Sport, and Lesbian Representability 277
Katharina Lindner
18 Why Doesn’t your Compass Work?: Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantasy Blockbusters, and Contemporary Queer Theory 294
Martin Fradley
19 Raised Voices: Homophobic Abuse as a Catalyst for Coming Out in US Teen Television Drama Series 313
Susan Berridge
20 Transmen on the Web: Inscribing Multiple Discourses 326
Matthew Heinz
21 Transgendered Saints and Harlots: Reproduction of Popular Brazilian Transgender Stereotypes through Performance on Stage, on Screen, and in Everyday Life 344
Johannes Sjöberg
Part IV Women, Men, and Gender 363
22 Sex/Gender and the Media: From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond 365
Cynthia Carter
23 Colin Won’t Drink out of a Pink Cup 383
Barbara Mitra and Jenny Lewin- Jones
24 Postfeminism Meets Hegemonic Masculinities: Young People Read the ‘Knowing Wink’ in Advertising 401
Sue Abel
25 Communication as Commodification: Video Technology and the Gendered Gaze 419
Corinna Chong, Heather Molyneaux, and Hélène Fournier
26 Dutch Moroccan Girls Performing their Selves in Instant Messaging Spaces 436
Koen Leurs and Sandra Ponzanesi
Part V All about Sex 455
27 Sex and the Media 457
Feona Attwood
28 Deliciously Consumable: The Uses and Abuses of Irony in ‘Sex-Trafficking’ Campaign Films 470
Jane Arthurs
29 The Sex Inspectors: Self-help, Makeover, and Mediated Sex 487
Laura Harvey and Rosalind Gill
30 Enacting Bodies: Online Dating and New Media Practices 502
Begonya Enguix and Elisenda Ardévol
31 Gender and Sexuality in the Internet Era 516
Panayiota Tsatsou
32 Gay for Pay: The Internet and the Economics of Homosexual Desire 535
John Mercer
Index 552