Feminine,Competent, Submissive: A Multimodal Analysis of Depictions of Women in U.S. Wartime Persuasive Messages During World War I and World War II

This analysis used Peirce's triadic approach to interpret 58 public depictions of women during the two world wars. The images, appearing in government posters or as ads and illustrations in U.S. magazines and newspapers, endeavored to convey the seriousness of the war effort and mobilize audiences to support it. Aligned in five thematic clusters (competence, domesticity, heterosexual attraction, beauty maintenance, and romantic longing), many invited polysemy through discrepant visual and verbal cues aimed at different audiences. Women as viewers and as objects of representation were addressed in the context of both citizenship and consumption. The analysis explicates ideological points about wartime gender relations and points to the objectification of women's bodies as implied sexual rewards for product purchase in WWII.     

Reality Bites: An Investigation of the Genre of Reality Television and Its Relationship to Viewers’ Body Image

Utilizing a unique methodological approach, this study investigated subtypes of reality television (RTV) to study the influence of exposure to RTV on body image (body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness) as compared a more traditional weekly report of RTV viewing. Young adults (N = 472) completed online surveys measuring their exposure to RTV and perceptions of their own body image. Four types of RTV were uncovered. Regression analyses using these 4 factors demonstrated that exposure to competition-based RTV shows (e.g., Dancing with the Stars) predicted increased body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness. On the other hand, the weekly self-report of RTV viewing did not reveal any relationships between weekly exposure to RTV and body image. These findings underline the need for cultivation-based media studies that include program-based measures of genre-specific media exposure, especially when seeking to capture media effects related to RTV.     

The Bachelor: Whiteness in the Harem

This examination of the representation of whiteness and women of color in the reality-based television series The Bachelor shows how the series is “raced.” It is a context in which only white people find romantic partners, a process that women of color work to facilitate. The Westernized trope of the Eastern harem structures The Bachelor, duplicating in the series the imperialist, Orientalist, and oppressive racist premises of the harem trope.     

A Puzzling Problem

This study examines the discourse observed within The New York Times crossword puzzles that, in Gaye Tuchman’s terms, appears to symbolically annihilate people of color, women, and members of the LGBT community. Using a critical discourse analysis of a random selection of crossword puzzles between 1993 and 2015, this paper will argue that they tend to skew toward white (Western), male, and heterosexual clues and answers in one of the world’s most important newspapers. In doing so, the discourse of the crosswords appear to stereotype, omit, further marginalize, trivialize, underrepresent, and render as child-like many marginalized people. These findings contribute significantly to the theory of symbolic annihilation in mainstream media, the consequences of which will be discussed.     

Covering urban vice: the New York Times, "white slavery," and the construction of journalistic knowledge

Communication scholars have analyzed how such pivotal historical and political events as war, assassination, and the rise and fall of nations and political regimes have functioned to shape and shore up the legitimacy of particular news institutions. This paper explores the role played by an early twentieth-century sex-related social and moral panic over “white slavery” in transforming news practices. Beginning in 1907, stories proliferated in the U.S. mass media of White women kidnapped and sold into prostitution organized bands of immigrants, often alleged to be conspiring with top city officials. diachronic textual analysis of New York Times coverage of a 1910 white slavery investigation finds that reporters initially drew from a stock of sentimental narratives describe the investigation's findings. However, as the investigation grew increasingly problematic, the Times developed a detached orientation toward its object, similar to that demanded of professional journalists today. I examine how the Times engaged paradigm repair and significant historical revision to account for and defend its earlier articles on this controversial phenomenon.     

Gendered Relationships on Television: Portrayals of Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples

Although intimate heterosexual couples often exhibit power imbalances in gender role behaviors, with one partner more dominant and the other more submissive, it is unclear whether the same is true for homosexual relationships. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that television portrays both heterosexual and homosexual couples as gendered. This content analysis of intimate relationships on television examined whether heterosexual and homosexual couples are portrayed as gendered, finding evidence of gendering for both homosexual couples and heterosexual couples. Possible implications of these gendered portrayals for viewers' perceptions and behaviors include cultivation of negative stereotypes and modeling of gender-typed behaviors.     

The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy in Knocked Up,Juno, and Waitress

This essay explores three films from 2007, Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress, which foreground young women's unplanned pregnancies. These movies depoliticize women's reproduction and motherhood through narratives that rearticulate the meaning of choice. Bypassing the subject of abortion, the women's decisions revolve around their choice of heterosexual partners and investment in romantic relationships. Although they question the viability of the nuclear family for single pregnant women, these films represent new iterations of post-feminism that ultimately restore conservative ideas that valorize pregnancy and motherhood as women's imperatives. We conclude by addressing how these movies present a distorted and short-sighted depiction of the politics of reproductive agency and the challenges that single mothers face.     

United in gender,divided by race: Reconstruction of issue and identity by the association of southern women for the prevention of lynching

This essay begins to investigate the relationship between race and gender in communication through study of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (1930‐1942). Organized by and composed exclusively of white women, this campaign managed to reconstruct lynching from a race issue to a gender issue. In doing so, the leader of the ASWPL, Jessie Daniel Ames, was successful at empowering white Southern women and uniting black and white women. However, due to failure to understand issues of the relationship between race and gender, the ASWPL perpetuated the very racism that was the cause for lynching.     

When sistahs support sistahs: A process of supportive communication about racial microaggressions among Black women

This study extends a rich line of research on racial microaggressions (Sue, 2010) by examining the way friendship networks of Black women communicate support to a targeted individual. Groups of Black women friends (n?=?52) engaged in supportive discussions about racial microaggressions by white women perpetrators, and a research team of Black women inductively analyzed the supportive encounters. The findings indicated that groups engaged in a two-phase process of supportive communication that began with Individual Orientation, which describes person-centered messages that solely supported a target, and continued to Collective Orientation, which describes group-centered discussions about the prevalence and effects of racial injustice on all Black women. Three co-occurring sub-themes emerged in Collective Orientation: Hostile Differentiation, Socio-political Contextualization, and Collective Uplift. Humor and Laughter were important in both phases. Generational dynamics were also considered in this study, but few differences emerged. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Social–Sexual Interactions? Meta-Analyses of Sex Differences in Perceptions of Flirtatiousness,Seductiveness, and Promiscuousness

Scholars have assessed the degree to which heterosexual men and women make differential judgments of flirtatiousness, seductiveness, and promiscuousness during cross-sex interactions. Findings from extant research suggest that men decode verbal and nonverbal communication cues differently than do women, and this difference results in men's tendency to rate individuals more highly in levels of these social–sexual constructs than do women. This paper reports the results of three meta-analyses that provided estimates of the magnitude of the sex differences in perceptions of flirtatiousness, seductiveness, and promiscuousness and argues that these results are consistent with error management theory. Sex of target and mode of observation interacted to impact observed sex differences. Sex differences were strongest for female targets when research participants were observers of face-to-face interactions (average r=.32), whereas sex differences in evaluations of flirtatiousness, seductiveness, and promiscuousness were strongest for participants who were rating male targets in face-to-face interactions (average r=.36). The implications of these results are discussed.     

Body Politics: Coverage of Health Topics and Policy in U.S. Feminist Magazines

This study considered health coverage in 3 highly circulated U.S. feminist magazines: Ms., Bitch, and Bust. The authors used critical discourse analysis to examine 80 print and online articles for representations of liberal, social, radical, and postfeminist feminist ideologies in health coverage; the rhetorical strategies publications used for health content and how they compare with mainstream women’s magazines; and their emphasis on health policy and public health initiatives. The findings suggested that the magazines relied on discursive approaches resembling those of mainstream magazines when covering health, such as prioritizing personal health issues and individualized responses. However, through distinctive feminist lenses, they also performed better than mainstream women’s magazines in presenting health issues, representing a broader range of concerns affecting women, addressing people from diverse communities, and suggesting opportunities for collective response.     

Sex differences in communication and the construction of HIV/AIDS

This paper reports analyses of sex differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to HIV/AIDS and communication about HIV I'AIDS in the heterosexual college population. Men and women differed in their assessments of risk to HIV infection for various behaviors; in each case women perceived greater risk. Women were more favorable than men regarding talking about AIDS and attitudes about condom use. Men reported a greater number of sexual partners for the previous five years than did women. Men, more often than women, appear to have changed their behavior in a direction of greater risk. Only two sex differences were found for prevention‐related behaviors. First, men more often reported having purchased a condom. However, no sex differences were found for actual condom use. Second, as reported in previous studies, women were more likely to engage in AIDS‐related talk with a sexual partner. Because of their many differences, men and women need to be targeted as separate audiences for HIV/AIDS prevention. Further, because women have emerged as the most rapidly growing group at risk for HIV infection and because women appear to be more willing than men to implement HIV/AIDS prevention in their relationships, they should be considered a primary audience for HIV/AIDS‐prevention programs designed for influencing the behavior of heterosexual couples.     

Pistols and petticoats,piety and purity: To Wong Foo,the queering of the American monomyth,and the marginalizing discourse of deification

–Recently, the mainstream media have begun to include positive portrayals of gays and lesbians. This essay suggests that these positive portrayals demand critical scrutiny to determine how they redefine mainstream culture and how they serve to challenge and/or reinforce heterosexual bias. In an analysis of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, we examine how a narrative film negotiates the practice of drag and represents gay male “drag queens” through a progressive refiguring of the monomythic themes which inform the popular genre of Western film.     

The Influence of Female Lead Characters in Political TV Shows: Links to Political Engagement

This study examined political television dramas with lead female characters, proposing a model that links viewing of these shows with political engagement. A survey revealed that regular viewers of Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, or Scandal reported feeling transported by these programs’ narratives and parasocial relationships with the main characters (i.e., women in positions of political leadership). These responses were also related to increases in political interest and self-efficacy, with interest predicting real-world political participation. The findings illustrate that these political dramas have prosocial implications, including the non-stereotypical representation of women as well as increased political engagement among viewers.     

Two Stangengläser from the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague: Decorative techniques,material analyses,and conservation

Abstract

The two Stangengläser, tall cylindrical vessels from the beginning of the seventeenth century, are described in detail. The severely damaged Stangengläser, decorated with diamond-point engraving and cold-painting, were challenging to treat. Research preceding the conservation revealed differences in decorating techniques. Samples of the paint layers were analyzed using micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Two layers of resinous varnish with a middle layer of paint containing a plant gum were found on the Stangenglas with Allegory of Caritas and Zierotin coat of arms. In the plain paint layer of the Stangenglas with dancing couples, egg white was identified as the binder. The glasses, analyzed using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, had similar potash–lime–silica compositions, which seems to be characteristic for glass from Bohemian lands. Results of analysis contributed to the discussion about the possible provenance of the Stangengläser, the glassworks at Wilhelmberg, South Bohemia.     

Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media

In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this particular performance of gay identity in order to discern what qualities render it – as presented in this configuration – not only acceptable but popular, given the heteronormative sensibilities that characterize the mainstream audience to which it is directed. I argue that, in these texts, homosexuality is not only recoded and normalized in these representations as consistent with privileged male heterosexuality but is articulated as extending heterosexual male privilege. In so doing, blatant sexism is reinvented and legitimized, and gay male identity simultaneously is defined by and renormalizes heteronormativity.     

Latina Magazine and the Invocation of a Panethnic Family: Latino Identity as It Is Informed by Celebrities and Papis Chulos

Latina magazine is a bilingual women’s magazine that was launched in 1996 for a target audience of bicultural college-educated Latinas between the ages of 18 and 45. In an attempt to reach such a wide range of Latinas, the magazine makes an appeal to familial forms of identification, often presenting discourses of familial allegiances alongside calls for panethnic solidarity. This article presents a case study of the construction of Latinidad through a textual analysis of Latina articles on entertainment and romance and through interviews with the magazine’s editorial staff. Latina oscillates between celebrating the inclusion of Latina/os in the U.S. entertainment industry and speaking out against the criminalization of Latino men and the hypersexualization of Latina/os. This study situates the creation of Latino media in relation to theories of panethnic identification and research on the ideological function of popular culture and the marketing of ethnicity.     

Topic Avoidance,Everyday Talk,and Stress in Romantic Military and Non-Military Couples

Relationships are increasingly impacted by military involvement, necessitating a deeper understanding of communication within these couples. This study examined perceptions of everyday talk, topic avoidance, and stress of participants romantically involved with (a) a military partner (n = 118) or (b) a non-military partner (n = 94). Couple types avoided similar topics, but non-military partners avoided these topics more frequently than military partners. Both couple types engaged in everyday talk, but military partners found this communicative exchange to be more important. Non-military partners experienced greater stress than military partners, and communication was predictive of the stress experienced. The results of this study highlight similarities and differences in romantic couples and reveal areas in which relationship education can address these communicative nuances of military couples.