Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 My media product is a magazine based on the pop genre. Once I looked into other pop magazine and their typical audience I noticed that they tend to aim their product at teenage girls. This then became my aim whilst I was creating my magazine. On the front cover, my main image is of a girl dressed in a black glittery playsuit with large ear rings and other jewellery. When I looked into other pop magazines I found that when often females would appear as the main image but they were dressed in a ‘pop’ way. They never wore particularly revealing clothing as it’s aimed at young girls and they always stood in a casual way as it’s suppose to be a young girls magazine. I took this into consideration whilst creating mine so my main image is only posed slightly and is more friendly than ‘revealing’. When I took these photo’s I booked the photo studio out as this looked to be how many other pop magazines in particular did theirs. This meant that the background was pure white and allowed me to fill it with other plugs/puffs/taglines.  As it’s a pure white background, it implies that the magazine is completely innocent and there aren’t any hidden messages within the background. However, if my background was taken in a run down place it would clash with the typical ‘pop’ theme and probably wouldn’t suit the target audience.

My product is quite colourful and contains a lot of information and text which was something I found nearly all pop magazines did. This is once again as the target audience are young girls so stereotypically they prefer more feminine colours and need something that will attract their attention.  However, I didn’t want my main image to be dressed is extremely bright colours like some other pop magazines do as it would make her blend in too much with the rest of the text/images. Also by dressing her in feminine colours it would distant the secondary audience of boys away as not only would the colour scheme of the text be ‘girly’ colours but now the main image has also followed that stereotype. Whereas, if she is dressed in more neutral colours, it would allow young boys who ‘like’ this particular artist to feel more comfortable about reading the article.

I do believe overall that my magazine probably supports dominate ideas about my social group as it does appeal to girls more by following typical feminine colours and involving ideologies linked to boys and dieting such as “boy crush” and “new diet crazes” as this is what is stereotypically linked to females. The use of the words also reflects younger girls, ‘crush’ as it implies it’s nothing serious. However, the fact that the main image still complies with main ideologies about females such as wearing make-up and jewellery, it does challenge it slightly by wearing more neutral colours that apply to both males and females.