hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to vogue magazine and representation this video is particularly relevant to you if you are studying the educast exam board a level media studies because vogue is one of the optional set texts on the component to exam paper not all schools study vogue as a magazine option for this exam so please don't panic if you don't but i do have other videos on my channel for huck women's realm and the big issue the front cover of vogue magazine features sophia loren who was very famous in the 60s for being a very kind of exotic beauty she was kind of held up as being a very beautiful role model for women so featuring her here looking very glamorous and exotic and she seems very rich and wealthy you know she's got jewels on and beautiful clothes certainly it makes her feel very exotic um she it feels like a kind of like turkish dancer you know her costume and things like that represent her in that way and you could talk about how that represents her as kind of other um and it might be useful to look at stuart hall for for understanding that i do have a video about that on my channel but it's that idea of of creating these exotic representations of other cultures in the financial article that is inside vogue they have some quite counter-typical representations of women in places so they interview a woman who is um or works for the financial times called sheila black and she's very much represented in a position of power you know she talks about women being financially independent you know wanting to invest money and having kind of financial power and this was really quite unusual for its time you know in the 1960s women legally didn't actually have that much power for the most part it was starting to change we were getting the influx of um you know second wave feminism and so they were starting to become these kind of shifts in the way gender was treated in society but this would have been quite unusual for the time and quite counter typical in relation to a lot of other mainstream magazines it might reflect the class and financial status of the typical readers of vogue women who were reading vogue at that time and who are reading vogue now tend to be more wealthy and so um you know talking about them having money to invest um whilst it might be counter typical in terms of gender it might absolutely represent the fact that they were wealthier and so were more likely to have their own finances and their own money although the fact that they have to have an article at all explaining to women all these key words and basically treating them like they don't understand finances might suggest and reflect this idea that it was still a very new thing for women to know anything about what was happening with their household finances previously it was always their fathers or their husbands that would have dealt with this so the fact that they're having to explain in quite simplistic terms what it means to invest money and and what different investment opportunities there are is very reflective of um you know the way women were being treated in society at the time and certainly it represents women as not being completely independent yet you know it talks about women relying on their husbands quite a lot it talks about women having a lack of privacy from their husband and their husband still being very much involved in financial affairs and so reflecting this idea that perhaps married women were certainly certainly still quite reliant on their husbands at the time there are some fairly conventional representations of women in the rest of the magazine you know van zunen says that women are either represented as domestic or sexualized and you can see this in a lot of the rest of the pages in the qtex advert you've got a woman who kind of appears to be naked so no clothes and it even uses phrases that seem to suggest nudity so the bare essentials birthday suit barely decent these are the names of the colors that um the this lipstick comes in so very much um you know suggestive of being naked um and and it even says like are you woman enough so asking this rhetorical question this idea that you need to be naked and beautiful and sexualized to be feminine to be a real woman so very reflective of the way in which women were represented in the media and the way in which women still are often represented even in modern magazines in the revlon advert as well we're seeing very similar representations women are called alluring and beguiling this idea that you're supposed to be there to attract those words that are about attracting somebody so it's very much suggesting that your appearance and what other people think of you and how they respond to your looks is highly important in the imperial leather advert we see a mother and son and again this is a fairly typical representation of women being domestic and maternal you know this idea that women were there to become parents and to have children and the way she's holding him um it very much suggests that she is is caring and gentle and loving um and because it's talking about soap and the softness on your skin this representing this idea that women need to be soft and gentle um and so very reflective of that more domestic and maternal stereotype that we're so used to seeing in the media around women particularly in this historical time period women are represented as domestic in the picnic articles and fashion pages as well you know they're holding children nurturing them uh you know feeding them it's that idea that women are passive you know they're not doing anything they're lounging around in those photos it feels quite romantic but it it also feels like this idea that um you know we don't really see women taking any action in these pages they are just modeling clothes laying back holding children so very passive representations of women and and again even though i mean this was the 60s so obviously things were different but it's important to remember that the 60s was changing you know society was changing women were becoming more powerful and yet this magazine only really the financial page seems to suggest this the rest of the pages are still quite old-fashioned in terms of the way gender is represented and that might be because this was quite a mainstream magazine and it might also be because um you know higher class women had less pressure on them to go out to work whereas more lower class women their families needed the money so when they could work they did whereas perhaps richer households the women were still taking on more traditional roles of staying at home looking after the children the fact that vogue magazine features women with children is very reflective of the time period as well because don't forget now vogue magazine has very little about children and child care because many women are delaying having children until later in life whereas in vogue in the 60s it was very common that the women that they were targeting would already be married and have children because people were getting married earlier at a younger age so the representations of women being mothers is absolutely representative of the historical context it's very obvious that class and the upper class is being represented far more in this magazine than sort of lower classes so you're you know there's quite complex language going on there's the article like the fashion pages that are kind of like picnics and talking about picnicking and you can see that the costumes is very formal clothing um you know the fact that they're talking about lords and ladies and they mention queen victoria um and and famous artworks it's this very much um representing you know quite upper um cultured women as being the focus and as and as of being idealized and and that being the the right way to be um and and that's reflective i guess of the people that generally buy vogue magazine they do tend to have more money the magazine itself is quite expensive and the brands they promote are quite expensive so perhaps reflecting the target audience as being from that sort of a b social economic group the representations of ethnicity in these magazine pages is quite interesting if you look at the white models that are in the magazine a lot of the white models in the magazine are pictured in jewels and luxury clothing and so therefore are kind of represented as being quite high powered quite high status um and and perhaps having more money um being of a kind of paler or whiter skin tone is normalized if you look at the cutex lipstick advert and this is supposed to be nude uh nude range of colors so it's supposed to be very neutral like skin tone almost and if you look at the actual range of colors um that are available it's very clear that these colors were made primarily for women with whiter skin tones these are these nude tones are not um you know made for women with darker skin and obviously that's kind of reflective of this kind of historical context in the you know early to middle 20th century where a lot of media products were aimed primarily at white audiences um you know britain was a less diverse place and certainly um a less inclusive place um and so it's kind of reflecting the social cultural context of the way ethnicity was dealt with at the time in britain if you have a look at some of the other fashion pages there are some ethnic minority people in them so it's like the um kind of black egyptian men in one page but they are marginalized in the position in the fashion pages they're in the background of the shots and they very much seem like the staff and and they are seen working and doing deals and things whereas the woman is kind of um dancing and enjoying leisure time this idea that they are perhaps represented as poorer whereas the white people are represented as having a higher status financially so the leisure time the white models in the in the picnic article are kind of lounging around in their leisure time and not having to actually work whereas the um non-white models used in the backgrounds are doing their everyday tasks and and jobs so um still very much that post-colonialist representation of ethnicity um the way that they are positioned and the way that the focus is on the women in the clothes it feels like the white models are um you know the the kind of customers the ones with power and that these black men are like the employees that are there to kind of be her servants or bring her things so you know reflecting quite a post-colonialist representation of ethnicity which would have been reflective of those 1960s you know the white man is in a suit and he's writing it's this idea that he looks perhaps more professional so you know it's not just about gender it's this idea that you know the white men and women are seen in positions of power and luxury and status and and uh non-uh white models are backgrounded you know seen as other and um seen as less important certainly in the pages so that was my easy to understand guide to vogue magazine and representation please check out my channel and hit subscribe for more videos that might be useful for you for a level media studies and don't forget if there's a video that you would like that i don't already have on my channel please just leave a comment below