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Gender identity is and always will be difficult to define, especially with all the contemporary and modernized changes in society. It is almost impossible to identify a certain gender in a category anymore. With the influence of the mass media and certain people’s set essentialist ideologies of gender norms, it is a fine line as to what the role of a man and woman is today. The media is a major if not catastrophic impact on societies beliefs, the media has the ability to manipulate and twist things to make them believable and acceptable to their viewers. Certain types of media like TV have a bigger influence on people, but others like newspapers and magazines are considered reassurances of what TV portrays. In specific regarding gender identity roles, is the role of men in media and how it is portrayed. Since the beginning of time men have always been considered the dominant gender, that thrive on there masculinity. And to define masculinity is to define what a man is. If you were to attack a man’s masculinity you would be taking away his sole purpose identity. With reference to the media men have always been portrayed as the tough, overpowering, masculine, in charge type person. With the media portraying men in this way it has lead to societies beliefs that men are exactly this, thus making it extremely difficult to change their perspective of male identity roles. Now that we have an idea of what has been portrayed in the past I will be looking at how magazine media portrays men. I will be looking specifically at the men’s magazine genre, this way I will be able get a perspective of what men thank and perceive of other men as well as society as a whole. The whole idea of masculinity is directly correlated with how the roles of men and their identities are perceived in society. As I said earlier, men used to be considered the generic authoritative and powerful leaders of society. They were the care free, unemotional journeymen that were in control of society. Since the feminist move there has been a significant change in these roles, which has directly affected the identity of male masculinity and what it has become. The main elements that are associated to this shift in male masculinity roles are firstly, the structural changes in society, and the process of racial and gender equality. From an article done by a brazilian author name Marko Monteiro, he states that these changes in masculinity roles of men are correlated through three main elements they are “Economic modernization, that brought increasing numbers of women and races to the labour market and to professional fields that until then were white male-dominated. Secondly, was the so-called wave of feminism that exploded world-wide, that questioned patriarchy and traditional male roles by questioning the inferior position of women in society; this amounts to the construction of a feminist discourse and a feminist subject position consequences. Third, the explosion of gay power movements also world-wide, that questioned patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, thus also questioning traditional male identity and creating a new subject position, the gay subject” (Monteiro, Marko: Him/Her: discourses of masculinity in a Brazilian magazine, 1969-1972, www.artnet.com.br/~marko/him.html, with socio-cultural). From reading the works of Norman Fairclough, on Discourse and social change, and Marko Monteiro’s article on discourses of masculinity, I believe the change of masculinity, is a result of cultural and historical changes in the roots of society. Furthermore, from this shift of masculinity in society, it has launched the mass media to portray a new and modern male masculinity role in popular culture.
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