Abstract/Summary

In response to the increasing pressures to attain a healthy body in the contemporary neoliberal society, this study seeks to investigate the constructions of healthy corporeality as circulated in cosmetics and food advertising in two of the most popular global health and lifestyle magazines Women’s Health and Men’s Health published locally in the UK and Poland between 2014- 2021. I am particularly interested in evaluating the extent to which the promoted healthy body ideals are gendered, that is, perpetuate stereotypical associations around masculinity and femininity, and whether any changes could be observed in the studied period. A novel mixed-method approach, which combines 3 interrelated methods, has been adopted to investigate the issues in question in a systematic empirical manner. First, a Content Analysis (CA) of all adverts identified in the magazines is performed to establish the significance of cosmetics and food. Since adverts are multimodal aggregates, the principles and techniques of a Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) are employed to investigate the visual representations of the female and male body ideals. To address the textual dimension of adverts, a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach is used to investigate these representations in and through language. Finally, an in-depth Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) of the most prominent type of cosmetics and food adverts is carried out to demonstrate how both textual and visual resources interact in truly multimodal ways to construct and disseminate corporeal ‘templates’ and assess the extent to which they are influenced by and perpetuate gender stereotypes. To add a critical lens for data interpretation, this study is supported by the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which acts as an overarching conceptual framework. The findings that emerged from all four stages have shown that the cosmetics and food advertising in the studied health and lifestyle magazines, and moreover in both the UK and Polish versions, tends to create and reinforce global/universal corporeal ideals that are grounded in what is stereotypically associated with hegemonic femininity and masculinity. For example, the CA analysis revealed that not only cosmetics but now also food serves as a vehicle for gendering, promoting different products depending on the gender of the magazine audience, such as ‘beauty’ supplements and food for infants/children only promoted in WH and red meat and alcohol used in MH. Gendering also emerged from the MDA and CADS analyses, where it was observed that cosmetics and food adverts portray the female body predominantly as young, thin, and White, and the male body as a mesomorph, especially in the food adverts where its portrayal became bodybuilder-like. The CADS analysis further revealed the increasing neoliberal importance of self-maintenance of female and male corporeal health, which presently also extends to appearance and should be self-maintained not only through the consumption of cosmetics but now also food. Furthermore, from a novel perspective, this analysis also demonstrated how gendering occurs through scientific discourse, such as that of health claims, linking women and men with their stereotypical gender roles and behaviours. Despite the prevalence of gendered discourses, the studied magazine adverts have also demonstrated some advances in equality and occasional focus on inclusivity and bodily positivity. Among these were the increasing portrayal of female muscularity and the ambiguous sexuality of the male body. Finally, the in-depth multimodal analysis presented meshing of feminine/masculine hegemony with the liberation and/or empowerment of women and men from their gendered roles, which indicates an expansion of, rather than liberation from, hegemonic values. The study also revealed differences between the UK and Polish contexts. For example, while the UK magazines demonstrated an increase in racial diversity, the Polish magazines projected ‘Whiteness’ as a measure of ‘Polishness’. Importantly, neither of the magazines expanded beyond the gender binary to acknowledge the diverse sexual and gender (LGBTQIA+) identities. This study makes the following novel contributions to the field of language and gender. First, it offers a new systematic and replicable mixed-methods framework to study large and diverse ‘multimodal’ datasets, such as adverts. Second, it is one of the first attempts to thoroughly examine gendered bodily ideals in a hitherto neglected area which has become crucial in the increasingly neoliberal society, namely the food industry. Third, it provides deeper insights into ‘glocalised’ gendered corporeality in the post-communist conservative Poland, where research on gender in advertising is still in a developmental stage. Given how unrealistic and unattainable the standards set for both female and male body ideals are, the continuous exposure to these ideals could lead to an increase in negative body image and associated disordered behaviours. Consequently, the findings from this study stress the need for media literacy and continuous critical scrutiny of advertising more broadly.