Age is nothing but a number: Ben 10s, sugar mummies, and the South African gender order in the Daily Sun’s Facebook page
- Authors: Mlangeni, Ntombikayise Lina
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: May-December romances -- South Africa , Women in mass media , Men in mass media , Sex role in mass media , Masculinity in mass media , Feminism and mass media , Critical discourse analysis , Unemployment -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Daily Sun (South Africa) , Ben 10
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167077 , vital:41435
- Description: This thesis examines how meanings of masculinity and femininity are negotiated by South Africans on a social media platform linked to a popular local tabloid newspaper. In particular it explores conversations surrounding the Ben 10 phenomenon on the Daily Sun’s Facebook page. A Ben 10 is commonly understood as a young man who enters into a sexual relationship with an older woman, mostly in township settings, and readers engage vociferously over the meanings of such relationships. Using a constructivist understanding of gender, a thematic analysis is used to examine the Facebook comments on the Daily Sun’s most popular Ben 10 stories. South Africa’s constitution promotes the right to gender equality and freedom, which contributes to the normalisation of sex in public conversations and political debate. However, with high levels of unemployment and poverty in South Africa, the narrative of masculine success through work remains relatively unattainable. This tension between the narrative of male-bread winner through work and the reality of South Africa’s poverty and unemployment has been referred to as the crisis of masculinity. This thesis will argue that tabloids can play a strong political role by providing an alternative public sphere and that they can also assist their readers in coping with life in a democratic society by creating an imagined community of people sharing common experiences.
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- Date Issued: 2020
“Beautiful powerful you” : an analysis of the subject positions offered to women readers of Destiny magazine
- Authors: Jangara, Juliana
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Destiny Magazine , Women's periodicals , Women, Black -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Sex role -- South Africa , Femininity -- South Africa , Women -- Identity , Feminism and mass media , Femininity (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3533 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013395
- Description: Women's magazines are popular cultural forms which offer readers representations intended to advise women on how to work towards and achieve idealised femininities. They perform such a function within the wider socio-historical context of gender relations. In a country such as South Africa, where patriarchal gender relations have historically been structured to favour men over women and masculinity over femininity, the representation of femininity in contemporary women's magazines may serve to reinforce or challenge these existent unequal gender relations. Informed by a feminist poststructuralist understanding of the gendered positioning of subjects through discourse, this study is a textual analysis that investigates the subject positions or possible identities offered to readers of Destiny, a South African business and lifestyle women's magazine. Black women, who make up the majority of Destiny's readership, have historically been excluded from the formal economy. In light of such a background, Destiny offers black women readers, through its representations of well-known business women, possible identities to take up within the white male dominated field of business practice. The magazine also offers 'lifestyle content', which suggests to readers possible ways of being in other areas of social life. Through a method of critical discourse analysis, this study critically analyses the subject positions offered to readers of Destiny, in order to determine to what extent the magazine's representations of business women endorse or confront unequal gender relations. The findings of this study are that Destiny offers women complex subject positions which simultaneously challenge and reassert patriarchy. While offering readers positions from which to challenge race based gender discrimination – a legacy of the apartheid past – the texts analysed tend to neglect non-racially motivated gender prejudice. It is concluded that although not comprehensively challenging unequal gender relations, the magazine whittles away some tenets of patriarchy.
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- Date Issued: 2011