Date of Award

12-12-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Heather M. Crandall

Second Advisor

Dr. John Caputo

Abstract

This study is an ideological rhetorical analysis of how women’s magazines encode the “thinideal” in advertisements to women over forty. Analysis of three women’s magazines, all of which are geared to older women, focused on the rhetorical strategies employed by advertisers when communicating the “thin-ideal” to these women. The theoretical basis of the work included semiotics, Festinger’s social comparison theory, and Hall’s cultural studies. The findings of the study: 1) the “thin-ideal” is connoted with youth, 2) depictions of women over forty are scarce in the advertisements of the magazines for which they are the purported audience, 3) aging is encoded as a disease, 4) depictions of “real women” are limited mainly to advertisements for goods and services to treat health conditions, and 5) the lack of numerous thin-ideal depictions still reinforce the values of what society deems socially valid. Such findings indicate that persuasion is complete. Magazine advertisements no longer have to persuade readers, who have spent a lifetime internalizing the thin-ideal to participate in conscious social comparison processes to buy into the predominant ideology. This ideology communicates to middle-aged women that if they want to remain valuable and visible within society, they will conform to the requirements of an unrealistic thin-ideal, despite the cost to their physical, emotional, and financial health.

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