Preferred Meaning

I found an article in The Irish Sun from the 16th Feb that I think has a preferred meaning. The article header says 'Behind plus-size fashion weekend', with the headline reading 'Our catwalk has beautiful, curvy NORMAL girls'. The preferred meaning in this article would be to make people believe it's ok and normal to have a fuller figure. The intended audience would be fuller figured women to help them feel better about themselves. This plus-sized fashion weekend has happened at the same time as London fashion week where you see super skinny models walk the runway. While the aim of this is to make women feel beautiful no matter what their size, there is another reality to this that we're not seeing here.

Now while I believe that curvy figures are much nicer than super skinny and that curvy women should feel beautiful there is a line between what's healthy and what's unhealthy. The plus-sized model in the article says that she is a size 16 and eats healthy and goes to the gym, but the reality that's not being pushed here is that a size 16 figure could be very unhealthy. While it might be healthy for this model to be a size 16 depending on her height and her BMI, it doesn't give us this information in the article, so in turn every size 16 girl reading this may be led to believe that it's healthy when they could in reality have an unhealthy BMI. It is very unhealthy for people to have excess fat around their mid section, especially for women. According to the Drummond Clinic website:

"Carrying weight around the middle represents a serious health risk. It is now known that there are major health implications of storing fat in the middle of the body rather than anywhere else – studies have shown it increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer (especially breast cancer) and high blood pressure." 

http://www.drummondclinic.co.uk/articles/fat-around-the-middle/

In the article the model also says "Designers make clothes up to a size 16, so why don't they use real size 16 women, their customers, to show them off? Why would a designer create clothes in larger sizes if they don't want to see them worn?" The reality not being said here is that the designers are the ones picking the super skinny size zero models to show their clothes on the catwalk. At the end of the article there's a small piece by the fashion editor saying that "The Irish Sun has been campaigning against size zero models since 2007." While I am against size zero, I would be against unhealthy size 16 models also. I believe fashion shows should have size 10-12 models as this to me is what represents 'normal' and also healthy figures. I believe that women should be confident and feel good regardless of their shape but they also need to be healthy and this is the reality that is no being pushed by this article.

Here is a link to the article online:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/article4797781.ece

Here is also a photo of the article that I saw in the newspaper:

The circuit of culture: The article is represented to us with a picture of the size 16 model posing seductively so that people will think she's beautiful and desirable. She is also the one being quoted in the article and as she is taking part in the plus-sized fashion week she is a reliable source for this kind of information. It's printed in a tabloid newspaper making the information easy to digest by the reader. They know that this sort of article will be acceptable by the reader and it is definitely aimed at female readers. It's also a short article with a big headline to catch the readers attention so they are likely to read it. The picture of the model may also catch the eye of some of the male consumers.


I think that the alternative reality is not being pushed here because people get so caught up in trying to get rid of size zero models that they forget about what's actually healthy and what's not healthy when it comes to plus sized models. Plus sized models want to make people think it's ok and normal to be that size so they don't tell them the risks that go along with it.

Pseudo Events

Pseudo events are events created by the media to generate news. The need for pseudo events comes from the general public. People expect papers to be full of news. If a reporter cannot find a story they are expected to make one. We demand more news than the world can give us resulting in fabricated stories. We keep these news reporters in business by demanding that they fill our consciousness. More and more of what we are seeing in the news are pseudo events, but this is because we expect them so therefore we are given them. These events become 'need to know' by the general public and therefore the lines between what people really need to know and what they can know become blurred. This news then becomes 'packaged' news. The news reporters select, invent and plan these events and news stories.

Pseudo events have 6 characteristics:
1. They are more dramatic and easy to get across and receive
2. Can be repeated/re-enforced
3. Cost money to create so they are advertised in advance
4. More sociable, easy to digest, convenient
5. Knowledge of the event becomes the test of being 'informed'
6. Pseudo events spawn other pseudo events that dominate our consciousness

A very recent example of what could be a pseudo event is from the Grammy Awards last night. Rihanna was seen at the awards ceremony wearing a ring on her engagement finger. She was sitting in the audience with Chris Brown, now four years after he assaulted her, wearing many rings on her fingers including her wedding finger, and she was clearly showing them off. When the singer then got on stage to perform she just had one simple silver band on her wedding finger. This lead to speculation on twitter about an engagement. This kind of of event being captured and reported on generates a lot of free publicity for Rihanna and Chris Brown. All she has to do is show up at an event with a ring on her finger and without even saying anything everyone on the internet is talking about it. This could have been totally planned by the singers PR team to get people talking and the ring could really mean absolutely nothing, knowing that the news reporters would need this as news. It could also be a plan to show the doubters and skeptics how happy and together the couple are on the 4 year anniversary of her beating from Chris Brown. Here is a link to the story that I found on the mail online website:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2276772/Grammys-2013-Rihanna-snuggles-Chris-Brown-flaunts-engagement-ring.html#axzz2KbB4OHzP

Media Discourse Analysis

I found the first class in this subject very interesting. It brought up topics that I would never have thought of or considered before. I never knew before that there are three ways in which information is given to us through the media and it's how the media manipulate and show it is how it's seen which is not always necessarily the truth. 

They are:

A genuine event

A media event 

A pseudo event

A genuine event is obviously something that has happened no matter what the media say about it and can't be influenced by the mass media. A pseudo event is something that is created for the purpose of getting media coverage which is something that I would have already known happened in terms of celebrities and what they do that is captured in magazines and news stories. These are not spontaneous, they are planned. But the one I never really had considered before is a media event, which is something that was going to happen anyway but it is received differently by the public because of the way the media decide to show it and manipulate it. A media event is held in response to an event or news story. But these events shouldn't be held to often as they need to be seen as a celebration or a spectacle of a specific event. 

It shows that we have to consider where our information is coming from and how we are receiving it. I am cynical enough already when it comes to things published in the media. As much as I love my celebrity gossip and would like to believe everything I read is true I know its not and even though I still read it I don't always believe whats being said. For example, a friend told me the other day about some music video footage that she heard was leaked before the release and straight away my response was, "That's definitely not true, it was planned, nothing is ever 'accidentally' leaked."

I think this module will make me look at stories more critically than I already do and probably make me analyse everything I see and read and be more cynical about what's reported in the news. I already blame the media for the recession among other things.