Report on the representation of ‘Pop’ Magazines
The genre that I chose was ‘pop’ music which includes magazines such as ‘Top of the Pops’. This type of magazine is aimed at girls of around the ages of 8-12 because of the style and gossip included in it.
The representation of people in these magazines is normally positive and doesn’t include many factual details about celebrities’ personal problems. This is because, young children don’t want to know the details about people’s marriage dilemmas, they want to see cute couples and to be able to idolise a celebrity. The representation of people in this magazine tends to show the realities of their lives, rather than the glamour. It shows celebrities being ordinary people and doing everyday things such as getting a MacDonald’s. As Pop Magazines are generally aimed at young teens, the people portrayed in them are role-models and therefore the negatives are rarely shown, or are not a major section of the magazine.
The representation of places in pop magazines isn’t very distinct. The places shown in this type of music magazine are usually holiday destinations or shopping malls. This is because the magazine focuses on the celebrities being in the real world rather than in a fake setting. For example, some more professional music magazines have pictures taken of singers at awards or red carpet events with the backdrops behind them advertising companies. These are more likely to appear in music magazines that maybe focus on appearance and fashion because, events such as the Oscars are ones where celebrities are dressed up and not in a natural environment. However, in these particular pop magazines, the celebrities shown on beaches and at the airports help to sell particular holiday destinations to the public. As the genre of magazine has a target audience of young girls, they are easily persuaded by pictures of places if a famous musician or singer has been there. Young girls can therefore persuade their parents to take them there because it has been approved by someone who probably has very high standards.
There are many ideas associated with this genre of magazine. If someone was to ask you what you would think may be included in a pop magazine, people would be most likely to answer pop artists and posters. There are stereotypes included with this type of magazine because people think that pop artists are for children and are probably associated with ‘Disney Channel’ or ‘Nickelodeon’. However, many artists such as Cheryl Cole and Michael Buble are on the cover of pop magazines because they are seen as role models to many young teenagers. When you think of ‘Top of the Pops’ magazines, competitions and girly gifts are two of the things you may expect to find. I think that the magazine represents these ideologies and plays on the stereotypes by making their audience female dominant by the colours and celebrities they use, especially on the front covers. Another idea associated with pop music is that the singers always look stereotypically ‘perfect’. The magazines represent this by adding pages about how to re-create the style portrayed by a celebrity. This also creates stereotypes in itself because it is saying that people should look like the ‘perfect’ representation of a man/woman.
