Reception Theory - Woman

Woman - Reception theory

• The preferred reading of the magazine and the dominant hegemonic position is the target audience of Woman, the target audience would be women in the early 1960's.
• However the oppositional reading would be men, but in modern society majority of people would either be the negotiated reader or oppositional reader because of the changes in society since then and what is deemed as socially acceptable such as changes in regulation.
• Examples of this would be the Alfred Hitchcock interview, in the 60's people would believe that it is acceptable for his ideas of what women should be, do or look like, whereas in 2020, it would be seen very sexist because of the changes in society and the increase in the feminist movement.
• From the front cover, there are ideologies of women being stereotypically housewives whereas today that could be seen as not necessarily true.
• The contents also features ideologies of women's interests, 'Beauty', 'Cooking', 'Fashion', 'Home', 'Knitting'. Majority of women's interests have changed since the 1960's.
• The adverts in the magazine by Max Factor and Breeze, this represents women having to be beautiful and also objectifies them, readers nowadays may believe that the Breeze advert maybe more socially unacceptable as she is more sexually objectified.

• The audience's interpretation can be influenced by social, historical and cultural circumstances as women in the 1960's would be the preferred reading of the Woman magazine because society in the early sixties would consider these ideologies and what now would be known as sexist. This would be acceptable, which represents the regulation of conglomerates and the control of ideologies.
• The different audience interpretations with emphasis on polysemic readings, is found from readers in the 60's and their views and readers in 2020 and their views.