1. RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION DESIGN © 2012
www.PosterPresentations.com
PURPOSE OF STUDY: to analyze WNTW and evaluate how the hosts
influence the female gender and perpetuate the culturally
accepted definition of attractiveness.
METHOD/ANALYSIS: In hopes of obtaining an in-depth view of the
presence of gendered communication in WNTW, I viewed 10 full-
length episodes. These episodes were chosen because the explicit
language and attention that was placed on what it means to be
feminine.
In order to get a holistic view of media’s impact on female beauty, I
integrated the concepts of mass media, feminine ideals, and
cultural attractiveness, while carefully attending to the
communication of both hosts and participants, as well as the
narrated messages that played as voiceovers during each episode.
LACK OF MEDIA LITERACY
• Media outlets with the sole purposes of entertaining and making
a profit will usually subscribe to and promote the conventional
positions to avoid loss of sponsorship. As a result, a large
majority of media presents a worldview that conforms to the
status quo.
• Though magazines and movies deliver the same messages,
television usually has the greatest impact because of its ability to
repeat and reinforce the same messages to different audiences.
• Due to the pervasive nature of television, entertainment
television has the capacity to bring multiple groups together as
one audience and disseminate the same message of gender and
beauty.
• Makeover television, and media at large, gives viewers a skewed
assessment of reality that usually aligns with a certain type of
beauty, and when this kind of beauty is unobtainable, women
experience body dissatisfaction.
• If viewers lack media literacy, then they accept what they hear,
see, etc. without question and begin to pattern their lives after
such images. Thus, women begin to dress according to publicized
feminine ideals.
METHOD/ANALYSIS
WNTW’s IMPACT ON FEMINITY
• WNTW endorses the culturalized notion of beauty by
perpetuating the look of the ideal “natural” beauty, which is
nothing more than a constructed norm based on cultured gender
ideals.
• “This dress follows the rules because it give you a small waist.
You should get fitted for a bra because the proper bra will lift
everything up, slim the waist, and help form the hour glass
figure. So, you really can exploit the waist by bringing attention
to it” (Season 10, Episode 20).
• “You walked in here and had no style, no clothing style, no
makeup style, no hair style, and we’ve been pushing you along
the lines of femininity to get you away from the tomboy side”
(Season 2, Episode 47).
• “If you’re going to run out of the house with anything, then you
should run out of the house with mascara and blush” (Season 2,
Episode 47).
• “I’m a mother of nine, so if I get to shower it’s a good day. So, I
don’t have time to figure out what size jeans I am” (Season 10,
Episode 15).
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