Gender Role Assignment in Nari and WOW: A Critical Visual Analysis

Abstract

This study is an attempt to explore how, through the women's magazine, namely, Nari and WOW, assign definite gender roles through their textual and visual messages. In exploring this issue, primarily, Theo Van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress's ideas of the Grammar of Visual Design and Roger Fowler's idea of lexicalization have been utilized. In doing so, Nari, women’s magazine, is selected. A brief cross-sectional analysis (syntagmatic and paradigmatic, in Saussurean sense) is made. The selection of items under analysis is made eclectically. The study argues that the women's magazines under scrutiny do not contribute to empower women in general, as their investors claim, but rather they disempower certain women by assigning them the traditional gender roles. Nari and WOW assign homogenous and reductive gender roles that are confined to food, fashion, childcare, homemaking and entertainment. And at bottom, the women participants, whether represented or interactive, are controlled and guided by the consumerism, capitalism, and male mindset.