Advertising: Gauntlett and masculinity

 1) The examples Gauntlett uses for the decline of tradition were the traditional view of women being only seen as a house wife and the masculine ideals of self reliance, emotional silence and absolute toughness being shaken apart.

2) The media plays an important role in constructing our identities through things like magazines, television, songs, etc. These all provide a type of guidance on how we should live our life through the myriad of suggestions. This is due to the social world not being confident in its traditions and as such are more prone to search to form there "experimental life" through popular media.

3) Gauntlett suggests that generational differences may be due to the elderly's devotion to tradition and rejection of modernity. People over 65's are less likely to be consuming media from magazines or be the key audience for pop music sensations. Furthermore they're also more likely to be less tolerant of homosexuality and less sympathetic to unmarried couples living together. They usually fight against the mass medias liberal perspective.

4) Gauntlett believes that masculinity is not in crisis as the media (particularly mens magazines) has an obsession over the socially constructed nature of manhood. Manhood in general is a socially constructed performance and the media attempts to generalise this masculine image. Nowadays representations of men is about finding a place for themselves in the modern world.

5) I believe advertising does still reinforce the conventional male attributes but have toned it down from the previous years hypermasculinity with some adverts even mocking such thoughts. Mens perfume adverts especially still fall into the habits of reinforcing these stereotypes but they have become frequent and extreme.

6) Advertising has provided evidence to support the idea of "girl power" with adverts not promoting the same stereotypes of women being dependant on women to such an extreme level as adverts like the score hair cream one. Nowadays advertisements attempt to represent women in a more independent and powerful position or discard traditional values of what women should be or look like.

7) I believe younger generations are comfortable with the social changes of gender roles as they are definitely less likely to be rooted in tradition as such we accept new ideas or changing values. 

8) The examples gauntlett provided for the changing nature of gender in society was the CK one fragrance "for a man or a woman".

9) Advertisements continue to both reinforce and subvert gender stereotypes as there will always be an audience to target in both. They may not be to the extreme as they once were but they'll most likely always be an advertiser looking to appeal to this audience. Additionally, consumers themselves may base a portion of there identity on the stereotypes so it may partially catch the eye of them.

10) I believe that the media does indeed reinforce the changing attitudes of society since if they didn't keep stick to the direction that society seems to be heading towards they may be disregarded. People are looking for change and if the media stays stagnant on its views then people would just move on without it.