Representation of Women in Advertisements: A Semiotic Analysis of Women in North Cyprus Life Style Magazines

ABSTRACT: Mass media project various representations of gender. Women are represented within different roles in media outlets. Advertisements as a type of media tools include various representation of gender. To convince the audiences to buy the product or service, advertisements present recognizable and acceptable images. Therefore, they create models to encourage people to look like them. It might be possible to say that in addition to the advertised products or services, advertisements also try to sell images. This study examines the representation of women in advertisements in two life style magazines of North Cyprus. The textual and semiotic analyses are methods used to evaluate how women are represented in the advertisements of North Cyprus Magazine-Home and Zoom to find out whether there are any mis-representations of gender images. In spite of the new emergence of life style magazines in North Cyprus, almost all sexist representations covered in advertisements are recognizable. It is possible to argue that most of women representations are portrayed through traditional roles such as mother, spouse or partner, in contrast to the few non-traditional roles like minister, director, or technical positions in the advertisements. Moreover, the pattern of being a beautiful and sexy woman is already shaped by these women images of advertisements. If this study accomplishes what it has set out to do, the considerations and comments on women made here may be helpful for the further construction of gender representations in mass media. Keywords: Mass media, representation, gender, woman, semiotic analysis, textual analysis. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………