UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS Body shaming ideologies in Women’s Health magazine covers in the Philippines A Paper presented to the Faculty of Arts and Letters University of Santo Tomas UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE In partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree Bachelor of Arts and Letters in English Language Studies By Francis Beatta M. Ramirez [email protected] UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables vii List of Figure xi List of Appendices xii Acknowledgments xiii Abstract xv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Research Objectives 8 1.2 Theoretical Framework 8 1.3 Conceptual Framework 12 Chapter 2: Method 16 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE 2.1 Research Design 16 2.2 Research Corpus 16 2.3 Data Analysis 17 2.4 Intercoding 18 2.5 Research Procedure 19 Chapter 3: Findings 21 3.1 Overwording 22 3.2 Lexical Choice and Semantic Prosody 25 3.2.1 The Lexeme “sexy” 25 3.2.2 “Fat” Body Connotation 28 3.3 Body Shaming Euphemisms 30 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE 3.4 “Real Women” and “Weight loss” Connotation 33 3.5 Building Relations: Synthetic Personalization 34 3.6 Ideal Body Type Defined 36 3.6.1 Assertive Speech Acts 37 3.6.2 Directive Speech Acts 39 3.7 Personality of the Magazine Covers 43 3.7.1 Placement of Images 44 3.7.2 Image Act, Gaze, Gestures 45 3.8 Women’s Health: The Brand 46 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE 3.8.1 Confidence in sexy, slim, fit body type 49 3.8.2 Sexy and Slim Culture 52 4.0 Intercoding 54 4.1 Ovewording 55 4.2 The Lexeme “sexy” 55 4.3 “Fat” body Connotation 56 4.4 Body Shaming Euphemism 57 4.5 “Real Women” and “Weight loss” Connotations 58 4.6 Assertive Speech Acts 59 4.7 Directive Speech Acts 60 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE Chapter 4: Conclusion 61 4.1 Implications 62 4.2 Recommendations 63 References 64 Appendices 69 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Frequency of overwording 23 Table 2: Frequency of overwording 54 Table 3: Connotations of sexy 55 Table 4: Connotations of fat 56 Table 5: Body Shaming euphemisms 57 Table 6: “Real Women” and “Weight loss” connotation 58 Table 7: Assertive Speech Acts 59 Table 8: Directive Speech Acts 60 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE xi LIST OF FIGURE Figure 1: A Schematic diagram of the Conceptual Framework of the Study as Adopted from Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (1996) 13 incorporating Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory and Cook’s (2001) model in language and advertising UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE xii LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A: Sample Coding Sheets 69 Appendix B: Women’s Health Magazine covers (research corpus) 75 Appendix C: Coder 1 Coding Sheet 81 Appendix D: Coder 2 Coding Sheet 85 UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE xiii Acknowledgments The writer is sincerely grateful to the following for their invaluable contribution and very kind assistance: The University of Santo Tomas – Faculty of Arts and Letters for being the home of the researcher for the past four years and instilling Christian values and virtues; Dr. Alejandro Bernardo for being a diligent ELS Thesis Coordinator; The researcher’s thesis adviser, Ms. Josephine B. Alarcon, her immeasurable support, unwavering patience and understanding, commendable knowledge, and for providing the researcher with all the necessary factors to successfully finish this paper; The researcher’s fellow thesis advisee, Laiza Ysabelle Rodriguez, for being the best buddy in every thesis undertakings and struggles, through the library- searching adventures just to have enough sources and references and unending chat and encouragement just to overcome each other’s anxiety. The researcher’s interraters, Ayn Bernos and Chia Castro, for imparting UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE their commendable knowledge to validate the research findings; The researcher’s forever Best friends (Som, Chi, Dan, Cam, Justin, Ika, Ina, Angge, Ven, Joma) for keeping the researcher ecstatic while writing the paper through late night chats, corny jokes and stories, and witty debates about presidentiables and politics; The researcher’s College friends (Pearl, Lae, Abi, Patti, Cath) for keeping the thesis writing more fun through unforgettable sleepovers and food adventures; The researcher’s friends (Amos, Chelsea, Marion, Aaron) for patiently listening to the researcher’s sentiments, for tagging anything about body shaming issues, and for supporting whatever the researcher’s decisions are; The researcher’s family (Mama, Papa, Mico, Igui) for being best of the best support system, motivation, inspiration and for giving care and love to the researcher while writing the paper; Most importantly, the Lord Almighty, for His unending grace and spiritual guidance in everyday undertaking. UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE xv Body Shaming Ideologies in Women’s Health magazine covers in the Philippines Francis Beatta M. Ramirez Abstract Advertising is the most influential institution of socialization in modern society such that it has brought into perspectives on how people who are in control of business in advertising manage to exercise their power and manipulate certain beliefs. These instances opened an area of studies on language and power and ideologies. Thus, this study is focused on body shaming ideologies and controversies observed in Women’s Health magazine covers in the Philippines through Fairclough’s (1996) Critical Discourse Analysis framework and Searle’s (1962) Speech Act Theory for an intertextual and interdiscursive analysis of texts and events, and Cook’s (2001) Language and Advertising model for the analysis UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE of visual texts that includes discourse strategies present in magazine covers. The synthesis of these theories allows a comprehensive and a qualitative analysis of all linguistic, visual, textual, and social factors to the depiction of body shaming ideologies in the magazine covers. The use of overwording, lexical choice and semantic prosody, synthetic personalization, directive and assertive speech acts, image act, gaze, gestures, and facial expression in the magazine covers greatly show the unfavorable and biased portrayal of “fat body” and partiality and confidence for “sexy”, “slim”, “flat” body type, inducing body shaming ideologies. Hence, this paper contributes to the growing literature on body shaming ideologies and raises awareness to the Filipino community on how body shaming is presented in magazines exercising the power of advertising to manipulate women’s cultural beliefs. Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, body shaming ideology, beauty ideology, magazine advertising, speech acts UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE 1. Introduction Advertisements are skillful and amusing in promoting various products across a variety of categories. Cook (2001) explains that advertising is a topic which both causes and reveals existing social divisions due to the growing effectiveness of its persuasion techniques. It has elevated beyond the use of basic techniques in promoting products and services such that it has entrenched into social discourse and permeated the cultural landscape of the people by virtue of its widespread diffusion throughout the society. Intense large-scale advertising has a history now. Since people grow up with it and grow used to it, it UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE is perceived as evil and ambiguous, and it is also seen as inevitable and remarkable. Thus, in its strongest form, it can be argued that a growth economy, social exploitation and inequality, violence and destructions are all inextricably linked to each other, and that advertising is both an expression of this apocalyptic unity and dependent upon it (Cook, 2001). In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted as to language and power, body image, and body shaming controversies and ideologies. The expanding awareness of body image and body type has become the main elements of research especially in discourse advertising. Andrew (2012) even argues that body shaming issues are growing; hence most women are being UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS FACULTY OF ARTS AND LETTERS PAGE deprived of their body type and image based on how social media portrays the ideal and perfect body of women. Body shaming happens when someone is made to feel shame for his/her body image and/or body size. Usually, this incident is associated with being overweight or not, being pretty and handsome enough versus the ideal image of a certain individual that has been set and portrayed by the social media. However, psychologists explain that body shaming is not a one-sided issue; rather it includes being made to feel shame for being too skinny. But predominantly, being overweight has a greater impact when it comes to this issue since a large number of women often do self-starvation to lose weight and UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS GRADUATE SCHOOL PAGE to achieve their ideal body type leading them to be bulimic and anorexic. Due to this, the growing number of self-starvation is uncontrollable among women; such that self-starvation to slenderness and its hypothesized relation to the media image, suggests food use/abuse is just a range of technologies working on women’s bodies to alter shape, weight, and attributes. Hence, blaming the media for reproducing and extolling representations of unrealistic female bodies that encourage young women to starve themselves has almost become a popular truism (Wykes & Gunter, 2005).