Mudanças na subjetividade feminina: o papel do discurso publicitário na construção da identidade da mulher de meia-idade

Abstract

This study investigates the role of advertising in the discursive construction of middleaged women, in an attempt to contribute to studies of gender, specifically to the study of the changes in the ways mature women have been represented in the media. In order to better apprehend such changes, it was decided that the research would focus on CLÁUDIA, a magazine that is widely read by the middle class, white, Brazilian woman. One particular aspect of this magazine has also influenced its choice: the fact that it started being published in the early sixties and is still published nowadays, which makes it adequate for the purpose of this research, with its emphasis on change. The theoretical framework for this research is found in Kress and van Leeuwen´s study of multimodality (2001, 2006). To the authors, discourse is socially constructed knowledge of some aspect of reality, with the production of meaning being understood as the result of the articulation of image and verbal texts. Kress and van Leeuwen s work draws on Halliday s systemic functional grammar, also used in this research for the analysis of the interpersonal component of language. Also relevant to this research are: first, the concept of identity (Hall, 2005), and second the discussion of power and the body (Foucault, 2006). The focus of the analysis is on the visual and verbal representation of middle-aged women in ads published by CLAUDIA in the decades of 60 through the first decade of 2000, relating them to changes in Brazilian society. The findings of this research are twofold: on the one hand, they suggest changes in the discursive representation of mature women concerning a gradual dissociation from patriarchal power. On the other, the findings suggest that a new discursive regime is being imposed on the Brazilian mature women represented in CLAUDIA: a discursive regime which extends to women in maturity the requirements of youth, beauty, health and independence postulated for women at a younger age. Key words: discourse analysis; multimodality; identity; middle-aged woman; advertisements; changes