Scholarly record

IDENTITY DISCOURSES IN POLISH WOMEN'S MAGAZINES

Aneta Duda

Abstract

Background: In the first part of my article, I refer to the theoretical basis of my line of argumentation: I compare two opposing, though, still popular approaches dominant in Polish reference literature on the quality and role of popular women's magazines in shaping consumer attitudes. Methods and results: In the second part, based on the analysis of the content of the most popular women's magazines (24 issues from 2013), I propose my own theses, abandoning already overused arguments of dominant, repressive or heterogeneous, libertarian nature of these cultural texts. I present the results of investigation into women's magazines and point to four main conclusions to be drawn from them: 1) Women's magazines as a market product 2) Orientation towards conventions and aestheticization of commercial identity discourses 3) Search of 'authenticity' of commercial messages of celebrities. 4) Contradiction between identity models promoted therein Conclusions: I have shown the inadequacies of studies focusing on criticism of 'emptiness, banality and conformity supported by the cultural industry' [1] as well as papers in which women's magazines are merely a place of 'semiotic democracy' [9], still producing resistance-full, oppositional meanings. Even if some dominant groups attempt to create in a society an 'unarticulated consensus' [9], it is necessary to ask questions what this 'unarticulated consensus' would be about or what content and forms it conveys. The results obtained in the presented analysis rather motivate us not to agree with postmodernists’ thesis that there are increasingly fewer distinctive meanings that would reflect some kind of meta-narrative or some tolerably coherent ideology. In fact, new possibilities are offered to the feminine, playing with tradition and innovation without falling into a rigid dichotomy. The magazines encourage women to embody a certain kind of “liberated” identity instead. However, an important question arises, what really is this "liberated" identity. It is definitely not connected with encouraging women to step outside their carefully outlined yet imaginary boundaries determined by what is 'stylish' and 'fashionable'. Women’s magazines clearly represent contemporary society within categories of consumer culture as a pleasant bricolage of goods and services and social order as one big cultural jumble sale. To research this issue further, it is necessary to have a combination of an in-depth reception and text analysis, both of which would add new quality to this discussion.

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