The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media

This volume represents a fundamental change in how we conceptualize the mediation of gender, sex, and sexualities. It brings together a collection of new research that includes, but also extends beyond, comparisons between woman/man, into considerations of more complex and fluid notions of sex and identity. Ranging across a number of different media, including print, television, and the Internet, this collection explores the ways in which, on the one hand, popular media are complicit in the stereotypical reproduction of sex and gender “norms” and, on the other, the ways in which we are increasingly becoming architects and chroniclers of our differently constituted selves.

Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xix Editor’s Introduction xx Part I Mediated Women 1 1 The Geography of Women and Media Scholarship 3 Carolyn M. Byerly 2 Chilean Women in Changing Times: Media Images and Social Understandings 20 Claudia Bucciferro 3 The Girls of Parliament: A Historical Analysis of the Press Coverage of Female Politicians in Bulgaria 35 Elza Ibroscheva and Maria Stover 4 Gossip Blogs and ‘Baby Bumps’: The New Visual Spectacle of Female Celebrity in Gossip Media 53 Erin Meyers 5 Fanfiction and Webnovelas: The Digital Reading and Writing of Brazilian Adolescent Girls 71 Ilana Eleá 6 Virtually Blonde: Blonde Jokes in the Global Age and Postfeminist Discourse 88 Limor Shifman and Dafna Lemish Part II Rugged Masculinity and Other Fables 105 7 Men, Masculinities, and the Cave Man 107 Jeffery P. Dennis 8 Rhetorical Masculinity: Authoritative Utterance and the Male Protagonist 118 Stuart Price 9 Conan the Blueprint: The Construction of Masculine Prototypes in Genre Films 135 Guido Ipsen 10 Save the Cheerleader, Save the Males: Resurgent Protective Paternalism in Popular Film and Television after 9/11 157 Sarah Godfrey and Hannah Hamad 11 Fucking Vito: Masculinity and Sexuality in The Sopranos 174 Lynne Hibberd 12 Studio5ive.com: Selling Cosmetics to Men and Reconstructing Masculine Identity 189 Claire Harrison Part III Queering the Pitch 205 13 No Hard Feelings: Reflexivity and Queer Affect in the New Media Landscape 207 Katherine Sender 14 The L Word: Producing Identities through Irony 226 Julie Scanlon 15 Andro– phobia?: When Gender Queer is too Queer for L Word Audiences 241 Rebecca Kern 16 Questioning Queer Audiences: Exploring Diversity in Lesbian and Gay Men’s Media Uses and Readings 260 Alexander Dhoest and Nele Simons 17 ‘In Touch’ with the Female Body: Cinema, Sport, and Lesbian Representability 277 Katharina Lindner 18 Why Doesn’t your Compass Work?: Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantasy Blockbusters, and Contemporary Queer Theory 294 Martin Fradley 19 Raised Voices: Homophobic Abuse as a Catalyst for Coming Out in US Teen Television Drama Series 313 Susan Berridge 20 Transmen on the Web: Inscribing Multiple Discourses 326 Matthew Heinz 21 Transgendered Saints and Harlots: Reproduction of Popular Brazilian Transgender Stereotypes through Performance on Stage, on Screen, and in Everyday Life 344 Johannes Sjöberg Part IV Women, Men, and Gender 363 22 Sex/Gender and the Media: From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond 365 Cynthia Carter 23 Colin Won’t Drink out of a Pink Cup 383 Barbara Mitra and Jenny Lewin– Jones 24 Postfeminism Meets Hegemonic Masculinities: Young People Read the ‘Knowing Wink’ in Advertising 401 Sue Abel 25 Communication as Commodification: Video Technology and the Gendered Gaze 419 Corinna Chong, Heather Molyneaux, and Hélène Fournier 26 Dutch Moroccan Girls Performing their Selves in Instant Messaging Spaces 436 Koen Leurs and Sandra Ponzanesi Part V All about Sex 455 27 Sex and the Media 457 Feona Attwood 28 Deliciously Consumable: The Uses and Abuses of Irony in ‘Sex–Trafficking’ Campaign Films 470 Jane Arthurs 29 The Sex Inspectors: Self–help, Makeover, and Mediated Sex 487 Laura Harvey and Rosalind Gill 30 Enacting Bodies: Online Dating and New Media Practices 502 Begonya Enguix and Elisenda Ardévol 31 Gender and Sexuality in the Internet Era 516 Panayiota Tsatsou 32 Gay for Pay: The Internet and the Economics of Homosexual Desire 535 John Mercer Index 552

Karen Ross is Professor of Media and Public Communication at the University of Liverpool. Her recent publications include Rethinking Media Education: Critical Pedagogy and Identity Politics (edited with Anita Nowak and Sue Abel, 2007), Gendered Media (2009), and The Media and the Public (with Stephen Coleman, Wiley Blackwell, 2010). She is the founding editor of the ICA/Wiley Blackwell journal Communication, Culture & Critique .

" The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media is a gift made even more attractive in that the concepts are explored within the context of many students’ favorite topic: media." – Sex Roles