Sociology: Media Representations - Sexuality

1. Camp - one of the most widely used gay representations, found mainly in the entertainment media, is the 'camp character'.

2. Macho - stereotype relies on exaggerating masculinity, and is also an openly sexual look, transforming practical male clothing such as safety helmets and police officer's caps into erotic symbols. Research suggests this media representation is regarded as threatening, particularly by men, because it subverts traditional ideas of masculinity.

3. Deviant - gay people are often stereotyped as deviants by media representations - for example, they may be portrayed as evil or devious in television drama, as sexual predators or as people who feel tremendous guilt about their sexuality.

-These companies are now slowly beginning to respond to what the gay and lesbian audience wants, by actively courting it through advertising campaigns and the provision of media products, particularly in the new digital media and the 'plethora of gay and lesbian sites'.

However, the findings also suggest 3 important limitations in media coverage of young people's sexuality:

1. Contraception was clearly represented as a female responsibility - this was emphasised in references to pregnancy and letters to problem pages centred on girls' worries about getting/being pregnant.

2. There were distinct differences in terms of how young men and women in media texts talked, felt about and acted, in relation to sex - for example, they found that female media characters boasted about their sexual prowess. Girls were portrayed as being more interested in emotions, while male characters were represented as being more interested in sex. The general picture therefore, both in magazines and in television drama, was of boys/men as pursuers and girls/women as the pursued.

3. There was a lack of positive images of lesbian and gay teenagers, and a failure to represent sexual diversity.

They also found that being gay was not generally integrated into mainstream media representations:

-Rather, when it did appear, for example, in television drama, it was represented mainly as a source of anxiety or embarrassment, or it was seen as a target for teasing and bullying.

-They also found that, in mainstream young people's media, lesbians were not to be found at all.

-Consequently, if a person, whether heterosexual or homosexual, demonstrates these signifiers in the course of their everyday behaviour, they may be labelled as 'gay' by their peers and subjected to prejudice and discrimination by others.

This sociologist also analyses Craig's (1992) 3 media signifiers of 'gayness' that are common in media representations of homosexuality:

1. Camp - he defines it as the use of irony and exaggeration by characters that are generally regarded as extremely colourful and flamboyant figures on fun. He claims that heterosexual audiences do not interpret camp as threatening, however, the camp persona probably does reinforce negative views of gay sexuality by being somewhere in between 'male and female'.

2. Macho - He argues that the media stereotype of 'gay as macho' was popularised by the pop group 'The Village People'.

3. Deviant - he claims that gay people are rarely presented in a sympathetic manner and, even when they are, plots tend to focus on heterosexual characters' acceptance of their homosexuality. In many cases, gay characters are completely defined by their 'problem', and homosexuality is often constructed to appear morally wrong.

-The power of this has now been recognised by advertisers - many gay men and women are professional people with no dependants and large disposable incomes to spend on consumer goods.

-As a result, companies have actively courted gay and lesbian consumers through gay-positive advertising and marketing campaigns.

-Shows such as 'Grey's Anatomy', 'Ugly Betty', 'Glee', 'Transparency' and 'Orange is the New Black' have positively featured transgender characters and actors.

-In 2015, the UK's first transgender character played by a transgender actor appeared on BBC Two in the comedy 'Boy Meets Girl'.

-However, unlike homosexuality, this is still represented quite negatively by the mass media, especially the right wing press - for example, in April 2019, The Times newspaper published the headline: 'Calls to end transgender 'experiment on children' and in January 2019, The Daily telegraph published the headline: 'Trans row as men get access to women's NHS wards'.

-Social change has been reflected in media attitudes – and new media helps to promote attitudes and social change – ideas are challenged.

-Gauntlett and Gill both point out that mainstream media often still only represents a 'sanitised' representation of homosexuality.

-She points out that gay men are rarely portrayed in a sexualised way, like kissing, touching or having sex.

-They appear mainly as stylish and attractive figures with beautiful bodies in adverts or other media content designed to appeal to women, not to other gay men.

-She suggests the opposite applies for lesbians, who rarely appear in advertising and other media in anything other than a highly sexualised manner, which appeals to one of the oldest heterosexual male sexual fantasies - that of watching women engage in intimate sexual conduct.

Such representations have the triple effect of:

-Appealing to the gay and lesbian market.

-Not offending heterosexual media audiences and advertisers.

-Not challenging heterosexual ideology, but actively securing its continued hegemony as the norm.

-It was often previously stereotyped as having particular amusing or negative psychological and social characteristics.

-For example, in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, the Mail on Sunday published the headline ''britain threatened by gay virus plague'.

-Same sex relationships have been symbolically annihilated in visual media formats – advertising, film, TV.

-But social change and changes to the law have led to increasingly positive representation.

-For example, the recent introduction of same-sex couples on Strictly Come Dancing.