“Put on that red lipstick”: Cross-cultural Analysis of Solutions in Advice Articles of Women’s Magazines

Year 2019, Volume: 13 Issue: 2, 187 - 204, 31.12.2019

Reem Adib Lulu Sharifah Nurul Huda Alkaff

Abstract

Women’s magazines are widely seen as mirrors of social change in society; thus they have increasingly become an important topic for scholarly exploration. This paper focuses on the sex and relationship advice column in locally-produced English language women’s magazines in the US, the Middle East, and Malaysia. Sixty relationship advice articles were obtained online from the selected magazines. The study investigates the solutions these publications promote to their readers. It also examines whether these solutions reflect the dominant values of the respective society, or do they challenge them. Machin and Van Leeuwen’s problem-solution discourse schema is used to analyse the texts. Although Machin and Van Leeuwen’s solution categories of their problem-solution discourse schema are found in our data, not all of these categories are found in all of the contexts studied. This study also finds an additional four solution categories, namely, ‘Pleasing Oneself’, ‘Acquiring Knowledge’, ‘Taking Responsibility’, and ‘Forgiveness’. In addition, the socio-cultural, political and religious beliefs of the three parts of the world studied reflect the types of solutions appearing in the articles. The findings of this study also suggest that frames of femininity are polarised to form two images of women: a traditional feminine image of women and an empowered image of women.

Keywords

Women’s magazines, Sexuality, Cross-cultural, Solution categories, Female empowerment

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