Como as revistas femininas brasileiras identificam as representações da sexualidade feminina – um estudo de caso sobre as revistas Lola, Nova e Marie Claire

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify different forms of female sexuality representation in contemporary Brazilian magazines aimed at female audiences. The specific aim is to verify how much these representations get close or far from long-standing feminine stereotypes built in Western civilization. The research corpus is composed of three publications by some traditional Brazilian printing houses: the Nova and Lola magazines (the last one already extinct) by Editora Abril and Marie Claire by Editora Globo, collected along six months – from January through June 2013. Theoretical fundamentals used in this work include results of research about feminism, the history of women in the Western world, identity as a narrative construction, social interactions and communication. Categorical content analysis, as a proposal by Laurence Bardin was the methodology used to analyze the selected material. A research work about the reception of this product has also been conducted. The overall conclusion suggests the existence of an idea of “modernizing in order not to transform” a characteristic that has been found in magazines and seems to have been highlighted in the last decades.