Ideologies of masculinity in women’s magazines : a critical stylistic approach

This article reports on an analysis of ideologies of masculinity in a corpus of women’s magazines from a (feminist) critical stylistic perspective. I identify four core themes of ideologies of masculinity produced via assumed and implied meanings. My discussion of these themes demonstrates how the texts’ constructions of masculinity ultimately uphold gender dichotomies, denying a performative understanding of ‘gender’ in a post-structuralist age. The ideologies discussed have potentially negative implications for female readers, because they serve to maintain notions of gender difference and uphold the power differential between women and men.