DILEMMAS OF FEMININITY - GENDER AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SEXUALIMAGERY

This work builds on an interactive, interpretive approach to the study of cultural texts in an investigation of how images of gender and sex uality in music television (MTV) are read by the audience. After viewi ng a music video by Michael Jackson, 80 respondents described the vide o's portrayal of feminine and masculine images. A content analysis of the respondents' open-ended descriptions of the images indicate that t here are significant gender differences in how young women and men soc ially construct the meaning of femininity in the video, particularly c oncerning the intersection of gender, sexuality and power. There are n o major gender differences in the interpretations of the masculine ima ge. The findings show that MTV texts have multiple meanings for the au dience, and the interpretations of sexual imagery reflect traditional gender ideology about gender and sexuality.