The representation of teenage girls in Home and Away

Home and away is a television series that attracts a young audience of teen boys and girls. Its set at a beachy small town called "Summer Bay" in Australia. The weather is always perfect and sunny and the men and women on Home and away are tanned, fit and sporty, attractive and well.. simply perfect in general.

For example, April Scott is a young woman in her first year of university; she is beautiful with a perfect physique, dark hair and very tanned skin. April is also very intelligent and studying to be a doctor. This gives the message to viewers that its possible for a girl to "have it all," brains and beauty. This creates an extreme pressure on teen girl viewers to feel like they should be as smart as April and as fit and tanned as April also. She has a lot of male attention on the television series, however when her boyfriend breaks up with her April is portrayed as very lost and confused and shows OCD signs. This tells the audience that women need men to stay stable and feel complete, even April who replicates a stong girl who has everything a girl could want is left dazed and unable to function without her boyfriend. Mise en scene is often used to portray the idea of the girls in Home and away to appear perfect and a mans dream girl, such as the costume use, mostly bikinis, the lighting is always strategically used to light up the girls faces in the right way to give them a captivating look in their eyes. Dialogue is also used to portray this idea, for example, we often hear the girls talking constantly about their boyfriends or current love interest. Which shows the audience that thats really the only concern to the girls.

This is a negative portrayal of teen girls, its saying teen girls as a group do not have the confidence to be a strong single person, its saying girls need males and are only focussed on boys. Another example is of a character in Home and away, Sasha, she again is very attractived and has perfect a complexion, she has a great body but when things between her and her boyfriend do not work out she too fell apart and was portrayed as a "lost puppy" who wept at any reminder of her boyfriend. This is a very negative portrayal of teen girls as it is blatently implying that teen girls need males in their lives and the one thing that a girls life revolves around is the male species.; and viewers are watching this and seeing the portrayal of teen girls and relating it to real life.

The females on Home and away are mainly high school girls who are typically blonde, tanned, perfect skin. They wear their uniform often on the show, a short schoolgirl dress. To me this is creating an ideal that all high school are like this in real life and in reailty the actresses who play these 17 year old girl characters are at least a year or two older than the actual characters age. This makes the girls on Home and away look older than they are and therefore reflect to the audience (the teen girls who are watching) that they should look and act older than they are which means wearing make up all the time, having a developed body; breasts and long legs, and to simply grow up to fast for their own good.

The school girl connotation also is a negative portrayal as it implies school girls have young, perfect skin and this puts pressure on real girls and women to have perfect, flawless skin. Home and away is promoting young girls to look and act older than they are, they are brainwashed into thinking they need to be a mans idea of perfection and distorts a teen girls indiviuality and aspiration to have her own goals and distorts also who and what a teen girl idolises. For example from watching Home and away a teen girl would idolise April and Indie who are two gorgeous, tanned young woman who work in a gym and are surrouned by men.. this is hardly a great inspiration.

The selection of material reinforces the stereotype that teen girls are dumb and don't care for school for education, only boys and men and their next boyfriend. This is terrible as it is showing to viewers that teen girls are one dimensional creatures with no substance to their character. This is an unfair and innaccurate representation of teen girls as this may be a true fact that girls are concerned about boys and boyfriends but its not the only thing they care for and a lot of girls feel pressured to have a boyfriend or a love interest because its so popular on these tv shows and it becomes a aspect of society that you need to have to be a perfect girl. This is effecting teen girls by making them less independent and rely on men to make them a complete person.

In comparison we have tv shows like Shortland Street and although it is quite similar to Home and away in some ways we see a differing point when the character Jasmin is not like the typical teenage girl that is usually portrayed in the media. She is nerdy and introverted and has her friends always trying to get her to put herself out there. This is different as we are used to seeing perfect girls who all pretty much look and act the same. However Jasmin does end up conforming to the pressures of society and gets a 'make over' to attract male attention, of course. Another differing point is that a lot of the women in Shortland Street are doctors or CEO's and hold powerful positions in society. This is a slightly better influence on teen girls than seeing a bunch of blonde barbies running around on the beach.

The representaion of teen girls in Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan is a magazine aimed at women aged 20 to 40, however these days it is becoming much more popular for a younger audience of teenage girls age 16 plus. Cosmo advertises a lot of sexual products and contains lots of sexual refrences encouraging sexual relationships and sexual inuendos.

The cover of cosmo always has beautiful women who look perfect, for example, Jessica Alba on the cover in a purple tight, short dress, showing a lot of cleavage. The background colour bight orange with purple writing, to match her dress. It draws attention to the finer detial and connects the dress and writing together so they relate. The first words that catch my eye are, "HIS #1 SEX FANTASY" written in bold, big, capital letters. They are the biggest words on the page and this is portraying the idea that women only care about satisfying their man. Due to the fact the writing of this is the biggest on the page and most attention catching and paired with the sexuality of the photo of Jessica Alba inncinuates that women are only present to please men. The image on the cover is unrealistic idea of how a woman should look, her figure is perfect with every part of her body being in proportion to each other. She also looks relatively natural so its hard for a teen girl to look at this image and think well, Jessica Alba looks quite natural in this.. but I should still look like her because even though its natural shes still perfect. And teen girls need to be taught and shown that every female is natural AND perfect. All female figures are different and its up to you to decide how you want to portray yourself.

The selection of material reinforces the stereotype of girls having to look perfect and only caring about their appearance and what people, mostly men, think of them. This isn't a fair representation as although some women and girls do care about these things, its not the only thing they care about and they basically only are concerned about those aspects because its how women and girls have been brought up, through media influence such as this magazine, to care about. If magazines like Cosmo, which are known for being mostly appearance, sex and men related started bringing more world issue stories and career stories into their magazine and advirtising these stories on the front of their magazine then it would begin a revolution of women and girls becoming more accustomed to finding themselves naturally attracted to these intellectual stories. The readers of these magazines would be seeking to find magazines with these types of stories in them and it may start to become more important to teen girls to have a high paying career and financial success than a perfect wardrobe and the best make up.

There are four out of eight front cover features that relate to sexuality. This very strongly gives the the impression that women are simply objects to men and a womans only goal is to please her boyfriend/husband etc. Another feature on the cover is "6 CONFIDENCE BOOSTERS" which to me implies that it is assumed women don't have adequate confidence, which seems rather contradictary as theres encouragement of sexual actions and then confidence boosters, so I personally find that confusing as its telling me to lower myself to be objectile to males but then saying how to be confident. Women are portrayed negatively through this magazine I believe, as it is so focussed on sex and making the men the main idea in a womans life rather than focus on career or world issues which would portray women more positively in a more intellectual.

The front cover photo of Jessica Alba looking very attractive and revealed with perfect make up and precise waves framing her face gives the impression of perfection and most girls would feel it impossible to look like her.

In contrast to Cosmopolitan we have Time magazine, a news and world issue magazine with current stories of the worlds issues. It contains no sexual content unless it is educational and useful. This is definitely more of what teen girls should be brought up to be reading and interested in.

The representaion of teenage girls in Mean Girls

The film Mean Girls has a strong representation of teenage girls throughout the entire film, the whole thing is based on teenage girls in a struggle to be at the top and be the best; the prettiest, the girl everyone appears to like and admire. The film shows all different groups in high school and how they interact and behave towards each other. The film is based around “Queen Bees and Wanna Bees” showing what extents they would go to just to be most popular. More over how teenage girls are more concerned about looks, beauty, boys and fashion then what’s more important.

Teenage girls are portrayed in this film as very nasty and un caring of each others feelings, they're all out for themselves and don't care what may happen to any other girl on their way to becoming the best in the school. For example, when there is the first establishing shot of the high school cafeteria we see the 'mean girls' sitting in the middle at their own table, they stand out with extremely similar clothing and sitting the same. The girls appear oblivious of anything going on around them, the only thing that matters is whats going on in their little world. The surrounding tables have all the different groups of girls and boys and we are shown what they're like and the stereotype they fall under by the clothing, actions and use of language they have and use. For example, 'the plastics' wearing fashionable pretty clothes and their hair nicely done and made up. In contrast with the 'art freaks' who have weird and different clothing and not very fashionable or trendy, they don't care about what people think of them especially 'the plastics' who they appear to dislike the most. We see the 'nerds' which stereotypes mostly all smart and clever people, but when Cady comes to school people realise you don't have to be 'nerdy' to be smart. Then Cady begins to dumb herself down to get a boys attenetion.. she is giving into the pressures of society to be something you're not to get the attention of a boy. Looking at 'the plastics' as an example of stereotypes, we see the stereotype that they are 'dumb blondes' for example the character Karen is portrayed very stupid and asks silly questions and statements such as when she says "I have a fifth sense, my boobs can tell when its going to rain... well they can tell when its already raining." this makes her look really dumb and portrays teen girls as stupid.

The camera angles are relevent in showing the dominance and portrayal of the characters such as the camera tilts up and down when Cady sees 'the plastics' showing us Cadys analysis of them and shows the audience they are a main focus to the film. The camera technique when Aaron Samuels is introduced to the film is slow motion and slightly hazy to replicate a dream and then we see a close up of Cadys face and eyes showing she is interested and he is another important aspect of the film.

The sound when 'the plastics' are shown on screen walking onto the soccer field is non diegetic and empathises with the characters for example it reflects the characters personalities and dominance in the film. Its powerful with a kind of upbeat party feel to it that tells the audience these girls are powerful and party girls. Matched with the boys carrying Regina in like a Queen, this really tells the audience that shes dominant and people see her literally as above them.

In contrast to Mean Girls a film that first pops into my mind is The Hunger Games, where the main character, a female, is portrayed as very strong, intelligent, a protecter, with hunting and gathering instincts. She looks after her younger sister and provides for her family. Unlike Regina, from Mean Girls who is a terrible influence on her little sister who we see watching tv and imitating the inappropriate actions of the girls on the tv show she is watching. She is the opposite of how the girls are portrayed in mean girls. She is much more of a better influence on teen girls. She is an inspiration to teen girls to be strong and independent and focus on the more important things in life such as family and learning to look after yourself rather than be dependant on other people, especially men.

The film tells the audience that teenage girls only focus on one thing and that is attracting as much male attention as possible, we are told this by the clothing worn and appearance used. For example, when Cady becomes close friends with 'the plastics' her skirt gets shorter, tops get tighter and lower cut and she starts caking on make up every day at school and never has a hair out of place. This tells us she feels she needs to keep up with the other girls she's surrounded by and that means keeping her appearance on form at all times. Its become a competition between her and the other girls of who can be the best and hottest girl who gets the most male attention. 'The plastics' christmas show perfomance for the school is another example of the girls only caring about male attention. They wear short read skirts with white fluff and tigh red tops showing much clevage, innapropriate for school definitely however that is just the point they are trying to show; the girls don't care about school or the rules they care about getting boys attention. The saying keep your friends close but your enemies closer is very true in this film as all four girls know its better to be in 'the plastics' than to not be in it. They keep each other close so theres less chance of them turning on each other and attempted to sabotage each other, which in the end is just the thing that happens.