Singaporean women's interpretation of magazine advertisements.

Abstract

This research aims to add to the literature’s understanding of contemporary women's attitude towards beauty and fashion magazine advertisements, by first re-examining what young educated Singaporean women define as beautiful and consequently, how it has changed the way they read and interpret magazine advertisements. The line argument from past research seems to claim that exposure to magazine advertisements has detrimental effects on women, as it sets high standards of beauty on them, causing them to feel insecure about their bodies. In this research, I find that the tertiary-educated women perceived beauty in a broad and individualistic manner. Additionally, they were able to actively interpret magazine advertisements, and were resourceful in finding other sources of information on beauty and fashion apart from magazines. Nevertheless, despite the criticisms given to the magazine advertisements, magazines still proved to be influential in shaping women’s ideas of beauty.