Women’s “beach body” in Australian women’s magazines

Jennie Small

Annals of Tourism Research, 2017, vol. 63, issue C, 23-33

Abstract: Representations of tourism subjects, both people and places, extend beyond specifically tourism media. This paper explores the presummer images of swimwear and beach bodies in Australian women's lifestyle magazines. A content analysis of swimwear images confirmed British findings that there was a general uniformity in the characteristics of the women modelling the swimsuits: young, slim, white ethnicity (but tanned) and able-bodied. Critical Discourse Analysis highlighted that the beach body discourse is in many ways contested. On the one hand the beach is a place of abandonment, but women need to work hard to achieve the required normative image. Women's agency and choice is questioned due to the narrow normative image and the neo-liberal, consumerist systems underlying the discourse.

Keywords: Women; Magazines; Images; Beach body; Feminism; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:63:y:2017:i:c:p:23-33

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2016.12.006

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