Music: a portrait of woman

Wellman, Amy R.

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Author

Wellman, Amy R.

Chair

DeCaro, Peter

Committee

Richey, Jean
Anahita, Sine

Abstract

Music in today's society is ubiquitous. It is in the car, the cinema, on television, in the doctor's office, in the home, on the other end of the phone; it really is everywhere. Music arguably is a large part of culture and as such, has the ability to construct social realities. In hopes to understand how media constructs the image of the female, a contextual analysis was performed on the lyrics of the top twenty-five country and pop songs according to Billboard.com. This was done using Grounded Theory through the employment of coding. Results showed that although country and pop music depict women in a slightly different manner, they both for the most part depict women in traditional gender roles. Furthermore, the propitiation and adherence to traditional gender roles sustain and conciliate patriarchy. Therefore the depictions of women in the music lyrics were then analyzed as processes of patriarchy.

Description

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012

1. Literature review -- 1.1. Media : the portrait of woman -- 1.1.1. Music -- 1.1.2. Television -- 1.2.3. Film -- 1.2. Intersectionality in the representation of women in the media -- 1.2.1. Black women in the media -- 1.2.1.1. General -- 1.2.1.2. Music -- 1.2.1.3. Television -- 1.2.1.4. Film -- 1.2.2. Native American and Alaskan Native women -- 1.2.3. Latina women -- 1.2.3.1. Music -- 1.2.3.2. Film -- 1.2.4. Asian women -- 1.2.4.1. Television -- 1.2.4.2. Film -- 1.3. Rationale of study -- 2. Methodology -- 2.1. Grounded theory -- 2.2. Method -- 2.3. Data collection -- 2.4. Data analysis -- 3. Results -- 3.1. Country music -- 3.1.1. Male's depiction -- 3.1.1.1. Country cutie -- 3.1.1.2. Family -- 3.1.1.3. The prop -- 3.1.1.4. Kryptonite -- 3.1.1.5. Liminal ladies -- 3.1.2. Females' depiction of self -- 3.1.2.1. Heartbroken -- 3.1.3. Duets -- 3.1.3.1. Virgin -- 3.2. Pop music -- 3.2.1. Male's depiction of female -- 3.2.1.1. Gold digger -- 3.2.1.2. Sex object -- 3.2.1.3. Bad woman -- 3.2.2. Females' depiction of self -- 3.2.2.1. Bad girl -- 3.2.2.2. Empowerment -- 3.2.2.3. Inspirational -- 3.2.2.4. Broken hearted bitch -- 3.2.2.5. Dynamic women -- 3.2.3. Duets -- 3.2.4. Emergent themes -- 4. Discussion -- 4.1. Patriarchy -- 4.2. Social construction of gender -- 4.3. Traditional female gender roles -- 4.4. Emergent theme -- 4.5. Country music and pop music : a patriarchal process -- 4.5.1. Processes of patriarchy -- 4.5.2. Country cutie and the sex object -- 4.5.2.1. Beauty ideals -- 4.5.2.2. Sexual objectification -- 4.5.3. Family -- 4.5.4. The prop -- 4.5.5. Kryptonite and the bad woman -- 4.5.6. Heartbroken and the revengeful/broken hearted bitch -- 4.5.7. Virgin -- 4.5.8. Gold digger -- 4.5.9. Bad girl and the empowered -- 4.5.10. Dynamic women and the liminal ladies -- 4.5.11. Subjugated woman -- 4.6. Theoretical exploration -- 4.6.1. Symbolic interactionism -- 4.6.2. Critical theory -- 4.7. Limitations -- 4.8. Implications of further research -- 4.9. Conclusion -- References.

Date

2012-08

Type

Thesis

Collections

College of Liberal Arts

Theses (Communication)