“The solving of ordinary problems and the making over of ordinary lives is the very stuff of lifestyle media (Roy, 2008). In helping us to transform to a better, more efficient, happier self, lifestyle media ties the journey of self-improvement into ordinary aspects of daily life such as redesigning our homes, getting the job we want, managing a divorce and rearing our children. This tying of self-improvement into the general unfolding of everyday life may be most apparent in lifestyle TV, but it also resonates through other lifestyle media: self-help literature, popular journalism, The Sunday supplements, magazines, radio and TV talk shows, advertising, agony columns and health promotional literature to name but a few (Raisborough 2011 p.4)”
Analyze gender in ONE lifestyle media text of your choice using:
* Judith Butler’s theory of gender trouble and fluid identities. OR
* Michel Foucault’s theory of lifestyles and technologies of the self. OR
* Anthony Giddens’s theory of the trajectory of the self
In your answer, you should briefly locate your chosen text in its cultural and historical context. You should also assess the appropriateness – i.e. the strengths and weaknesses – of your chosen theoretical approach.
