„Tahan särada, teada, et ma olen ilus“: Suvetüdruku konkursi diskursused osalejate ja Õhtulehe tõlgendustes
Date
2010
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
Every summer Õhtuleht, one of Estonia’s largest daily newspapers holds a summer
girl competition where girls dressed in a bikini compete for a holiday trip prize.
During three months pictures of half-naked girls are published in the paper and on a
special website.
This dissertation is an analysis of the summer girl competition, putting its focus on the
reasons that the participants and organisers give for what they are doing. The aim is
to find out, why girls take part in the competition and what is their interpretation of
this social practice.
The theoretical framework relies on different scholars who share the belief that for the
last few decades the Western society has been going through what has been labelled
“a sexualization of culture”. The theoretical chapter gives an overview of what this
concept means, as well as mentions other concepts that are used to mean similar
trends – such as “pornification”. One of the most important features of this process is
that there is a blurring of the public and the private sphere. Whether the summer girl
competition is an example of this is a question that this dissertation also addresses.
Interviews with five girls and two project managers from Õhtuleht show that the
competition is mainly talked about in four discourses.
The beauty discourse is used to give reasons for competition: the girls want to know
what others think of them, they want their beauty to be publicly recognized and
confirmed. The courage discourse is used to express the need to be brave to expose
oneself in public. The courage discourse is therefore connected to the third discourse
– the exposure discourse. The girls as well as the organizers consider posing in a
bikini to be a normalized part of the summer girl competition, especially as it is held
in summer.
The fourth discourse, networking, is describing the girl’s hope and the newspaper’s
certainty that the summer girl competition will open the doors for the girls to the
different kinds of social practices in the entertainment and beauty industry, such as
TV-reality shows or professional modeling career.
If an analysis of the beauty discourse gives an overview of the values involved in the
social construction of beauty – such as a thin body, tanned skin, long hair and thin
legs – then the exposure discourse adds another feature: partial nudity/body exposure.
Research results show that exposure of the naked body is a considered to be a normal
part of the competition discourse. This leads into a discussion over whether the
Õhtuleht summer girl competition is evidence of the sexualisation of Estonian
mainstream culture. The author concludes that it is. However, she refuses to agree
with the claim that the outcomes of the sexualisation process are entirely negative,
which is the dominating view taken by cultural critics.
Keywords
magistritööd, meedia, trükiajakirjandus, meelelahutus, kultuur, noored, tüdrukud, fotod, ajakirjandusfotod, seksuaalsus, Õhtuleht (ajaleht)