"Diva Nation explores the constructed nature of female iconicity in Japan. From ancient goddesses and queens to modern singers and writers, this edited volume critically reconsiders the female icon, tracing how she has been offered up for emulation, debate or censure. The research in this book culminates from curiosity over the insistent presence of Japanese female figures who have refused to sit quietly on the sidelines of history. The contributors move beyond archival portraits to consider historically and culturally informed diva imagery and diva lore. The diva is ripe for expansion, fantasy, eroticization, and playful reinvention, while simultaneously presenting a challenge to patriarchal culture. Diva Nation asks how the diva disrupts or bolsters ideas about nationhood, morality, and aesthetics"--Provided by publisher
This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centres on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures generated through the reading of fashion editorial in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted to the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against the grain reading of mainstream women's fashion magazines. The development of the lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines, in the context of the pink pound, produces a situation in which an eroticized lesbian visual pleasure is the overt remit of the magazine, rather than a clandestine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery. In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy by which readers produce lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that in a subcultural context readers deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive images iconography. The article uses the concept of subcultural competency to consider the different ways lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media and suggests that the conflict over Diva's fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.
Purpose– The purpose of this study is to consider entrepreneurial imagery that sheds light on differing and emerging patterns of female entrepreneurial identity which illustrate shifts in the locus of power that challenge masculine hegemony and power structures. As a concept, power has an image component, and shifts in power are often conveyed by subtle changes in the cultural semiotic. Globally, images of female-entrepreneurship are socially constructed using stereotypes which are often pejorative. The semiotics of gendered identity as a complex issue is difficult to measure, assess and understand. Gender has its own semiotic codes, and, universally, images of female-entrepreneurship are socially constructed using pejorative stereotypes. Entrepreneurial imagery can shed light on differing and emerging patterns of female-entrepreneurial identity illustrating shifts in thelocusof power that challenge masculine hegemony and power structures. Artefacts, images and semiotics construct alternative gendered social constructs of the entrepreneur to the heroic alpha-male. The imagery associated with the female-entrepreneur is either said to be invisible, or associated with "Pinkness" and the "Pink Ghetto". Therefore, images, forms and presence associated with gendered entrepreneurial identities have been explored.Design/methodology/approach– One hundred images of female-entrepreneurship were analysed semiotically using photo-montage techniques to identify common stereotypical representations, archetypes and themes. The resultant conceptual typology highlights the existence of near universal, archetypal gendered entrepreneurial stereotypes including the Business Woman; the Matriarch; the Diva; and the Pink-Ghetto Girl.Findings– Although the results are subjective and open to interpretation, they illustrate that the contemporary female-entrepreneur, unlike their male counterparts, is not forced to adopt the persona of the "conforming non-conformist" because they have more options available to them to construct an entrepreneurial identity.Research limitations/implications– This study extends research into entrepreneurial identity by considering visual imagery associated with socially constructed stereotypes. In looking beyond images associated with the "Pink-Ghetto" the author challenges stereotypical representations of the appearance of female-entrepreneurs, what they look like and how they are perceived.Originality/value– This study widens knowledge about entrepreneurship as a socio-economic phenomenon via images forming part of enterprising identity, a physical manifestation of nebulas phenomena acting as "visual metaphors" shaping expected constructs.
