“Who is the ‘best of culture’?”: representations of gender, race and age bracket on the covers of Bravo! Magazine

Abstract

This paper proposes to map and analyze the covers of Bravo! magazine during its circulation for almost 16 years, observing collective memory construction about the brazilian culture from the different individuals who appear in Bravo!’s cover, this place that consecrates and it is consecrated. After the quantitative analysis, we applied the concept of gender established by the post-structuralist feminist studies, and understood as an analytical and epistemological category (SCOTT, 1995; BONETTI, 2007), mapping gender, race and age bracket issues on an intersectional perspective (CRENSHAW, 2004). The qualitative analysis was performed by the application of the theoretical and methodological rules from Enunciative Analysis (FOUCAULT, 2007). The results indicate the memory built by Bravo! magazine privileges the individual who is male (74% of the covers), white (91%) and is 60 years old or more (60%), which means that the magazine reinforces hegemonic social values about brazilian culture. Furthermore, it was found that women have more visibility under the age of 40 (61%), while men acquire more legitimacy on the magazine cover from their 60 years old. Considering an intersectional perspective, we identified the triple invisibilization of gender, race and age bracket that affects black women, who were present in only 0.67% of Bravo!’s covers.