Investigando representações de masculinidades em capas de revistas para o público LGBT+

Abstract

In contemporary society, there is an increasing number of multimodal texts and technological resources that build social representations and establish interpersonal relationships, which, in turn, influence the way we understand our everyday experiences in the most diverse contexts. In this paper, we investigate representations of masculinities present in magazine covers produced for the LGBT+ audience. Based on categories of analysis proposed in Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) grammar of visual design and on concepts from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) put forth by Fairclough (1989), as well as studies of gender (LOPES, 2006, CONNELL, 2005), six covers of the magazine MaisJR were analyzed. Besides being distributed nationwide, MaisJR was chosen for having the highest circulation among magazines of its genre in Brazil. In these covers, we aimed to find aspects that could help us to understand if such representations contribute to the maintenance of a hegemonic view of masculinity, or if, on the contrary, they help to deconstruct patterns known in society and propagated through other means. After selecting the covers, we carried out the multimodal analysis and discussed the textual results found based on concepts of CDA. General results indicate that the magazine works with an editorial policy that favors the propagation of hegemonic values ??regarding masculinities, valuing the strong, muscular man who has hair on his body and who conveys the idea of ??power through clothing and/or how he behaves in the social environment.