The Imaginary "She"

Guangzhou Republic Daily,founded in 1923,is an important reference material for the study of Guangzhou citizens’ life and social culture in the 1920 s and 1930 s.Many scholars have explored it from multiple angles.Media’s construction of image has always been one of the important issues in the history of journalism.Many advertisements in the newspapers and periodicals can reflect the special background of The Times and the change of social values,among which the rich female roles have certain reference value for the study of the female image at that time.There are many types of advertisements in Guangzhou Republic Daily,including both public welfare and commercial advertisements.Its audience can cover both upper class and poor class women.The construction of female images in advertisements can reflect the living status of women at that time to a certain extent.From the perspective of gender,this paper selects the advertisements from 1923 to1930 as the research text,classifies their female images and analyzes the reasons behind their image construction,and explores the trend of women’s liberation at that time from the changes of female images combined with the social context.This paper is mainly composed of the introduction,the text of four chapters and conclusion,of which the second and three chapters are the main parts of the article.The first chapter introduces the background of politics,economy and culture in combination with the issuance period of Guangzhou Republic Daily to understand the current situation of women’s survival in the historical period.Guangdong had a relatively open ideological atmosphere,developed economic environment,and relatively open politics at that time.At that time,women had made certain progress in education,career,marriage and other issues.The second chapter classifies the samples of female images in advertisements from the perspective of gender theory,and summarizes three kinds of female images with similar core: traditional women,glamorous women and "new" women.At the same time,the differences of multiple female images are explained theoretically.The third chapter explores the reasons behind the different female images constructed in media advertisements.The mercantile nature of Lingnan culture in Guangdong makes women become "consumed" commodities,and because Lingnan people are open in their bones,they have a high tolerance for Western culture at that time.Many Western material and spiritual cultures have a certain influence on the shaping of women at that time.However,the traditional Confucian thought and the predicament of the female position make the media fail to show the flesh-and-blood women in shaping the female image.The fourth part is to take a look at the historical scene presented by Guangzhou women’s liberation through advertising after sorting out the female images.Driven by the new trend of thought,diversified female images appeared,which had certain advanced significance at that time and could provide thinking for the current female movement.Although the female images in Guangzhou Republic Daily are diverse,they fail to truly reflect the spiritual style of the women of The Times.The female images lack full and multi-level social positioning.The female movement in the new century still needs to carry a heavy historical burden to move forward.