The Aesthetic Construction And Significance Of Female Visual Images On The Cover Of Chinese Women (1978-2021

With the deepening of reform and opening up,there has been considerable development in various social aspects in China.Such social changes have exerted a profound impact on the media’s reproduction of women’s visual images.Meanwhile,women’s visual images in the media reflect the social reality of women’s lives and people’s gender concepts.As the mouthpiece of mainstream ideological publicity,the magazine "Women of China" is targeting the vast majority of women.In order to cooperate with the socialist publicity,the visual images of women on the magazine cover is a crucial expression front,playing an important role in social culture with its aesthetic construction and dissemination.This thesis was divided into five sections.The first section,the introduction,mainly discussed the research background,research methods,and research significance of the thesis;in the second section,742 research objects were sorted by content analysis method and systemically quantified;the third section analyzed the quantitative results in combination with the background of the times,divided the samples into timelines,and summarized their aesthetic characteristics;the fourth section interpreted the aesthetic value of the cover samples within the scope of the present study and conducted in-depth analyses of the trend,background,and factors of aesthetic changes;the fifth part analyzed the aesthetic significance of the visual images of women on the magazine cover and the social value of its aesthetic construction.This paper takes the covers of female pictures in the magazine Women of China from 1978 to 2021 as the object of research.By analyzing the female images in different eras,it finds that the female images on the covers of the magazine Women of China showed the shift from “de-gender typing” of producing idols to “gender typing”of consuming idols.Besides,the paper also analyzes the causes of aesthetic changes in female images and discusses the aesthetic value and practical significance of cover pictures in Women of China.This paper expounds that the aesthetic value of female images on the cover of magazines is influenced by mainstream discourse and market mechanism,and the aesthetic value of female images is changed due to the turn of visual culture and the aestheticization of daily life.Therefore,under the contradiction between traditional cultural consciousness and modern mind emancipation,the magazine "Women of China" has constructed an ideal visual image of women.