Feminism in ELLE

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with the liberating of media press, women magazines in Taiwan entered the stage of internationalization. European magazines such as Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Vogue began to publish in Taiwan during the 90s, providing new perspective and opinions towards women issue and began to influence Taiwanese readers, also with the localization of the content it then developed into a style of International-Chinese version of magazines (郭詠萱, 2009).

Women magazines had been growing rapidly due to the increasing feminism consciousness in Taiwan; women magazines have slowly become the life guide in women's daily life. Magazine has the function of reflecting society, every time period shows the current social trend, further women's magazines change with the changing structure of society, constantly altering the central idea, and the changing trend plays an important role in enlightening the readers (周欣君，2002).

2.8 Feminism in ELLE

Feminism used to be labeled as man hating and unhygienic and unattractive because of the Second wave agenda back in the 60s. Two of the most common stereotypes of feminists are that they hate men and that they are all lesbians (Holmes, 2000d, 235). Alex Holder, creative director of Mother, said that there are too many women who believe in equality and choice but not proud to call themselves feminists.

A kind of mythical beast that dominates feminism’s image—a hairy, man-hating, bra-burning shrew, which is unfortunately not helpful in promoting feminism, and it is the feminist stereotype that intimidates people (Dunne, 2013).

To break the stereotype of being a feminist and to make it more approachable, ELLE provided different perspectives and new definition of the modern face of

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feminism. Based on the literature review it is possible that feminism can work with fashion magazine to benefit each other. With the upcoming Third wave feminism, power feminism and girl power, girly and glossy objects are no longer be seen as symbols of patriarchy oppression.

Elle magazine UK has initiated a rebranding feminism campaign in the November issue, 2013. They invited three feminist groups to work with three award- winning agencies, Mother, Brave and Widen & Kennedy to rebrand feminism, which many feel the term has become burdened with complications and negativity. The goal of the campaign is to make feminism a better fit to the modern society and the value of modern women (see Appendix C for more information on the feminism campaign).

The three campaigns are as follows: Mother worked with the campaign group and magazine Feminist Times on its campaign, called "Make Them Pay", which aims to tackle gender pay inequality. Brave collaborated with campaigner Jinan Younis, their campaign, "Feminism For Everyone", aims to convince women who do not call themselves feminists to reconsider the label by using a flowchart. "Being a feminist is actually pretty simple," the ads state, also stating that Feminism is not extreme but rather the radical belief that women are people. Wieden & Kennedy worked with Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, the founders of satirical feminist blog Vagenda in the project, "I'm A Woman And...". Their concept aims to reverse gender stereotypes, asking women to post a picture on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag

"I'm a woman and", followed by a phrase that defies stereotypes. (Ridley, 2013) Also another new initiative of ELLE UK in 2015, "MoreWomen"; by interacting with the Internet users it is aiming to celebrate the global power of women's

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collectives in a more playful, engaging way. Smart and successful women are often presented as "fierce individualists concerned with their own success" ELLE's campaign page reads "The story of how women in positions of strength continually support and empower each other is consistently ignored while the myth that we pit ourselves against each other perpetuates." The goal is to create more positive conversation and to support and grow each other when pushing for global equality.

During the campaign they are asking powerful groups of women to post a group photo on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the caption: "One woman's success makes EVERY WOMAN STRONGER" tagged with campaign hashtags (Horton, 2015). The tactic of using social media is a good progress on the effort of promoting feminism for it is made to be more interesting and entertaining and also easier to access for readers. Which serves the purpose of making feminism fun (Wolf, 2006).

Most women cannot appeal to feminism is because they do not have a role model to look up to (Wolf, 1994). But through this campaign by showing all the successful women on mass media as a feminist icon can serve the purpose. For example, in the November issue of 2015 ELLE featured the English Hollywood star Carey Mulligan talking about motherhood, reflecting the need of women's voices to be heard, also on wage inequality both in Hollywood and other industries, and how to be a feminist. Also nowadays, more feminism has been displayed on pop stars such as Beyonce and Miley Cyrus, providing modern women feminist role models to look up to. Popular culture female icons can relate to women in ways that academic cannot, they represent powerful and independent women for women to identify with.

Feminism has become too academic for people to understand, but feminist politics

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can be spread to the world if carefully disguised in the mass media (Wong, 2003).

In an interview with Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, a professor of Reims University in France, published in June International Chinese issue 2015 with the topic of《要女權也要性感.》Camille stated that women's bodies are an important break through in the progress of feminism and it deserves to be furthermore discussed in a positive way. Camille refuses to be labeled and avoids the traditional perspective of feminism research. Her point of view corresponds to Simon Beauvoir's statement in her book, Le Deuxième Sexe, also known as The Second Sex; that women should truly embrace her femininity in order to be a complete individual equal with men, denying femininity is also denying part of the humanity in you as a woman. In Camille's new book, tells us that woman being pretty is not a completely useless and a shallow matter. She explained that it is time to liberate women on a more personal aspect, such as their body and sexuality. The situation is different from when Simone Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex. It was necessary for Second wavers to avoid discussing body issues other than maternity and appearances, in order to get out of the situation that women should stay in households. Not only that this enhances the social existence of women it also diminishes women's existence in a personal level, which are women's femininity and their appearance. Today women should know that being pretty is not compromising to men or capitalism. It is true that media has been giving women this perfect image and body of women that is just so difficult to achieve, but since women are now liberated from all the social expectations, they should be able to be judgmental and objective when encountered this sort of situation.

Women now should know better and be able to make their own decisions on how to

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do with their bodies. She stressed that during her research and interviews with lots of women, she came to know that now women are more capable of seeing themselves with a more positive attitude.

Also women's bodies are no longer serving the only purpose of breeding and procreation. Feminism should be about the freedom of women, about women be able to do whatever they want and be liberated from certain expectations that have been put on women for centuries. Women deserve to have choices, whether its becoming a housewife, a mother, or a career woman...etc. It is not appropriate anymore to assume that there is only one way to be women. Women today are allowed to make whatever choices they want, choices they did not have the freedom to make in the past; many young feminists are now practicing their right to choose these traditionally gendered activities such as cooking for the reason one likes to is the new empowering order of the current Feminism point of view (Gilley, 2005).

By using its strong influence among female magazines and with its robust marketing system, ELLE has changed the fact that feminism used to be lacking of mainstream media support. It is also worthy to mention that these advertisements made by a fashion magazine do make feminism more interesting for the mass public.

Based on the previous reviews of relevant literature about feminism and the positioning of fashion magazine ELLE, I propose a hypothesis as follows:

Hypothesis: There is a trend of increasing dose of feminist messages in ELLE magazine Taiwan under the influence of Third wave feminism during 1992~2016.

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