"Beautiful, out of control and from the Planalto": the representation of women in the media and the construction of female identity through the comparison between Dilma Rousseff and Marcela Temer

Abstract

The hegemonic discourse of mainstream media defines the ideal woman as someone concerned with appearance, discreet, submissive and dependent on a man. Recently, two brazilian leading publications compared the profiles of women engaged in politics. In April 2016, the IstoÉ magazine published an article entitled “The President’s fits” (“As explosões nervosas da presidente”)referring to the emotional instability of Dilma Rousseff, the brazilian president at the time; and the headline of Veja magazine’s story was “Beautiful, demure housewife” (“Bela, recatada e do lar”),in which they described the profile of Marcela Temer, the wife of vice president Michel Temer back then. The present study analyzes the representation of women in the media considering the discussion proposed by FreireFilho (2015) and purports to understand how the news and its frameworks are constructed as discussed by Albuquerque (1998), Charaudeau (2012) and Porto (2004). From the close relationship between media frameworks and the citizens’ political deliberation process, it is clear that the media favors the hegemonic interpretation of reality.