As discussed in "Media Texts and Gender," content analysis is defined as 'a research technique for the objective, systematic adn quantitative description of the manifest content of communication." The article goes on to discuss how women are usually portrayed as housewives, secretaries or nurses with very feeble, weak or vulnerable characteristics about them. This subservient portrayal of women was alive and well among feminists in the 1960s, dropped off by the 1980s, but has regained its momentum in criticizing advertisers who conform to these stereotypes. The article also discussed the fact that wehn the research in the area of gender and media is scarce, as for instance in most developing countries, content analysis is instrumental in providing a general imporession of the representation of women and men. While this may sound useful, it is quite harmful in the sense that it fails to truly represent a community or society factually, and therefore sends a misconstrued message to other audiences or viewers. Seminology or semiotics has become quite popular in feminist media criticism because of its ability to unravel structrues of meaning beyond the mere presence or absence of women in cultural forms. Furthermore, I found it interesting that the article stated 'As a concentrated form of communication, advertising needs to present its message in an extremely short time span, and depends heavily on the successful exploitation of the connotative power of signs.' I could not agree more with this statement because most commercials only have about 30 seconds - 1 minute to sell their product. In that short time span, advertisers are willing exploit anything to get the message of their product conveyed to the consumer effectively. In the "Sex and Consumer Culture" readings this week, it was also interesting to read about the ways homosexuals are viewed by the media and portrayed by advertisers. Their lifestyle and mannerisms truly are marginalized and slated most times in an untrue light.