Women's empowerment and blurring the boundaries between the public and the private: A study case of the lifestyle magazine Viva! (1997–2001)

Abstract

This article attempts to present the social constructs of women's empowerment in the lifestyle magazine Viva! in 1997–2001. The focus is on the blurring of boundaries between the public and the private sphere in the context of the general trend towards the revision of traditional family and work models and the role of the media in that process.
Combining the approach of discourse analysis with the methodology of content analysis, this study shows that the blurring of boundaries is effected by highlighting women successfully managing both family and work roles in ways that challenge the traditional separation of the private and the public. Drawing on the media studies concepts of gatekeeping and framing, it also argues that Viva! both reflected the new socio‑economic trends triggered by the 1989 political revolution and pushed for a new lifestyle. An important aspect of the blurring of boundaries was an obsessive interest in private lives, including intimate details, which were then served to the readers in displays of media voyeurism or exhibitionism. The magazine's partiality for photos of mothers proudly displaying their babies can as also be treated an encouragement of that form of exhibitionism which later acquired a name of its own, i.e. sharenting.