Communication

In this article the author examines expressions of the third-person effect found in an extensive feminist reception study investigating, for the first time, how Israeli women interpret images of women and femininity in TV commercials. Adopting the feminist and interpretive approach, the qualitative study was based on in-depth personal interviews with Israeli women from diverse cultural, economic, and social backgrounds. Grounded theory methodology, used for analysis of the interviews, revealed unexpected expressions of the third-person effect in the women's discourse on the potential influence of the images on different categories of “others.” The article presents this evidence and discusses its significance in the Israeli sociocultural context. As such, it uses different methodology in examining expressions of third-person effect than is traditionally used in this field.

This paper engages with the relatively new area of research into teenage girls and online social networks, focusing on the experiences and views of Israelis.  In particular, we examine how Israeli girls construct social relationships on Facebook. Adopting a feminist interpretive approach, this qualitative study is based on focus group interviews with Israeli girls aged 12-18 from diverse cultural, economic and social backgrounds. The girls clearly distinguish between different circles of social closeness on Facebook, with each circle marked by different relationships, dynamics and expectations. The study’s findings beg the question of whether social networks allow Israeli girls to exercise control, power, choice and agency in their social world, or whether they remain informed by existing social structures that shape and restrict their choices and actions. The significance of these findings is discussed in the contexts of feminism, girl power and Neoliberal discourse.

This paper presents and analyzes the findings relating to commercials for feminine hygiene products that emerged from an extensive feminist reception study which examined, for the first time, how Israeli women interpret images of women and femininity in TV commercials. Adopting a feminist and interpretive approach, the qualitative study was based on in-depth personal interviews with Israeli women from diverse cultural, economic, and social backgrounds.
Grounded theory methodology, employed for analysis of the interviews, revealed that many Jewish women in Israel, in particular those who are traditional or religious, are deeply disturbed by commercials for feminine hygiene products. The focus of their criticism was that intimate private matters which should be kept hidden are exposed to public view, thereby arousing embarrassment, shame, and even ridicule, especially when younger family members are present. In addition, the women were both critical and scornful of the customary advertising strategies that are employed systematically in these commercials.
The paper discusses all these findings in the Israeli socio-cultural context and attempts to identify different interpretive communities in the diverse population of Israeli women in respect to these texts.

Dove’s “real women” ads reached Israel in 2006. Part of a campaign with a social message, they
aimed at changing society’s stereotypical image of women, expanding the definition of beauty,
empowering women, and generating public debate of these issues. This paper examines the
discourse that emerged in Israel in two arenas: the Internet forum on the company’s website and
the media. It seeks to answer the questions: how successful was the campaign’s direct appeal for
public debate; what issues were raised and how were they addressed; and did a feminist voice
emerge? The findings show that the discourse, particularly in the forum, was primarily patriarchal.
The underlying premise and tacit message of most participants, male and female, was that women
are required to meet society’s patriarchal expectations as shaped by the conventional ideal
of beauty. Furthermore, the participants’ thinking patterns and conceptualization (e.g., binary
thinking, ranking the women in the ads by appearance) revealed an androcentric bias. These
findings suggest that the virtual realm cannot necessarily be expected to enable unconventional
public debate. On the contrary, the Internet appears to reflect traditional patterns of power and
oppression. The results are discussed in light of the social/cultural context of Israel.

This article examines the role of Facebook language tools in shaping and preserving community limits among Jewish Israeli adolescent girls, who constitute a young, dynamic, western and age-specific community. We describe how actions such as confirming friend requests, updating statuses and assigning ‘likes’ serve as means of phatic communication and as deictic elements that sketch out the community’s limits. Based on interviews with eight focus groups comprising a total of 35 Israeli adolescent girls, we challenge the prevalent view that social networks and the Internet in general facilitate fast and superficial transitions between sites and identities. Quite the contrary, we argue that these ostensibly random transitions in fact set clear limits by means of apparently banal authorizations of belonging to a community that occur on a daily basis. These community limits set by this youth communication are more rigid and conservative than those apparent in these girls’ everyday lives offline.

This article examines the role of Facebook language tools in shaping and preserving community limits among Jewish Israeli adolescent girls, who constitute a young, dynamic, western and age-specific community. We describe how actions such as confirming friend requests, updating statuses and assigning ‘likes’ serve as means of phatic communication and as deictic elements that sketch out the community’s limits. Based on interviews with eight focus groups comprising a total of 35 Israeli adolescent girls, we challenge the prevalent view that social networks and the Internet in general facilitate fast and superficial transitions between sites and identities. Quite the contrary, we argue that these ostensibly random transitions in fact set clear limits by means of apparently banal authorizations of belonging to a community that occur on a daily basis. These community limits set by this youth communication are more rigid and conservative than those apparent in these girls’ everyday lives offline.

Sigal Barak-Brandes This article is the first to scrutinize representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials in an attempt to shed light on the ideological constructs that these representations reflect and promote. I employ critical discourse analysis to identify the major recurring features in commercials that represent mothers and mothering. These features indicate advertising's ability to mobilize the patriarchal ideology of motherhood while using different thematic motifs, and such a mobilization of ideology occurs in the case of both antiessentialist and essentialist messages on motherhood. These different messages complete and complement each other, while in the end they enable advertising to exploit cultural norms and expectations in the service of the marketing and promotion of commodities. PLEASE ASK ME FOR THE FULL-TEXT

Although many studies have examined the image of women in advertising, the current study is the first to look at the representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials in an attempt to shed light on the ideological constructs they reflect and promote. 64 TV commercials were analyzed using critical discourse analysis.
In many ads the mother is depicted as aesthetically pleasing and shapely. This inclusion of the beauty myth in all its cruel demands into the can-do mother myth, could lead Israeli women to a sense of failure as they compare themselves to the glamorous image in the ads and invariably fall short.
The hetero couple-headed nuclear family shown in many ads seems to be a conservative manifestation of the assumption that the “good mother” exists only in the framework of the normative family unit. It seems that in the context of the advertising genre, it is products that lie at the heart of family and couple relationships, and that it is therefore possible to speak of the commodification of the family. The study also found progressive images of the clever, resourceful mother alongside the pathetic, ridiculed one – a new kind of a 'bad mother'.

This paper displays a feminist narrative study which explores the motivations behind an interesting Israeli phenomenon: girls and women who decide, voluntarily, to donate their long hair to make wigs for female cancer patients. This study sought to understand how women and girls account, explain or justify their decision and how they construct the act of donating their hair.
The narrative analysis found a complex end point: Altruism mixed with self-sacrifice and even bravery. All signs point to subjective perceptions of enormous sacrifice these women felt they bravely did, since donating hair is a process of modification of one's looks and image. It is a modification that takes these women and girls quite far from the beauty ideal which "prefers" long nurtured hair. In a machoistic patriarchal society such as the Israeli society, that clearly differentiates (and favours) masculinity and masculine features from femininity and feminine ones - the possibility of being considered as removed from these cultural gender norms might be a frightening thought. By expressing their self-sacrifice and bravery they are not only expressing how deep they are rooted within the patriarchal discourse and its disciplinary systems but also how much they are accepting and reproducing - rather than challenging or resisting -  hegemonic gendered beauty norms.
Alternatively, the study recognizes the act of donating one's hair as having potential for resistance and agency and thus as feminist activism, at least for a few participants.

Feminist scholarship has looked extensively at the perception of
the body as a flexible construction of cultural and social dictates,
but head hair has been often overlooked. Feminist Interrogations
of Women's Head Hair brings new focus to this underrepresented
topic through its intersections with contemporary socio-cultural
contexts.
Scholars from a wide range of disciplines investigate private and
public meanings associated with female head hair,
problematising our assumptions about its role and implications
in the 21st Century. Readers are invited to reflect on the use of
hair in popular culture, such as children’s television and pop
album artwork, as well as in work by women artists. Studies
examine the lived experiences of women from a range of
backgrounds and histories, including curly-haired women in
Israel, African American women, and lesbians in France. Other
essays interrogate the connotations of women’s head hair in
relation to body image, religion, and aging.
Feminist Interrogations of Women's Head Hair brings together
cultural discourses and the lived experiences of women, across
time and place, to reveal the complex and ever-evolving
significance of hair. It is an important contribution to the critical
feminist thought in cultural studies, fashion studies, media
studies, African American studies, queer theory, gerontolog

The paper focuses on the unexpected representation of leisure in a controversial Israeli campaign for a local furniture company starred by naked male models. This campaign reflects the growing popularity of (semi)naked male bodies in mainstream global advertising and the growing eroticization of male physique in contemporary Israeli popular culture. This chapter inquires the provocative campaign's universal, global, and cosmopolitan perception of men in domestic leisure and it questions traditional assumptions about masculinity, male sexuality, labour, and leisure, and the politics of sexual taboos. Padva and Barak-Brandes particularly reconsider this campaign's connotation of leisure and nudity, recreation and domesticity, hedonistic habitus and luxurious lifestyle.