Edyta Zierkiewicz, „I lost a breast but I survived”. Disease narrations in woman’s magazines
Key words:
woman’s magazines, patographies (disease narrations), breast cancer
Summary:
Breast cancer appears as an important issue in the articles in women’s magazines regularly, even if seemingly there in no place for such a subject. Press for female readership is like commercial institution, that aims to ‘selling readers’ to the advertisers, brutally speaking. It appears, however, that even such serious subject as breast cancer can be recognized as a sufficiently good excuse for running commercial business and for doing ideological work. In women’s magazines – no matters where: in quasi-medical articles nor patographies – breast cancer is used to convey certain ideas and to courage readers to take actions not only health-oriented. Media and advertisements as well as conventional medicine complement each other in exerting pressure on women in order to reproduce stereotypes of femininity among others.