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Glocal gender identities in market places of transition: MARIANISMO and the consumption of the telenovela Rebelde Dannie Kjeldgaard and Kaj Storgaard Nielsen Marketing Theory 2010; 10; 29 DOI: 10.1177/1470593109355249 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mtq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/1/29

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Volume 10(1): 29–44 Copyright © 2010 SAGE www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/1470593109355249

articles

Glocal gender identities in market places of transition: MARIANISMO and the consumption of the telenovela Rebelde Dannie Kjeldgaard and Kaj Storgaard Nielsen University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Abstract. This article follows recent calls to take the study of gender construction beyond the affluent cultural contexts of Northern America and Western Europe. The article examines the negotiation and representation of gender in the Mexican telenovela Rebelde. The study analyses the identity positions and tensions in the cultural product as well as analyzing consumer interpretive strategies to negotiate countervailing gender ideals. The article analyses how processes of market place transition and the negotiation of gender are handled by navigating between countervailing cultural meanings of tradition and modernity, conformity and rebellion, in glocalized forms. Key Words culture gender glocalization media consumption popular culture youth

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Introduction In the consumer cultural theoretical body of knowledge it is well established that consumers engage in identity-constructive readings of popular cultural forms, such as advertising (Mick and Buhl, 1992) and television programming (Kozinets, 2001). This stream of literature suggests that consumers apply a variety of interpretive strategies to negotiate countervailing cultural meanings represented in these mass-mediated cultural products to establish meaningful life-projects (Thompson and Haytko, 1997), and individual and collective identities. By analysing representations of gender in the Mexican telenovela Rebelde, and ethnographically exploring the consumption of this telenovela by teenage women, the article analyses how processes of market place transition and the negotiation of gender are handled by navigating between countervailing cultural meanings of tradition and modernity, conformity and rebellion, in glocalized forms.

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marketing theory 10(1) articles

Rebelde and the culture of telenovelas Telenovelas are frequently identified as being an essential ingredient in the recent tradition and history of many Latin-American cultures, particularly in Mexico (Casas Pérez, 2005; Clifford, 2005; Lopez, 1995; Pearson, 2005). The telenovela Rebelde was targeted at a teenage audience. It ran for three seasons in Mexico, ending in 2006. A Mexican remake of the Argentinean telenovela Rebelde Way, Rebelde had a large impact on youth culture in Mexico and elsewhere (the series was exported to 65 markets, among them the US, Peru, Brazil, Spain and Bulgaria). Rebelde and other youth telenovelas draw on global genre templates of television programming epitomized by Beverly Hills 90210, and are adapted to local cultural contexts in terms of character, moral issues, and storyline. The story is set in a private school in which students also live. The majority of the students come from the upper socio-economic stratum, although a few students are from the lower socio-economic stratum and are attending the school on a scholarship. In the telenovela, we follow the lives of each of the main characters, fellow students, professors and the students’ families. As the story develops, we follow how they cope with age, gender, socio-economic and cultural identity issues, which unfold in how they relate to each other as well as to different kinds of conflicts and problems with their parents, professors, classmates and boyfriends. The predominant theme, as the title of the series suggests, is the perceived cultural rebellion that emerges in the attempt to establish modern youthful identities, breaking traditional norms in the process. Furthermore, the title Rebelde can be interpreted as being inscribed in the ideology of global youth culture, in which the idea of rebellion is a core constitutive part (Kjeldgaard and Askegaard, 2006). This paper advances consumer culture theoretical research on gender by illuminating gender negotiation in a cultural context of marketplace transition. This is achieved through analysis of the countervailing cultural discourses of gender in a Mexican cultural context as they are represented in Rebelde and as they are part of consumers’ readings of the series. The paper sheds light on the global–local dialectic of gender identity negotiation and construction by consumers outside of the highly industrialized markets of the US and Europe (Costa, 2000; Peñaloza, 2000).

Media, youth and gender in market places of transition Media representations are important cultural resources for consumers in negotiating identity and countervailing cultural meanings. Young consumers engage in readings of media products for consumption ideals and templates (Klitgaard Povlsen, 1996); and for guides to gender identity and gender relations (Pasquier, 1997). Cultures facing rapid marketplace transitions due to the globalization processes of marketization and modernization often find that the meaning of fundamental cultural categories such as gender are under negotiation (Liechty, 1995). The development of cultural meanings and practices of female gender roles


Glocal gender identities in market places of transition Dannie Kjeldgaard and Kaj Storgaard Nielsen

often takes place within the nexus of a dominant, traditional discourse of female identity that relatively rigidly defines the female gender role occupation in relation to motherhood, child rearing, housekeeping, etc., and relatively restrictive norms about the conduct of romantic and sexual relations (see for example Dedeoglu (2006) for a discussion based on a Turkish cultural context). However, the global mediascapes represent ‘protonarratives of possible lives’ (Appadurai, 1990), including liberal feminist ideals for womanhood (Bristor and Fischer, 1993) in late-modern cultural capitalism that emphasise self-realization through professional careers; development of ‘pure relationships’ (Giddens, 1991); morally a general equality of the sexes; and a consumer culture ideology (Üstüner and Holt, 2007). These countervailing ideals of gender definition in general and womanhood in particular lead to highly reflexive negotiations of gender identity. Local sociocultural templates for identity interact with impressions of the modern global woman as resources and sites of personal and cultural conflict in the performance of gender (Butler, 1990). Media products play a pivotal role in representing these ideals to consumers as well as offering suggestions for solutions of identity conflict for consumers (Gauntlett, 2002). The present article explores how one particular media product – the telenovela Rebelde – acts as template and site of cultural negotiation of gender roles, and how a group of consumers – female teenage consumers – read this popular cultural product as they relate the cultural discourses represented in the series to their identity negotiations.

Methodology The empirical part of this study draws on different research traditions within media studies. While effect studies first and foremost are occupied with (ideological) media messages, and the focal point of reception analysis is audience’ reception of media texts, media ethnographic studies intend to explore the social context of media consumption (Machado-Borges, 2003). The media ethnography was conducted during a three-month stay in the city of Toluca. The fieldwork was conducted by two marketing graduate students trained in qualitative methods. The city is an industrial city close to Mexico City. Around one million people live in Toluca, which belongs to one of the most productive and economically important states in the country of Mexico. The context of study was a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Toluca. This neighbourhood is characterized by inhabitants from the upper socio-economic stratum and is considered exclusive. The neighbourhood is primarily residential, with easy access to shopping malls. One reason for the choice of studying teenage girls from the upper-middle class was that these girls, due to their parents’ economic resources, can at least to some extent follow the consumption patterns shown in some telenovelas. To a greater extent, they match the setting of the youth cultural environment depicted in the telenovela. Obviously, informants in this setting have a higher degree of accessibility to global consumer culture by way of economic and sociocultural resources. A



different socio-economic composition of informants may have resulted in other ways of relating to the series in a more consumer fantasy-like manner. Fieldwork consisted of general ethnographic work in the form of observation and participant observation among both consumers of the media and general cultural discourses, focusing on the relations between telenovelas and the everyday life of individuals of mainly upper-middle class families. Participant observation, which is a method that usually requires a large amount of time in order to make ‘naturalistic and realistic’ observations (Taylor and Bogdan, 1984), is the foundation of the study. Researchers lived in a house with two teenagers, offering unique ethnographic insight into their everyday life and into the cultural significance of telenovelas and Rebelde. The research team represented insider and outsider perspectives in several ways. One researcher was female and a native to Mexico, and a relative of the household in which she stayed. The other researchers was male and a Dane with advanced knowledge of Spanish as well as knowledge of Mexico. The combination of skills, insights, experiences and gender of the research team helped ensure the trustworthiness of the research, as the insider knowledge (culturally and gender-wise) ensured the uncovering of important themes and categories that would possibly be inaccessible to a non-Mexican male researcher. On the other hand, the outsider perspective ensured a natural distancing from data throughout the process. This part of the fieldwork also included informal interviews with consumers. In total, this phase provided insight into prevalent cultural categories and discourse. Towards the end of the ethnographic work, two focus group interviews were conducted with eight teenage girls from 13 to 18 years old. They were divided into two groups, one consisting of girls from 13 to 15 years old and the other of girls from 16 to 18 years old. The focus was on life as a teenager in Mexico in general and Rebelde in particular. The focus group interviews lasted in both cases for about 1.5 hours. The focus group with participants from 13 to 15 years old consisted of Valerie (13 years), Mayte (14), Andrea (14) and Claudia (15); the focus group with participants from 16 to 18 years old consisted of Adriana (16 years), Erika (17), Liliana (18) and Carla (18). The eight girls that came to be the main informants all lived in the neighborhood in which the researchers stayed, all of them are Mexicans, Catholic, and most of them attend private schools. Informants were selected using the snowball method, expanding outward from the two teenagers in the household. The two focus groups are characterized by consisting of ‘young’ teenagers and ‘old’ teenagers respectively. We see the age difference between the two groups of girls as an interesting aspect of this study and an advantage in terms of gaining perspectives on how teenage girls, in different stages of being a teenager, relate to the representations in Rebelde. Participant observation at the early stages of fieldwork provided cultural knowledge that was used to probe deeper and to follow up on culturally significant themes emerging in the interviews. Focus group interviews offer the opportunity to study how individuals relate to each other while the focus is on the chosen subject. The emergent dialogue is seen as the performance of cultural discourse of identity negotiation as represented in



and interpreted from media representations. In the following section, we present mainly data from the focus group interviews, although the general ethnographic knowledge is included in some cases explicitly and in some cases implicitly as a basis for interpretation of the focus group data. In the focus groups, it emerged that informants were pre-occupied with the personalities and gender representations of the specific female characters of the series. The analysis, therefore, starts with a historical and cultural contextualization (Costa, 2000) of cultural categories of gender in the Mexican cultural context, followed by an analysis of the main female characters of the series.

Countervailing cultural discourses of identity Commentators on Mexican and Latin American culture (e.g. Canclini, 1995; Martin-Barbero, 1990; Vargas Llosa, 1994) often point out that in Latin America generally, and Mexico particularly, the typical ideal female has traditionally been represented as the ‘Virgin Mary’. In the Latin-American context, this identity model for females is known as ‘marianismo’ – the idea that the associations related to the ‘Virgin Mary’ should guide female behaviour (Clifford, 2005; Tufte, 1994). Marianismo is a term coined in the 1970s to encompass the celebration of a particular kind of womanhood as the cultural opposite to the machismo in Latin culture (Stevens, 1973). Marianismo and Machismo represent traditional cultural discourses of ideal feminine and masculine identity and behaviour (Sequira, 2009). Mexico has been characterized as ‘a male-dominant society which nevertheless places its highest values on the feminine’ (Meelhus, 1996: 230). Thus, the traditional gender ideal for a Mexican woman is to present herself and to be seen by others as self-sacrificing and celebrating motherhood.1 Women who do not live up to the standards of this ideal female type run the risk of being categorized as ‘una puta’ (a whore). The Marianismo ideology hence rests on the Madonna–whore dichotomy (Meelhus, 1996). One source summarizes Marianismo’s normative ethos as ‘Don’t forget a woman’s subservient place; never put your own needs first; don’t wish for more in life than being a housewife; sex is for making babies’ (http://www.culturaltalk.com/mariabook.htm). Traditionally, there has not been a discourse or identity model available for women in between these two rather extreme identity positions. This dualism constitutes the basic discursive space of the local gender culture interacting with modern ideals and discourses of identity. In psychotherapy, the Marianismo ideology has been identified as a significant source of trauma and personal inner conflict among therapeutic clients in Mexico and to some extent among migrant Hispanic women in the US, to the extent that self-help books are marketed on how to deal with Marianismo in a modern society (e.g. Gill and Vasquez, 1996). This tension is interpreted to reflect a process of political, economical and cultural transition in Mexico in terms of globalization, Americanization, democratization (Hogenboom, 2003; Merino, 2003) and not least the modernization process in which traditional cultural values are contested, renegotiated and asserted (Canclini, 1995).



Figure 1 Promotional picture of the main characters of Rebelde

The strong dominance of Marianismo has significant impact on the envisaged life trajectories of young Mexican women. Although accepting modern ideals, such that women should have equal access to education, the expected life trajectory is still to become a homemaker and mother as is reflected in quite frequent expressions of many girls who are studying that, ‘I am going to study until … I get married’. Mexican girls usually live with their parents until they get married, because it is not socially acceptable to live alone or with their boyfriends. Growing up in a middle-class environment in a Mexican city means passing through a difficult period in life where one tries to navigate between, on the one hand, following the dominant gender order enforced by parent culture, and on the other hand, developing one’s own individuality. Mexican parents’ preoccupation with controlling their children intensifies with the local cultural value of the importance of protecting the family name. The Marianismo ideology has been said to inflect individual, family and community life (Kemper, 2009) and obviously the envisaged life trajectory of young Mexican women (Hubbell, 1993). The characters of the telenovela Rebelde is to a large extent built up to reflect this dualism and strategies for handling the dualism by contemporary Mexican youth. The picture in Figure 12 shows some of the main characters from Rebelde: from left to right Diego, Roberta, Miguel, Mia, Lupita and Giovanni. In the telenovela, they constitute a pop band that also exists outside of the TV show. The Rebelde concept is similar to many other bands which originate in television series and materialize in commercial popular culture. The Rebelde brand is carried by the band’s tours and concerts, merchandise and licensing to for example Barbie doll versions of the main female characters. Rebelde hence represents a hybrid of a cultural product in the traditional sense, and a brand that mediates commodities (Lash and Lury, 2007).



The main female characters in Rebelde represent different ways of being a teenage girl in Mexico.3 The ways in which they interrelate and behave, as well as the conflicts among them, give us an idea about what is important in a teenager’s life in contemporary Mexico. In Rebelde, there are representations of being both a rather modern teenage girl in Mexico as well as being a girl with more traditional values, and one of the messages seems to be that a girl should be able to incorporate both these fundamental values in her identity. As Rebelde presents different characters with different personalities, it is possible for viewers to find a character with whom they can identify, as well as characters they do not like. Below, the main female characters are presented and analysed in terms of how they represent traditional and modern values. The character of Lupita represents the classical Marianismo position as regards how a decent girl or woman is supposed to be. She is naive, decent, innocent and never provocative. She often makes references to the Virgin Mary, gets red and nervous when other classmates talk about sexual matters, and feels naked when wearing the uniform short skirts. She does not like to wear tight, transparent or provocative clothes which are not part of her wardrobe, and she prefers long sleeves and long skirts. Some other female characters accept her, but there are others who do not like the way she is. The girls that do not like her consider Lupita to be ‘a mosca muerta’ (literally translates as ‘a dead fly’). The character of Mia is a typical example of a girl who, in some contexts, acts according to traditional values, while in other contexts, behaves like a modern girl. In some situations, she acts as a strong and independent girl by valuing education and modern fashion, while in other situations she wants to appear weak and dependent, for example in romantic relations and in relation to her parents. It can be argued that the character of Mia represents one possible identity strategy of contextual self-representation. The character of Roberta, although she to some point accepts parts of the traditional values associated with the ideology of Marianismo, for example girls being the relatively passive partner in a relationship, in a number of other situations, she does not want to be seen as a typical, traditional girl. In part she expresses her rebellion through style consumption, such as by painting her hair blue and orange, by wearing strange outfits, by using colourful expressions, and by provoking adult authorities. During the whole telenovela, Roberta represents a liberal feminist ideal (Bristor and Fischer, 1993) in that her character does not accept the traditional gender roles which imply a male-dominant gender relation. Furthermore, she breaks with the Marianismo ideology by explicitly discussing sexual topics. By Mexican standards Roberta can be said to be somewhat controversial and normbreaking. However, in order to avoid social stigma, Roberta refrains from too promiscuous behaviour. Many teenage girls identify with this type of character as an identity fantasy because of her daring demeanour, something which moral social codes make too risky in real life. Vico is the character in Rebelde who most often breaks the norms about how to be a (decent) teenage girl in Mexican society. She is an insecure girl who has the stigma of coming from a low socio-economic background. She is portrayed



and seen as too easy going with the opposite sex, especially when it comes to boys from a higher social class. Vico hence represents a cultural association between low socio-economic background and promiscuity – the character is developed as the cultural opposition to Marian ideals of womanhood and associated with specific social class affiliations. Vico is portrayed as stigmatized by being labelled a whore by her peers and faces social exclusion because of her reputation. In general, Rebelde offers the viewers examples of what is considered normbreaking behaviour for a young female in a Mexican context. As Vico is often represented as being somewhat sad about her behaviour and Roberta as being rather frustrated when she does not succeed in being considered equal to the opposite sex, the telenovela represents the dominant moral codex for ideal female behaviour.

Findings Based on reception analysis and media ethnography, the following section explores the cultural discourses of female gender identity in the teenage girl informants’ relation to Rebelde. The focus is on how the girls relate to the discourses presented in Rebelde about how to be a teenager in Mexico, while they try to navigate between traditional and modern identity models. This particular telenovela played a significant role in the informants’ lives: I watch Rebelde, even though my parents do not approve – I really ‘need’ to watch it – you know all my friends watch it, so I think it is quite cool to watch something which is made for young people. You know, I even feel somewhat rebellish [sic] when I watch it, perhaps because I know my parents do not accept it. (Valerie)

This comment can be seen as part of her ongoing narrative about self, which in this case includes some distancing from parent culture. In that sense, Rebelde is part of establishing a youth cultural identity space in which viewers can mirror their own general identity conflicts and struggles, while at the same time the mere activity of watching the show constitutes a rebellious practice. Rebelde offers the viewer discourses about how to be a teenager in Mexico in terms of cultural strategies of navigating between traditional and modern values. Navigating between traditional and modern values is articulated in a way that the girls in Rebelde, as well as the informants, deal with norm-breaking behaviour and relationships with boyfriends in relation to dominant parent culture. This came out in the interviews as the informants clearly related to the child–parent conflict in the series. The informants pointed to the fact that all the characters from Rebelde have conflictive relationships with their parents. This was seen as an obvious thing since the main theme of the telenovela is to be a rebel, which means being against parents´ will and authority. Valerie mentioned that she sometimes can identify with the relationship Mia has with her father. She expressed the following: My father is also a busy person and I do not see him that much – I can identify with the character Mia because I also miss my dad because I do not have a good relationship with my mom and neither with my brother.



Claudia told us that she identifies with the relationship that the character Roberta has with her mother in the way that her own mother also is over-protective. In Claudia’s words, ‘I just obey my mother because I do not like to discuss with her. My mother acts exactly as Roberta’s mother, both are so hysterical, I cannot stand that my mother spies me all the time’. Carla mentioned that she identifies with the relationship of Celina and her family. Carla also has a weight problem and her mother is always pressing her to go on a diet and do exercise, which she detests. The informants clearly relate to the characters in their everyday negotiations of the tensions with parent culture and the countervailing cultural gender discourses. These tensions came out most strongly in two predominant themes: ‘controversial behaviour’ and ‘relationships’.

Controversial behavior This section analyses how informants deal with the theme of controversial behaviour as it is represented in Rebelde. Generally, it was relatively uncomplicated for the informants to express themselves by criticizing what they term as incorrect behaviour as it is represented in Rebelde. Vico and Roberta are the most clear examples of norm-breaking behaviour in Rebelde, while Vico does not live up to the standards of appropriate female behaviour among Mexican girls – she is categorized as being ‘too much’ as she does not follow the established way of starting and being in a relationship, Roberta is the classical teenage rebel, who does not like to follow the rules made by adults. While Roberta is considered norm-breaking by the standards of Marianismo principles, she is, for the same reason, the favourite character of most of the informants, as she personifies what teenage girls regard as an ideal female teenager in contemporary Mexico, incorporating traditional values as well as modern gender ideals. Roberta is considered funny and ‘cool’. The girls from both focus groups commented that they started to like her character from the beginning of the telenovela; she does not want to be admitted to private school, and appears wearing a very short skirt; her hair is coloured in blue and orange and she behaves like a rebel in front of the principal. Although all the girls liked Roberta, the older informants particularly were enthusiastic about the rebellious aspects of Roberta’s character. Carla, one of the girls from the older group, is considered a hip-hop girl who hates ‘fresas’ (snob girls) and she wears enormous trousers kept up only with a belt. She likes to consider that she is different from the rest in some ways and she feels proud of this and uses it in her own identity work. In a discussion of Roberta, Carla stated: ‘I have been considered somewhat controversial in some ways, because I like to break norms and I hate rules’. Discussion of Roberta provides Carla with a socially recognizable identity script that can be used for her self-representation. This self-typification was in agreement with how the other informants from the group perceived Carla but not themselves. In this way they also negotiate their own identity in relation to this ‘Roberta-type’. The character of Roberta provides Carla with a form of rebellion that is socially legitimate among her peers.



Vico, the most controversial of the female characters, also generated rich discussions of identity and identity positions. Informants generally criticized her promiscuous behaviour, and were generally very eager to distance themselves from her behaviour. Talking about Vico in that way is a means for the girls to negotiate their own identity in the group. The younger informants all associated Vico with the image of the whore. Mayte said, ‘Vico is an easy girl and everybody treats her like that’. Among the older informants, there was an empathetic attitude, since the character represents perhaps a more real, but also a more stigmatized representation of their identity. Says Liliana: Vico is just the representation of many girls who in reality are like that, however, due to the strong traditional values they hide their behavior and appear in front of their families, friends and the whole society as innocent, naive and virgin girls although this is just a façade.

The quote perhaps best summarizes the existential tension the girls feel due to the gap between their actual behaviour and the strong moral condemnation springing from the Marian identity ideals. Furthermore, this illustrates a tension between the moral judgment in the series of the character, Vico, and how the informants relate to her behaviour. Vico’s behaviour represents a sexual liberty that the girls aspire to, without, however, the moral condemnation of society at large. The characters in the series and the morality they represent are a reproduction of existing cultural ideals while the informants envisage a more liberal female ideal than the series can offer.

Relationships In a Mexican cultural context, the predominant ideal relationship is ‘traditional’ (Giddens, 1991) and in this context, discursively structured around the ideals of Marianismo and Machismo. This fundamental gender discourse inflects the informants’ discussion of cultural ideals of romantic and sexual relationships as they relate to these issues in the representations of Rebelde. It is seen as a male virtue to be the active and initiating partner, whereas the girl should be the passive partner. Says Andrea, ‘In Mexico it is the norm and basically compulsory for a boy to ask a girl if she wants to be his girlfriend’. The youngest informants generally accepted this traditional definition of roles and dreamt of finding their blue prince. In Valerie and Mayte´s words, ‘We believe in the romantic dream about the “right” way of entering and being in a relationship, and later getting married, some people we know have experienced this, and this is quite romantic’. The oldest informants, however, reflected more on the traditionalism of such ideals and questioned the Marian ideals of the woman as ‘weak’ partner: ‘Modern girls like us are not just waiting to be rescued by a blue prince, we have our goals and ambitions and getting married is definitely not our main goal’ (Erika). Here, the informants evoke a modern, liberatory ideal for women which are considered by the informants to be a trait of their own generation. Based on prior knowledge of Mexican culture and ethnographic data, this is interpreted



as a relatively new discourse among young females in Mexico and it is arguably inspired by the identity model of the modern female ideal as it is depicted in (foreign) representations in media. It implicates a more independent and individualized identity discourse of emancipation through self-realization, although all informants agree that a future husband will have to be the one taking the initiative for the relationship to be considered culturally ‘right’. This emancipatory ideal, which breaks with the Marianismo–Machismo ideology, also surfaces in discussion of the breaking-up of marriages. All of the informants agreed that they could never be in a relationship of abuse. Liliana elaborated: ‘New generations of Mexican women think different than our mothers or grandmothers who did not have any other options than to stay in a violent or dysfunctional family.’ Socio-economic and sociocultural structures have made it possible for Mexican girls to distance themselves from certain aspects of the Marianismo ideology and exhibit a clear generational identification and awareness. While this modern cultural ideal rests strongly with the informants, there were also reflections on how divorce is still not considered socially acceptable. A modern emancipatory ideal in conflict with the Marian ideology means that identity articulation is fraught with concerns over marginalization and moral condemnation. This moral judgement also came out when informants were discussing whom of the Rebelde characters they think that boys in general would prefer to be with: ‘I am sure that the most popular girls in Rebelde among boys would be Mia and Vico. Mia because she is pretty and popular in the school and Vico because she is an “easy” girl’ (Erika). However, the informants were quite sure that boys would not want somebody like Mia or Vico as their future wife. Mayte recalled that some male characters from Rebelde commented in their rooms (exclusive for boys) that when they marry someone they will choose a ‘virgin’ girl who has not been with other guys. In conclusion, while all informants subscribe to the idea of romantic love when finding a partner as it is also repeatedly represented in Rebelde, there were some differences in how they relate to the two countervailing cultural discourses in relation to the female partner being active or not when entering a relationship. While the youngest informants primarily disliked the idea of the female playing an active part when entering a relationship, most of the older informants found it relatively acceptable that women, at least to some degree, could play an active role when entering a relationship. These differences arguably are attributable to the fact that while all the informants are inscribed in the Marianismo ideology characteristic of the traditional gender ideal, the older informants are more likely to feel inspired about relationships in the liberal emancipatory ideal represented in the global mediascape products.



The Virgin

The Whore

Lupita

Vico

Mia

Roberta

Conformist

Rebel

Figure 2 Analysis of identity positions

Discussion and conclusion The analysis above suggests that in marketplaces of cultural transition fundamental cultural categories become destabilized. Market representations of counter vailing cultural discourses provide consumers with identity strategies for handling basic cultural oppositions that have arisen as the consequence of modernization and globalization processes (Liechty, 1995). In this case, the telenovela Rebelde represents both an urge to be modern and to follow the credo of global cultural ideologies of youth and gender, while at the same time dealing with traditional cultural ideals for womanhood. What this glocalization of gender ideals also points out is that for the individual consumer to practise the global ideals of a modern (female) young consumer is in no sense an easy task and can be fraught with anxiety. Striving to construct an identity rooted in modern, global ideals of gender equality can result in a cultural stigma because of the strong binary opposition of cultural gender ideals. Figure 2 summarizes the analysis of Rebelde and the general cultural analysis of the research context in the form of a Greimesian square (Floch, 2001; see also Holt and Thompson, 2004, for an application of the model to Northern American male gender discourse). The Greimesian square offers the possibility of analysing the complexity of cultural meaning incorporated in cultural binary oppositions. In this case the gender discourse is structured around the opposition of tradition and modernity metaphorized by the virgin and the whore. The diagonal arrows represent meaning by way of negation – i.e. non-traditional and non-modern, termed The Rebel and The Conformist. The vertical arrows indicate meaning by way of implication. The figure maps out the countervailing cultural discourses and their relations to female gender construction in the cultural context of Mexico and how these are represented by four main female characters of Rebelde. These discourses are often embedded in the way characters are built up in the series and the iden-



tity and life-trajectory issues that the characters are facing. Similarly, informants’ mirroring with the characters of the series reflects this set of discourses. As mentioned earlier, Lupita and Vico represent the basic dichotomous identity opposition that structures identity discourses. The character most liked by the informants – Roberta – seeks to rebel against traditional norms of behaviour for teenage girls hence a discursive negation of Marianismo and an opposition to conformity. At the same time, she is struggling with the implicative relation that the dominant culture makes between the rebel and the whore. The fact that many of the informants identify with this identity struggle demonstrates that they are seeking ways of expressing modernity through rebelliousness but want rebelliousness disentangled from the image of the whore. To many informants, the category ‘Conformist’ is a way to express a certain modernity while still respecting the traditional set of values and norms – a kind of hybrid strategy (Canclini, 1995) that encompasses the modern and the traditional. For example as was discussed earlier the hybrid strategy is performed by their attending higher education, not with the purpose of an independent career, but in order to improve their attractiveness as potential brides, and by sporting fashion that is modern, yet ‘decent’. The characters represent possible identity positions which the informants negotiate in relation to individual identities – some positions are positively valued while others are seen as negative stereotypes. However, the characters in the series are also felt to reproduce existing gender ideologies, moral judgments and negative stereotyping by way of association. One might argue that Rebelde, while providing informants with a mirror of their own identity tensions and dilemmas, primarily reproduces the existing cultural order. Therefore, the series also acts as a resource for constructing more liberatory identity projects, which breaks more radically with the existing, dichotomous gender ideology. As such, the results of this study point to the fact that marketing, and in this case a brand, offers both emancipatory potential as well as reproductive forces in terms of gender ideals (Catterall and MacLaran, 2002). Indeed, a brand such as Rebelde is fuelled by this tension between emancipation and subsumption to tradition. In line with previous research such as Holt and Thompson (2004), this study demonstrates that socio-historically embedded gender ideologies frame consumers’ gender identity projects. However, the context of study here reveals that countervailing cultural discourses of gender can also fuel identity narratives fraught with anxiety of social moral judgement. The powerful Marianismo ideology makes gender identity projects in this cultural context a much more intense process than the creative and dramatic self-construction in the context of the heroic masculinity discourse of North America. Furthermore, the socio-semiotic analysis of the dialectic of countervailing gender discourses reveals that the meaning of the notions of conformity and rebellion vary with cultural and gender contexts. In Figure 1, both rebelliousness and conformity appear as contradictions, rather than one as the negation of the other as in Holt and Thompson (2004). While it is not surprising that different gender and cultural contexts bring different discursive struggles to the fore, the analysis suggests that the tension between conformity and rebellion are representations of the basic societal dialectic between continuity and change



(McCracken, 1988) that spread with the diffusion of the modernization project (Liechty, 1995). However, such global ‘universals’ enter into and interact with local cultural categories and attain new meaning. Conformity and rebellion as expressed in gender discourse are instances of the semantic glocalization of concepts and ideals circulating in the global media and ideoscapes (Appadurai, 1990). In this case, global gender identity narratives interact with locally saturated cultural categories of gender. The narratives are not only drawn on in the interpretations of consumers but also lie at the heart of the discursive rooms of possibilities that make the Rebelde product so culturally potent. The glocalization of cultural values instantiated in a media brand empirically demonstrates the cultural dynamics at play in market representation of various gender ideals (Scott, 2000). Furthermore, it illustrates how one of the core values of the ideology of youth culture, namely rebellion, comes to serve as a resource for brand construction in a rather explicit way, rather than something which is only an ideological explanatory framework (Kjeldgaard and Askegaard, 2006). This study points forward to a number of future avenues of research: while it is not possible to extend the empirical work of this study, since the series Rebelde ended in 2006, a further exploration that goes deeper into how Marianismo inflects consumption practices in everyday life in Latin cultural contexts would be promising. Furthermore, the negotiation of traditional and modern gender ideals in other non-Euro-Anglo contexts would provide insight into how glocalized gender ideals emerge as global representations of modern womanhood meets with traditional gender ideals and a transitional sociocultural context.

Notes 1 In relation to this it is interesting to note that the celebration of Mother’s day (10 May) is a culturally significant event in Mexico and there are around 70 Marian fiestas in the Liturgical year (Kemper, 2009). 2 http://www.esmas.com/rebelde/home. 3 Watching the behaviour of the characters of Rebelde, we observed that they to a large extent represent the typical personalities of other series for teenagers such as Beverly Hills 90210. Although the characters of this series and Rebelde are not exactly the same, some of the characters share some ways of being. To demonstrate this we can compare the superficial Mia with Kelly (Beverly Hills 90210), the good Lupita with Donna (BH 90210), the polite Miguel with Brandon (BH 90210), the rebel Diego with Dylan (BH 90210), the funny Giovanni with Steve (BH 90210) and the daring Roberta with Brenda (BH 90210).

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