Telenovela and Gender in Brazil [i]

Using the example of one Brazilian telenovela this article proposes a way of understanding how television content can be a central factor in gender construction. The article presents one female character in the narrative that represents an archetypal female construction in Brazilian telenovelas, and shows how two middle-class female viewers of different ages enjoy this representation but interpret it in almost opposite ways. This article then shows how the telenovela text itself allows those readings, and discusses how this female construction and its possible readings can be interpreted as “gender technologies” according to De Lauretis proposition.