Summary
Arman A. Makaryan
Key words – gender upbringing, child – reader, children’s press, images, girls, boys, biological gender, physical differences, role penetrations.
The article is dedicated to the gender study of pictures printed in “Theatre: A Friend to Children”. In the course of the study the children’s periodical is observed as a peculiar semiotic system addressed to children in which the imageunits inform the reader about their models of gender upbringing. The girl and boy characters embodied in the pictures are the examples of self-identification, “ideal heroes” who must be imitated.
The boys are strong, masculine, doing physical jobs and have undertaken the function of protecting the weak ones, while the girls have put on their shoulders the burden of housework and are standing beside the men with dropped heads and in modest posture. In the pictures of the periodical this plot model becomes an acting pattern from which only one hero is deviating, that is, Gevorg who has got “a girl’s function”.