Engineering, Woman and Beauty: Breaking or Strengthening the Stereotypes? A Deconstructive Discourse Analysis of Woman Representation. A Case Study of Lauren Howe, Beauty Pageant Engineer in Miss Universe Canada and Miss Universe 2017

摘要

"Stereotypes were made to be broken" is the tagline of Lauren Howe's website (https://laurenhowe.ca/) where she exposes the two sides of her inspiration: Side A-Engineering and Technology and Side B-Media and Entertainment. Howe is beauty pageant engineer winning Miss Universe Canada 2017 and a top ten finalist of Miss Universe 2017. She has attempted to break the stereotype of STEM association to man by developing her personal campaign and personality profiling. This study attempts to apply deconstructive discourse analysis of textual and visual representation of woman and beauty in Howe's website, centring on the question whether the dominating woman stereotypes have truly been broken. The binary oppositions and metaphysic hierarchies will be subverted as to expose the deeper spread of meanings. The study concludes that even though Howe's worldwide efforts have been successful to break the stereotypes, she is still unconsciously trapped in conceptualizing and representing woman and beauty from male-dominated industry and standpoint.