Fashion Police: Magazines and Body Image
The magazines examined for this essay were Cosmopolitan, Glamour, GQ and Men’s Health. On average, Glamour contained fewer pictures of men than Cosmo, GQ and Men’s Health. Cosmo contained many pictures of men and men with women. The men were all stereo- typically handsome and, in most cases, were touching the women in some way. Cosmo also contained a lot of images, both in article content and ads, of unclothed body parts, whether it was for beauty, alcohol or anything else. The images basically said that a person is the sum of their parts; as long as your parts meet up with the standards of beauty, you are beautiful.
Men’s Health contained the most pictures of shirtless men. Men’s Health and GQ both contained images of men that were thin, cut and ruggedly handsome (square jaw syndrome). These two magazines were also the only two featuring naked women: In Men’s Health, a story about breakups featured two pictures of a naked woman covering her private areas, one of which encompassed two pages. The woman’s head was entirely cut off from the photographs. In GQ, the cover story about Star Wars’s Hayden Christensen featured a photograph of the actor driving a car while the passenger, a blonde woman with half her head cut out of the shot, reclines in her seat. Her shirt is unbuttoned and one breast is exposed.
Women in the men’s magazine advertisements were featured in alcohol and car ads mostly. These women were white, skinny, and wearing tight or revealing clothing. The women often were the subject of the advertisement, instead of the product being advertised.
All four magazines featured rail-thin women in skimpy clothes, sexily posed and looking longingly at the camera. This common occurrence in the magazines goes back to the ideas of “The Beauty Myth” and “The Power Myth.” The females in the women’s magazines show that women must embody beauty, and that if you are not beautiful, the products of capitalism will help you reach that goal. This is obvious in the plethora of advertisements concerning makeup, hair products, diet products and clothing. The females in the men’s magazines show not only that men must want to possess beautiful women, but that women must be possessed by powerful men. Both the “Beauty Myth” and the “Power Myth” are used in men’s magazines, while typically only the “Beauty Myth” is active in women’s magazines.
A perfect example of the “Power Myth” in Men’s Health is an ad for a diet program. The man who generated the ad lost a lot of weight and then started body building, and for such-and-such amount of money, you too can follow his program to weight loss. In the ad, the man had a number of rules that his system uses. Rule eight was “Be Powerful With Women,” and three photographs are shown of the man with his new physique, surrounded by women. It is very obvious the message that this ad is sending.
The majority of the advertisements were aimed at middle-to-upper class men and women. Expensive designer clothes, accessories and perfumes/colognes were prevalent in GQ, and make-up was an addition in Cosmo and Glamour. One ad in GQ showed a shirtless man covered in snakes, advertising a watch that was barely visible through the snake forest. The ad says that the man is strong, unafraid and powerful, and whomever purchases the watch will be that way too.
The magazines, then, are targeted to people who can afford the goods that are advertised. Both types of magazines have a narrow set of targets. People who read Cosmo, Glamour, GQ and Men’s Health are young, in the 18-35 range, are financially stable and secure, are heterosexual (based on the overwhelming number of images featuring men and women kissing, touching or embracing), and white. Eighty to 90% of the images in all four magazines were of white people. There was one significant photo spread of a black male in GQ, but his spread was four pages long, compared to one of a white model, whose spread was eight pages long. Open up any of the magazines to any page, and it is almost a guarantee that the men and woman will be white.
From a feministic point of view, it is almost sickening to read these magazines, especially the men’s magazines. The pictures in women’s magazines are bad enough, but the content in men’s magazines is disturbing. Take into consideration an article in GQ about men leading double lives with mistresses. The blurbs from this article alone are enough to raise controversy. One says, “Sure, women have intuition. But that doesn’t mean they will ever understand why a man will always have a part of himself that he hides from her.” The other says, “Most women would rather let themselves be fooled by men, particularly the men they love, than make those men look foolish.” These blurbs are the perfect example of the “Power Myth.” The myth restrains men from getting any sort of help or showing any emotion, and the second blurb in particular shows that women know this and will do whatever it takes to protect those men from feeling un-powerful, even if it means hurting themselves.
Stewart and Bryant discuss images of women in Vogue Magazine from 1940-1990 in the compilation book, Women’s Power and Roles as Portrayed in Visual Images of Women in the Arts and Mass Media. In the 40s, women were pictured alone, holding briefcases and wearing business suits (Stewart and Bryant, 23). In the 50s, women were pictured with children, usually inside unless they were out shopping (24). In the 60s and 70s, women were either pictured with men or alone, but the women who were pictured alone were in danger, either by being followed by dangerous men or by posing by a sign that read “DEAD,” (Stewart and Bryant, 24). Women in the 80s, similar to as they are portrayed today, are flawless, wear expensive clothes, pose sexily for the camera, and do not appear to be doing much of anything at all.
This study shows how the standards for women have changed in the course of 60-odd years. Women were once seen as independent and hardworking, and today magazines show women as sex objects and beautiful, mindless dullards.
Diane Barthel in her study examines the way that men are portrayed in advertisements. Men in ads for designer clothing are seen wearing expensive suits, in an office or posed in front of a building, which shows that they are powerful (Barthel, 139). Ads directed toward outdoor products, like hiking boots and fishing equipment, show men surrounded by trees, rocks, and other rugged elements of nature (143). Advertisements in men’s magazines make men look tough and un-penetrable, because that is the way that society has projected the image of the “real man.”
Without the use of a theoretical feminine perspective, it would be hard to identify just exactly what is wrong with men’s and women’s magazines today. In flipping through the magazines it is obvious that the images mean something, but there needs to be a scientific approach to examining the images to discover where these messages come from. One can look through a Cosmo or a Glamour and see that there are many pictures of scantily-clad women, brooding into the camera, but without knowing about the “Beauty Myth,” it would be difficult to understand that the way that society sees women’s bodies is linked with the economic and political atmosphere of the larger society. Men’s and women’s fashion magazines portray men and women in one light, a light that is narrow and shallow.
The purpose of the magazines is to make people feel bad about themselves so that they will purchase the magazines and the products advertised in them. Then, they will try to live up to the standards that society has set for them through these products, although it is impossible to live up to these standards. Men and women see images of “beautiful” men and women, become dissatisfied with the way that they look, purchase magazines to crack the beauty code, buy the products advertised in the magazines, use them, and, when the products do not succeed in changing appearances, men and women become dissatisfied with themselves. So the cycle continues.
