Everyone knows beauty magazines don’t promote a healthy body image. I wanted to look closer though….Inspired by glossed over, I decided to really look at the images presented to millions of women everyday. This months pick: January 2008 issue of Marie Claire.
7: Number of nude or implied nude images of women
18: Number of photos featured in the 101 outfit idea section
1: Article journaling the impossibility of not having sex for 30 days (who had this idea? really…)
57: Number of “smart beauty buys” i.e. items conveyed as not being advertisements, even though they are
0: Number of plus-sized models (or real people)
2: articles addressing addiction to cosmetic procedures
1: ad for breast implants
44 total models or staff members featured
41 White
1 Asian
1 Black (Halle Berry)
1 Hispanic (Salma Hayek)
More diversity among the REAL people featured…
(note: I use the term “other” only to distinguish that I didn’t want to presume the race of one model, and that she is not white or black)
So what can we conclude here? Just the obvious.
1) Overwhelming majority of white people featured in ads, models in articles, and second highest among the “real people.”
2) Especially among the models in articles, there was hardly even a runner up. It’s unbelievable that major celebrities would be the only people of color featured in all of the articles.
3) There are many mostly nude images of women
4) All of the women are thin
5) This magazine is not depicting anything close to the real world.
6) While not reading magazines is probably the best solution, someday I hope to see diversity on the pages, in the articles, in the ads. People with real non-airbrushed bodies, of every shape and size. Articles about actual issues, not promoting the notion of plastic surgery. Reality, or at least something like it.
We could ignore the images bombarding us constantly, but sometimes, if you look closer, the true absurdity can be the revealed.
(Please contact me if you would like to use these graphs for other purposes)
Popularity: 12% [?]
:) 
