Journal Article

Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002

Everyday people are bombarded by visual advertisements that encourage them to buy certain products or services. Images in magazines shape and influence our ideas of what it means to be male or female in society and how we should look. The study conducted was to examine the portrayals of women in advertisements in magazines. The researchers analyzed two magazines which were Time and Vogue magazines.
Women in the 1970’s were advertised in magazines primarily shown as the traditional-mother, home, or beauty/sex oriented roles. These roles were not representative of the whole society, they were quite stereotypical. Now in magazines women are shown in highly sexualized manners. The researchers found that women in magazines are actually smaller in the advertisements compared to men, showing that they are inferior to men. The researchers also noted that women were often depicted as mentally drifting from the scene and being vulnerable to potential threats in their environment. In magazines women are portrayed as many things but the main thing that they are viewed as now days are sex objects, eye candy, and just objects whose only function was to be looked at, they had nothing more to offer.

Lindner, K. (2004). Images of women in general interest and fashion magazine advertisements from 1955 to 2002. Sex Roles, 51(7/8), 409.

[Christina Lopez]