Media Representations of Female Body Images in Women's Magazines

Body dissatisfaction is a common emotion in women,
and female body images published in women's magazines
serve as the ideal body standards for some women.
The purpose of this content analysis was to ascertain
how Caucasian undergraduate female coders would rank
the female body images presented in women's fashion,
health, and fashion and health-related magazines
viewed most often by female undergraduate students as
listed in Simmons Market Research Bureau (2003).
Samples of the photographic images presented in the
12 women s magazines for June 2005 and samples of the
archived 1995 and 2000 issues of these 12 magazines
were evaluated by the coders. Furthermore, samples
of the female photographic images presented in four
May and three June 1950 magazines were also ranked by
the coders. This content analysis uses a rating
scale to rank female body images that are
systematically random sampled from women's magazines.
The findings indicate body images vary significantly
from 1950 to 2005 and 1995 to 2005. Furthermore, at
least 90 percent of the sampled images from the 1995,
2000, and 2005 magazine titles were ranked thin.

Autorentext
Karen Bale, EdD: Studied Higher Education Administration - Cognate Area Mass Communication at Oklahoma State University. Adjunct Professor for the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.