Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Zabriskie, Queen

Keywords

Race, Gender, Women’s Magazines, Cosmopolitan, Essence

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

This study examines racialized and gendered representations of embodied power within women’s magazines. The cultural imagery disseminated through visual media impacts the behavioral and physical markers of racialized gender that inform the meanings women use to construct ideas about femininity and make sense of their bodies. By looking at the images within women’s magazines, this study explores the different standards of embodied gender and racialized femininities for black and white women produced in this form of visual media. Specifically, I use a quantitative content analysis of the images of models within six issues of Essence magazine (from October 2015 to March 2016) and six issues of Cosmopolitan magazine (from November 2015 to April 2016) to measure the impact of race and skin tone on displays of embodied power. I show that both Cosmopolitan and Essence reproduce hegemonic racialized gender norms through images of black women as dominant and white women as submissive. I found that these magazines feature Black women engaged in “high power” body positions at a higher frequency than white women, while simultaneously featuring white women engaged in “low power” body positions at a higher frequency than black women. I also found that there was a positive correlation between darkness of skin tone and rates of “high power” body positioning. Overall, I argue that there must be more progress in the representations of women in visual media in order to better reflect the complexities of womanhood as well as offer more possibilities for how women can embody femininity.

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