Face-ism and Objectification in Mainstream and LGBT Magazines.

Nathan N Cheek,Ian D Stephen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153592

Abstract

In visual media, men are often shown with more facial prominence than women, a manifestation of sexism that has been labeled face-ism. The present research extended the study of facial prominence and gender representation in media to include magazines aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) audiences for the first time, and also examined whether overall gender differences in facial prominence can still be found in mainstream magazines. Face-ism emerged in Newsweek, but not in Time, The Advocate, or Out. Although there were no overall differences in facial prominence between mainstream and LGBT magazines, there were differences in the facial prominence of men and women among the four magazines included in the present study. These results suggest that face-ism is still a problem, but that it may be restricted to certain magazines. Furthermore, future research may benefit from considering individual magazine titles rather than broader categories of magazines, given that the present study found few similarities between different magazines in the same media category—indeed, Out and Time were more similar to each other than they were to the other magazine in their respective categories.

Highlights

The representation of gender in the media has interested psychologists and other researchers for many decades
I compared the facial prominence of men and women in mainstream and LGBT magazines to investigate (1) whether mainstream magazines still exhibit face-ism, (2) whether face-ism exists in contemporary LGBT magazines, and (3) whether studying facial prominence could shed light on questions about the relative level of objectification in mainstream and LGBT magazines
In contrast to the findings of Matthews [21], overall gender differences in facial prominence did emerge in Newsweek, suggesting that face-ism may be less prevalent than before, women’s bodies still receive more focus than men’s in at least some mainstream magazines [22]

Summary

Introduction

The representation of gender in the media has interested psychologists and other researchers for many decades (for a review, see [1]). Studies often find that women are represented less positively than men across different types of media (e.g., [2,3,4,5,6]). Research on media representation is important because such representation can be internalized, which can lead to self-objectification, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders, among other consequences [1, 7,8]. Because many researchers have realized the importance of investigating the content and form of gender representation in the media, several different approaches have been developed to study empirically how men and women are portrayed. Analyses can focus on specific behaviors of people in television shows, advertisements, and magazines (e.g., how many times characters of different genders eat [4]), or they can be more visually-oriented, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0153592 April 13, 2016

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