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Objectification Of Women In Magazines Essay

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The purpose of this experiment was to determine the extent to which women are presented as sex objects in magazines. Previous research by Stankiewic and Rosselli (2008) resulted in 51.80% of advertisements in magazines that featured women, and portrayed them as sex objects. The particular way in which objectification is defined, and thus the resulting rates at which women are portrayed as objects, had varied by study. The objectification of women in advertisements also varied by magazine type. . The independent variable of this experiment was the company of the magazines. The dependent variable was the percentage of women depicted as sex objects in magazine advertisements. It was hypothesized that women would be depicted as sex objects in more than 50% of the magazine advertisements. The null hypothesis was that women would be depicted as sex objects in less than or equal to 50% of the advertisements.
The extent to which women were presented as sex objects was calculated using a coding system. Every woman in each of the randomly selected 30 magazines was interpreted using a system that was similar to the method that Blaha used. Some of the categories that were coded were the percentage of face shown, gaze, product, expression, body pose, body part focus, degree of clothing, type of clothing, and whether or not the ad was seen as respectful …show more content…

The three main categories were women’s magazines, men’s magazines, and magazines that appealed to the general interest. Döring and Pöschl (2006) found that 54.8% of pictures of women in the general interest magazines were depicted. Generally, magazines either advertised certain products using people, or have a page for certain celebrities. It was rare to read a magazine that does not have a picture of a woman in it. Pictures of women can be interpreted more thoroughly by not only judging the sexuality of the ladies, but the overall condition the women were

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