HIGH FASHION vs GOSSIP MAGAZINES

High Fashion Magazine V Gossip Magazine

I done a study to find out the difference in diverse faces between high fashion magazines and tabloid type ‘gossip’ magazines, I chose to do this study because I was curious to see whether the lack of diversity issue lies within fashion magazines only, or magazines of all types.

I took a copy of Grazia; dated 21^st April 2012 and a copy of Heat dated 21^st-27^th April 2012. Both magazines were within a similar price range however from a quick glance between the two front covers, it was quite obvious as to that was where the similarities stopped.

I originally broke down the categories specifically into two headers, under the ‘White’ header I had the  labels ‘Blonde’, ‘Brunettes’, ‘Red-head’ and other and under the ‘Non-white header’ I had the labels Black, Mixed Race, Hispanic, Asian and South Asian.  However after the first attempt to gather data this way I noticed that there was a flaw under the ‘White’ header, as splitting the category into different hair colours may be better for me however they may not be accurate. After some research I became clear with the fact that many models wear wigs for the photo shoots and a lot of celebrities featured within the articles hair colours weren’t natural and so in order not to complicate it, I decided just to have a ‘White’ category and the rest of those listed above in the ‘Non-White’ header.

In Grazia magazine I counted 144 pages, within those 144 pages, 94 of them were articles and 50 of them were advertisements.  I split up the sections so I would count the faces in the advertisements and then count the faces in the articles, as I am aware that the advertisements aren’t always within the magazines control. Out of the 50 ads in Grazia I counted 39 of them had faces in, out of those 39, I counted 36 white faces, 2 mixed-race faces and one Asian face.

Out of the 94 articles in Grazia I counted 183 white faces, 17 black faces, 9 mixed-race, 11 Hispanic, 1 Asian, 3 South Asian and 1 other, which was someone from a descent I could not specify. To be honest I wasn’t particularly with the data I collected from Grazia, as a high fashion magazine, I expected the majority of the faces within both ads and articles to be white and as it focuses mostly on fashion and few other aspects of pop culture the results weren’t un-ordinary. What I wanted to clarify was that, the majority of the black faces that were included in the results were all from one specific article regarding the ‘Steven Lawrence’ case, and the out of the eleven Hispanic faces almost half of them were of Jessica Alba on various different articles regarding style, therefore without that Steven Lawrence case article the amount of black faces would’ve been significantly lower.

In Heat magazine, the amount of pages was slightly lower, 123, containing 92 ½ articles and 30 ½ advertisements. Again like I did with Grazia, I split up the sections so I would count the faces in the advertisements and then count the faces in the articles.

Out of the 30 ½ advertisements I counted 24 of them with faces in them; 20 of these contained white faces, 2 of them had black faces and 2 contained mixed race faces. There were no Hispanic, Asian or South Asian faces within any of the ads.

Out of the 92 articles in Heat I counted 273 White faces, 26 Black faces, 16 Mixed-Race faces, 10 Hispanic, 1 Asian, 5 South Asian, and 20 Others who’s races I could not specify.  Although the difference between the two may not seem as much in terms of the amount of non-white faces in the magazines, I think Heat could be determined as slightly more diverse as although the amount of non-white faces wasn’t much more, they were all spread widely throughout the magazine. I think the reason why Heat was slightly more diverse however was because it is a gossip magazine, therefore it’s focuses are pop culture such as music and television and within those particular genre’s it is incredibly diverse.

RACIAL STEREOTYPES IN WOMENS MAGAZINES

In April of 2008, the same year that the Vogue Italia-All Black Issue [See below post] was released, but a few months ahead, Alex Alvarez, an associate editor wrote an article titled Model Minority: How Women’s Magazines Whitewash Different Ethnicities. Throughout the article, Alvarez basically breaks down the racial stereotype for women of different ethnicities, and talks about how each ethnic minority is portrayed in its own stereotypical way.  

On each racial background, the writer gives a ‘brief overview’ which consists of a short paragraph depicting how this particular race is represented in most fashion magazines, an ‘Ideal’ which is a woman from that ethnic background whom the fashion magazine show frequently as the ‘ideal’ woman e.g. Jennifer Lopez- the ideal Latina, a few quick points on how their skin, hair and body features should look like and then finally an ‘How magazines have fucked up’ paragraph which talks about how magazines  feed this idea of the ideal woman and the way she should look to people of that ethnic background and how it’s wrong.

During the section about black women, the writer makes, what I thought, was a very interesting the point; ‘Brief Overview: While black women can come in a variety of shapes and complexions, those who are most often represented in mainstream American magazines are often, for lack of a better, equally descriptive phrase, “white-washed” in appearance. Features that are seen of characterized of black people, like curlier hair textures, wider noses and fuller lips, are often downplayed in American magazines, conforming to a white standard of beauty. While black women are “allowed” to be more overtly sexual than those who are white, many “high fashion” black models are quite thin and thus their backsides are smaller and the object of less focus than black women represented in other areas of mainstream entertainment.’ I also believe that the idea of beauty in different races within the media differs depending on what type of media you’re looking at, stick thin black and Hispanic women on the runways of Paris versus the curvaceous black and Hispanic women seen in several music videos nowadays. As some magazines may portray Hispanic and Black Women as curvy, and exotic looking on their pages, in reality looking at most successful high fashion editorial models within the same industry and from the same racial background they are incredibly thin and even though they’re facial features and skin tones may represent those of that background, their bodies do not, yet they are still considered beautiful. In a similar way, mainstream magazines have black women on the covers who don’t necessarily have facial features which are seen as characteristics of black people, yet they have the stereotypical curvy body of a black woman, and are again considered beautiful. Therefore I think that each sector of the industry simply attempts to cater to its audience; the fashion industry by introducing models with exotic different features and diverse skin tones whereas as still conforming to the model body type and the mainstream magazine media by doing the same thing yet trying to still keep it relatable to a large percentage of the population and its audience with regards to the facial features.

One thing that particularly caught my eye within this article was that, the writer wasn’t limiting her stereotypes to the usual black versus white, however she was taking the time to regard the other races that are fairly under-represented within the fashion industry and quite frankly mostly forgotten about. ‘Brief Overview: Asian women hold a curious place in the beauty stratum. Often, what is perceived as their “natural” physical traits are encouraged and often emulated by White women trying to achieve a certain standard of beauty? The idea of a natural physical ideal is a harmful one, because those who do not possess such traits are ignored or considered somehow inferior, physically. The Asian ideal, as perceived by American fashion magazines and elsewhere, revolves around the idea that one must be petite, slim, fair and delicate. Doll-like would be the best way to describe this ideal, both in terms of physical appearance and attitude.’ To me the point about Asian women was the one that made me think the most, I thought this one was probably the truest one in the bunch, because with the previous two we could almost argue that not all black/Hispanic women are portrayed like this in magazines, however with the Asian ‘brief overview’ I found myself struggling to think of a time that I had opened a magazine and seen an Asian woman, which is rare, who isn’t portrayed in this stereotypical way. After reading this I noticed that almost Asian women in fashion magazines are portrayed as this youthful doll-like image, which makes their features seem even more striking and incredible yet almost surreal in a sense. I also noticed that all the Asian models seemed to have incredibly pale skin and petite figures, yet in reality, with the Asian people I know, they seem to have a slightly more tanned skin tone and as within any race come in array of different body shapes as the writer also expresses  ‘Some Asian girls are chubby. Really! Some are muscular, some are tall, some are dark, some are doughy, and some are boney and awkward.’ The ‘brief overview’ made me wonder whether this is just the western idea of Asian beauty, or if Asian women themselves also strive to look this way?

The most surprising racial stereotype however was the one about white women- ‘Brief Overview: The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least “ethnic” and most “neutral” as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls – often with what is described as a “boyish” figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood – hips, ass. Personality. Irish-Americans, for example, who are today almost synonymous with the concept of what it means to be white (fevered dancing without the use of hips or shoulders, the consumption of potatoes), were very much “the other” for a very, very long time in America. Jewish and Italian Americans were also not always considered white folks here in the old U.S. of A. This isn’t mentioned to encourage anyone to wait whiteness out, it’s meant to highlight the fact that whiteness is a culturally manufactured concept and is only given meaning by a certain segment of society in a certain slice of history.’ I feel like we as a generation are so used to seeing white women dominate the pages of our high fashion magazines that we don’t seem to notice that it’s always the same type of pretty white blonde girl next door we see. The idea of the ‘perfect white women’ seems so bizarre to us, yet this article actually educated me a lot about opening my eyes and realising that every race has its own underlying pressures from people within their own race and people outside their own race to look a certain way and conform to a particular stereotype.

I personally feel like despite this being a good article the writer has failed to realize the fact that women’s magazines now feature all types of people, from actresses to singers and not just models, and therefore now the whole magazine industry is a business a way for people to promote themselves through being on the cover of a big name mag, and so we can’t just point the finger in the direction of the editors and say they’re the racist ones, and they’re the ones creating these stereotypes, I think the problem lies a lot deeper than that.

All in all although I didn’t agree with all the points the writer made, and the way in which she made them, it made me question my whole outlook onto the whole ‘Racism within the fashion Industry’ debate, are the fashion industry still racist if they prefer a pretty tanned blonde girl to a pretty pale-skinned ginger girl? Or if they put a stick thin light-skinned black woman on the cover of their magazine as opposed to a dark skinned curvy woman? I think the real question is are they simply giving us what we really want to see?

Source:[Read the full article here on racialicious.com [http://www.racialicious.com/2008/04/10/model-minority-how-womens-magazines-whitewash-different-ethnicities/]] April 10th 2008.

THE SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE PROJECT

[May 31^st 2010] Read the full post here by Jamie Keiles;

http://www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com/2010/05/seventeen-and-race.html   

In May of 2010 , Jamie Keiles created a blog based on the Magazine ‘Seventeen’, the whole point of the blog was for Jamie to live her life for a month according to the gospel of Seventeen Magazine, during this period she decided to do a post particularly on race. Although the author of this post claims she is from a town which is 95.1% white and has not had much exposure to racial discussion, I feel she wrote the post incredibly well, with no hint of any sort of biased opinions. The point of the article was for her to compare the breakdown of racial content featured in Seventeen Magazine with what was the latest census at the time of race demographics in the United States.

Comparing the two pie charts the writer created and with the information she provided on how she conducted the study, I concluded that the researcher counted 332 faces and then researched the ethnicities of the models she could identify. Models whose races she could not determine with reasonable certainty she did not include in the study and therefore ended up using 319 faces as part of her data. From the charts I can see that there were 19% non-white faces in the June/July Issue of Seventeen Magazine and 81% white (non-Hispanic) faces in the same [June/July/ Issue of Seventeen Magazine.

In the United States 72% of the population are white (non-Hispanic), 12% are Black, 5% are Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American, 9% are Hispanic white and 2% are Two or more races. In that particular issue of Seventeen Magazine, the racial breakdown is actual pretty close in comparison to the statistics of the races in The United States, with the exception of the 1% represented in the magazine compared to the 9% population.

 

‘Personally, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an entirely equal distribution of race in every issue, but it does seem reasonable (and logical) to expect that a modern magazine would have a race breakdown that is similar to the race breakdown of the country in which it publishes, in this case, the United States.’ I also, personally agree with this statement that the writer makes, I was incredibly surprised when I discovered these results. Although it would be fantastic if all magazines represented all races equally, it is also highly unlikely, because all magazines have a target audience to cater for and these audiences sometimes have a specific idea of what they want to see on the pages and what they think beauty is. Seventeen magazines, although they seemingly want to encourage diversity within their pages, still have a duty to cater for mainstream American teenage girls (their target audience) and the majority of that audience is white. I personally don’t believe it’s a race thing by not showing all races equally within the pages, I simply think that each magazine has it’s target audience and they are the ones widely represented in their magazines. For example ‘Ebony’ Magazine is predominantly aimed at African American’s and those are the ones who dominate the pages of their issues, that doesn’t mean that they only feature black people however they know that a member of their target audience is more likely to pick up the issue and buy it if there is a successful black woman/man on the cover.

All in all, I believe that this post by Jamie Keiles is one of the most interesting I have come across whilst researching for this topic, it has opened my eyes to the fact that although major fashion magazines may not follow this diverse trend that others are recognizing beauty within all races. In addition, after reading this article, I myself started to notice how teen magazines seem to represent race a lot more equally within them than the older, high fashion magazines do. This makes me wonder whether this represents the gap between the old and young generation within society, and are we, as the younger generation a lot more open and accepting to seeing beauty represented through all different ethnicities.

VOGUE ITALIA- ALL BLACK ISSUE

In July of 2008, Vogue Italia released an ‘All-Black Issue’. Vogue Italia is considered to be the best edition of Vogue there is and with a reputation as the top fashion magazine within the world and every aspiring and working model’s dream, what’s not to boast about this incredible publication? However despite the raging success of this high fashion magazine, Vogue is also known for some things which are slightly less positive, especially in the 21^st century.  Being such a successful and high end magazine, Vogue don’t necessarily feel the need to obey by any particular rules and whilst other magazines are becoming well known for adding women of international races across the covers of their issues, Vogue are known for using predominantly models of Caucasian backgrounds on their covers and across the pages; the lack of diversity spread across their issues is something which has becoming increasingly noticeable within the fashion and media world, so naturally when rumour had it that their July issue was to be an ‘All black Issue’ and especially as it wasn’t just Vogue, it was Vogue Italia, fashionistas all over the world held their breaths anticipating this unexpected issue and what it would contain, and naturally in true Vogue Italia style, it flew off shelves worldwide, was fabulous and completely disregarded the myth that ‘Black women on the front don’t sell magazines’. The issue had four different covers and each one sported a different model, them being; Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Sessilee Lopez and London’s very own Jourdan Dunn.

Dodai Stewart a writer for jezebel.com wrote an article called ‘Vogue All-Black-Issue; A Guided Tour’ regarding the famous issue as soon as it was released back in 2008. Although the writer talks about the interesting images and the striking black models featured within the pages; she also claims that between the pages of editorial content with black faces, the ads in between continue to have white faces. ‘Flipping through the much-hyped issue is interesting: After the pull-out cover featuring four striking close ups (Liya Kebede, Sessilee Lopez, Jourdan Dunn and Naomi Campbell), the next thirteen pages of ads — for Valentino, Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Dior — all feature white faces.’ Although I understand where the writer is coming from with this comment, the reality of this is that Vogue is a magazine with an already established target audience and honestly there aren’t many high end campaigns featuring black models, therefore although the issue is supposedly to be ‘All black’ the reality is that only meant the editorials, the content within the ad’s is not within their control and the target audience of Vogue is predominantly Caucasian therefore they need to remain some familiarity within the pages so they are doing something unique and diverse but still providing the readers with familiar content and ad’s that are relevant to their taste and identity.

The writer ends the article with; ‘There’s one last “Black on Black” shoot, but it pales (heh) in comparison to the rest, so I didn’t even bother scanning it. But after counting black models on runways and in magazines and finding them ignored by the fashion industry, this much-anticipated issue really delivered.
Is it a gimmick? Yes. But the fact remains that flipping through the issue and seeing page after page of gorgeous black women can act as a reminder to editors, stylists, modelling agencies and consumers — that beauty comes in many forms. It can be edgy, irreverent, weird, pretty, strong and avant-garde — while being black. While perhaps some may be upset that it took a “stunt” like this to throw a spotlight on the issue of the lack of diversity in magazines and runways, it’s actually a beautiful souvenir, a keepsake to remember these troubled times. A protest song in photograph form. Never has the racism issue looked quite so stunning.’ I agree with this final paragraph because of the fact that Vogue is an internationally recognised magazine and is well respected by so many people within the fashion/media world, I agree with Stewart when she says that this throws a spotlight on the lack of diversity issue and I think it proved to a lot of people that beauty isn’t a particular way, it comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes and races, and although it may considered a ‘’stunt’’ by some people, for a lot of younger people around the world it could be considered as inspiration and an eye-opener for those already within the industry. Although I think the idea of the All-Black-Issue was incredibly interesting, especially coming from Vogue, I think that people often forget that the world isn’t just ‘black and white’ there are a whole lot of races in between which aren’t recognised in not only Vogue, but magazines across the globe, Asian women, Hispanic Women, Mixed Raced Women and several others are completely forgotten by people and the lack of representations of these races within magazines is questionable and I wonder why only Caucasian and even black women, seem to be the only ones recognised.






















Read Dodai Stewart’s full article here[14th July 2008]: http://jezebel.com/5024967/italian-vogues-all-black-issue-a-guided-tour

The Beginning

The representation of women of different races within the media is a topic that I've been highly interested in since starting a research project on it last year. Although it is somewhat of a contraversial issue, it is one which is highly interesting and relevant to today's society. With that being said the posts on this page will be a collection of secondary and primary research studies I conducted last year regarding this matter. A lot of it is just my opinion, so please don't be offended or outraged as I'm still young. Researching this topic however, really did open my eyes and broadned my mind. As a young black woman it taught me a lot about society, representation and image. Initially I started this research wanting to explore The Representation of Black Women within the media, however as I got more and more into it, my views and the way I looked at things changed. I realized that, in order to open my mind, I really needed to start looking beyond the typical black and white debate, and delve deeper. We often forget that the world is not just black and white, but there is an array of races in between, who are forgotten about every single day when discussing this issue. Therefore I tried, to include as many perspectives as possible, to point out the flaws and positives within the stereotypes in every race, although the focus might be primarily on black women, I tried.
So for every colored girl who feels confused or ugly in their own skin, that doesn't feel like they match the 'ideal' beauty. This is for you. I know it's cliché and all, but beauty really does come in all different shades and shapes. We really do need to start promoting other beautiful females from across the globe, so that these insecurities aren't so much of an issue for the younger generation of girls of different races. By embracing each others differences as beautiful, we can change these ridiculous stereotypes and just let beauty be beauty. Not a particular hair colour, or skin shade or facial feature, but just beauty. So instead of trying to look like Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez or even Barbie, just be you. Fuck everyone else.