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.