This weekend I was sitting on a bus reading a bunch of celebrity gossip magazines (People, Us Weekly), when I noticed a startling trend. The vast majority of the people on the magazine pages were white. This realization inspired me to change my blog topic and instead focus on how people of different genders, races, ages, and backgrounds are portrayed in different popular magazines.
I decided to go to the Barnes and Nobles in Hanover to examine the 7 display cases of magazines. For my first blog entry I wanted to look at how people of different races were portrayed in magazines. First I looked at all 110 of the magazines that had people on their covers. While there are a multitude of races and cultural identities, for simplification purposes, I categorized all of the cover people into six racial categories: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian and Other. I compared the race of the people on the covers of the magazines to the actual U.S. race demographics. Here is what I found:
When I was looking at my results, some things that I noticed was:
- The percentage of white people on the covers of magazines is greater than the percentage of white people in the U.S. population.
- The percentage of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and American Indians on the covers of magazines is lower than the actual percentage of these race groups in the U.S. population.
Do these results surprise you?
Do you think that the percentage of people of each race on the cover of magazines should be equal to the percentage of these race groups in the U.S. population?
For the Health/Fitness/ Sports magazines, my findings were:
One thing that I noticed was that Sports/Health/Fitness Magazines had the highest percentage of black people on their covers than any other type of magazine.
- Do you think that this reveals anything about how the media portrays black people?
For the Celebrity/Entertainment magazines my findings were:
Out of the 30 womens' magazines at the Barnes and Nobles, 83% of them had a white person on the cover, while white people are roughly 66% of the U.S. population.
- I wonder why there is a higher percentage of white people on the covers of womens' magazines than there is in the U.S. population. Do magazines with white people on the cover sell more issues than those with other races on the cover?
For the Celebrity/Entertainment magazines I found:
The Celebrity/Entertainment Magazines where the least diverse type of magazine in terms of who they featured on their covers. 89% of the people on Celebrity/Gossip magazines at Barnes and Nobles were white. There were also no Asian, Hispanic or American Indians on any of the covers.
Why would Celebrity/ Entertainment magazines be the least diverse type of magazine?
For the Business/Politics magazines I found:
The Business/ Politics magazines were the most diverse in terms of who they featured on their covers. Unlike the other types of magazines, Business/Politics magazines had a lower percentage of white people on their covers than the percentage of white people in the population. I wonder if this is a conscience decision. If it is what does it say about how the media is trying to portray business and politics?
Personally, I think that the people featured on the covers of popular magazines should be representative of the U.S. population. The U.S. population is very racially diverse, so I feel that magazines should strive to show people of all different races.
It's very interesting that different genres of magazine display very different combinations and levels of different races. Initially you mention that Blacks are pictured less frequently than their percentage of the American population, but your first graph shows the opposite. I wonder if fair representation of minorities ever occurs. In both the health/fitness/sports and celebrity/entertainment categories there is a significant Black presence in the magazines, but the actual Black presence in these industries, particularly in sports is much higher than proportional to the population. This may also be true for Asians in the business/politics category.
ReplyDeleteI believe the red bar representing the white population in the United States holds the answer to all your questions. Simply put, the white population currently holds the position as largest demographic so they are also the largest group of consumers. Our nation is a country of consumers, so most effective businesses (such as magazine companies) cater to the biggest consumer pool, which we previously established is the white population. On the other hand, one of the reasons why non-white groups are represented in business and political magazines are because those are the two fields in which there is the greatest interaction with non-whites. Though I believe America should have equal representation (or even overrepresentation) of minorities, it is not beneficial by most means (perhaps with the exception of pretending to seem diverse and progressive for the public) for magazine to have covers with non-white people.
ReplyDeleteI think that jwolf and johnny make important observations. I agree with Johnny that the largest demographic/largest consumer group is white, and that this group is influencing what choices the magazine editors are making. I also agree with jwolf that we see higher numbers of minorities in areas where these minorities have stronger presences (blacks in sports, for instance). So in some ways these findings aren't surprising, even though they are disturbing. What I find perhaps most disturbing about the findings is how absent Native Americans are from media coverage. I understand that Native Americans constitute a very small proportion of the population, but their complete absence from mainstream media is disturbing nonetheless.
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ReplyDeleteHispanics are being dealt a really shitty deal. If the projections are anything to go by, Hispanics and Latinos will make up 30 % of the population by 2050. It would be great to do this analysis over the next few years to see how these stats change, if at all.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense to me that whites are often over-represented. They are the majority. They are the norm. People from other races and ethnicities often model their lifestyles based on the norm (arguable, I know). You therefore connect with a wider base when you use Whites on magazine covers.
I'm not quite sure why gocsik finds the absence of Native Americans disturbing. I don't know of any prominent Native Americans. Even though I am sure there many, the small population of Native Americans prevents them having a prominent voice in mainstream American discourses. Problematic, surely. But magazines are money making machines... they pander to their main markets.