Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone

Abstract

A number of journalists and scholars have pointed to the sexual objectification of women and men in popular media to argue that Western culture has become ''sexualized'' or even ''pornified.'' Yet it is not clear whether men or women have become more frequently-or more intensely sexualized-over time. In a longitudinal content analysis of images of women and men on more than four decades of Rolling Stone magazine covers , we begin to answer such questions. Using a unique analytical framework that allows us to measure both the frequency and intensity of sexualization, we find that sexualized images of men and women have increased, though women continue to be more frequently sexualized than men. Yet our most striking finding is the change in how women-but not men-are sexualized. Women are increasingly likely to be ''hypersexualized,'' but men are not. These findings not only document changes in the sexualization of men and women in popular culture over time, they also point to a narrowing of the culturally acceptable ways for ''doing'' femininity as presented in popular media.

White Women Wanted? An Analysis of Gender Diversity in Social Justice Magazines

“…Sexualization appears to be growing more prevalent across time, though only minimally and perhaps due to the large sample size. This trend does correspond with other findings regarding the increase of sexualization in the media [61,82,83]. It is also important to mention here that PETA, the publisher of Animal Times, is notorious for sexually objectifying the subjects in its media [24,27,28], which may have inflated the prevalence of sexualization in the results.…”

“…13 VegNews 2001, February (5). 14 While race and gender are social constructions, and are therefore relatively subjective, an exploration into other content analyses of a similar nature did not uncover a coding scheme for either variable [51,61,74,75]. Therefore, we have depended on our personal socialization to discern race and gender.…”

“…Another such trend is the increasing sexualization of women in the media [53,61]. This pattern is thought problematic because media could foster anti-feminist attitudes and increase aggressive behavior toward women [62][63][64][65][66][67].…”

Gender models: changing representations and intersecting roles in Dutch and Italian fashion magazines, 1982–2011

“…Four other poses were expected to be typically male: eye contact, photographed en face (frontal image with both sides of nose visible), erect body, and active pose (the person in the image is engaged in an activity other than being photographed) (Hatton & Trautner, 2011;Kang, 1997;Kolbe & Albanese, 1996;Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006;Lindner, 2004;Mager & Helgerson, 2011). Because of the inconsistent findings regarding the relational variables in previous studies, we constructed four descriptive variables measuring company: alone, with child, in the company of (adult) women, or (adult) men.…”

“…As many studies have argued, gendered poses typically signal female dependence, subordination and objectification vs. male dominance, autonomy and subjectification (Baker, 2005;Collins, 2011;Hatton & Trautner, 2011Gill, 2009;Mager & Helgerson, 2011). Goffman's Gender Advertisements (1979) transformed feminist critique into empirical scholarship.…”