Gender in Magazines

Selling Breonna: Twitter Responses to Breonna Taylor on the Covers of O, The Oprah Magazine and Vanity Fair

“…Women’s magazines have been critiqued for embracing a Western standard of beauty (Akinro & Mbunyuza-Memani, 2019; Groeneveld, 2020; Winship, 2000). Cover models create a “sign of woman” affirming White skin, youth, beauty, charm, and sexuality as valuable attributes of femininity (Winship, 2000).…”

“…This beauty standard is often “consistent with a global definition of beauty and supports the ideal of Whiteness,” a quality also evident in magazines aimed at women readers in Africa, in which models were thin with flowing hair and light skin (Akinro & Mbunyuza-Memani, 2019, p. 319). Ultimately, women’s magazines do not present a unified representation of gender (Groeneveld, 2020). As politics of gender, class, race, sexuality, and other identities shape magazine depictions, intersectional analyses are needed to situate their visual and textual discourses.…”