Karen Bale

Media Representations of Female Body Images in Women's Magazines: a Content Analysis of Media Trends Karen Bale

Body dissatisfaction is a common emotion in women, and female body images published in women's magazines serve as the ideal body standards for some women. The purpose of this content analysis was to ascertain how Caucasian undergraduate female coders would rank the female body images presented in women's fashion, health, and fashion and health-related magazines viewed most often by female undergraduate students as listed in Simmons Market Research Bureau (2003). Samples of the photographic images presented in the 12 women's magazines for June 2005 and samples of the archived 1995 and 2000 issues of these 12 magazines were evaluated by the coders. Furthermore, samples of the female photographic images presented in four May and three June 1950 magazines were also ranked by the coders. This content analysis uses a rating scale to rank female body images that are systematically random sampled from women's magazines. The findings indicate body images vary significantly from 1950 to 2005 and 1995 to 2005. Furthermore, at least 90 percent of the sampled images from the 1995, 2000, and 2005 magazine titles were ranked thin.