Content Anaylsis

Title: The Primary Roles of Females in the Ads of a Fashion Magazine

Two-Sentence Summary of Findings:
Women that are in the fashion ads are predominately sexy, risqué white females. There is usually one model in the ad and when another race is represented it is rare and they are put on display as a less sexy figure.

Summary of Previous Study:
The previous study by Tom Reichhert and Jacqueline Lambiase (“Sex and the Marketing of Consumer Magazines: How Men’s Magazines Sexualized Their Covers to Compete with Maxim,”2000, Sex in Consumer Culture) presents the facts the women were put on display for purposes to sell magazines because the old methods were not working. In ten years the presence of women on covers of magazines jumped up by forty percent. The study included five magazines Rolling Stone, Esquire, Details, GQ and Maxim. Maxim was the main magazine chosen by this study due to the fact that they have a formula they have discovered worked. Put a B-list actress on the cover and maintain 2.5 million subscribers. The other four changed their formula after Maxim’s debut and success. (Gremillion, 1997; Handy, 1999; Jacobson, 2002)

The Most Important Foundation Literature and its Relation to My Project: The most relevant study used by the previous study is by Soley & Kurzbard (“Sex in Advertising,” 1986, Journal of Advertising) helping to create a coding scale. The coding scale was used to analyze the depictions of the ads/covers. Some of the categories outlined were: primary models, the number of models, sex role, view of the body and sex factor. I chose to make a coding scale similar to this one because I felt it gage what I was looking for accurately. I also wanted to see exactly how many non-whites were represented in this high fashion magazine.

Corpus and Method:
My corpus method was to take Harper’s Bazaar from the months of March, May, June, July and August 2007. I left out April because I only wanted two months of spring and all three months of summer. I looked at all the ads in these magazines and gage the depictions according to my coding scale. I chose Harper’s Bazaar because to me it has always been a non-bias magazine representing fashion not race like I feel other magazines do. I never thought in a content analysis frame of mind either. The magazine focuses strictly on fashion there are not very many pages with wording on them unless it is describing the clothing; who made it, who’s wearing, where to get it. I used both qualitative and quantitative methods for my content analysis, coding the number of models, their race, style of dress, view of body and sexiness. The Maxim Coding Scale was an excellent guide to help me build my scale (“Sex and the Marketing of Consumer Magazines: How Men’s Magazines Sexualized Their Covers to Compete with Maxim,”2000, Sex in Consumer Culture). I used the view of the body to figure out the true depiction of the model/s, full body, three-quarters, head and torso or face only.

Findings: I only found one ad with more than seven models, Valentino; an Italian designer was feature in the middle of ten models in the same demure-type red tube top dress. Of the ten models four were non- white, one was actually black with a dark, deep skin tone. Another ad for a shoe company depicted three models, two white one black. The black model in this ad was placed in the back. I found another ad for dove with an older lady appearing to be nude showing her head and shoulders. The only other nude model I saw was of a non-white dark hair woman with a stingray on her back. It was so odd I forgot what they were advertising. In a June issue I found a pair of lips, in which I assumed to be non-white, the advertisement was for jewelry therefore it didn’t make too much sense, but what I did find interesting is that the lips were slightly separated. As stated in another study performed by Debra Merskin (“Where Are Clothes Going? The Pornographic Gaze in Mainstream American Fashion Advertising,” 2006, Sex in Consumer Culture). I found one specific Hispanic model, Eva Longoria for “Bebe Sport,” she was partially clad and had a coding of yes for sexiness.

Conclusion:
This mini-study does uncover some of the same findings of the prior research. Women are used as sexual figures to sell to other women. I could have went more into depth with my research and singled-out specific races like Asian, African-American, Latina, bi-racial and etc but I felt white vs. non- white would develop more results. Another cool study would be the depiction of white vs. non-white females on prime time sitcoms.
References:
Merskin, Debra. Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media Marketing. Mahwah , New Jersey : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2006, pp199-217
Reichert, Tom, and Jacqueline Lambiase. Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. Mahwah , New Jersey : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2006, pp 67-86.
Soley, L., & Kurzbard, G. (1986). Sex in advertising: A comparison of 1964 and 1984 magazine advertisements. Journal of Advertising, 15(3), 46-54, 64.

Coding Sheet

Magazine: Harper’s Bazaar
Month
1=March
2=May
3=June
4=July
5=August
Number of Models
Primary Model/s
0=white
1=non-white
Style of Dress
0=demure
1=suggestive
2=partially clad
3=nude
View of Body
0=full body
1=three-quarters
2=head and torso
3=face only
Sexiness
0=no
1=yes
Overview
1,5, 4’0s 1,1,0,1
1,2,00,02,11,0
1,2,11,00,0,0
2,1,0,0,1,0
2,1,0,2,2,1
2,1,0,3,1,0
2,1,1,3,3,1
3,3,001,1,1,1
3,1,1,1,3,1
3,10,6’0s4’0s,1, 0,0
3,1,0,0,0,1
4,1,1,2,1,1
4,1,1,2,0,1
4,2,2,2,0,1
5,1,1,1,1
5,3,2’0s/1,1,1,0
5,1,0,0,2,1