News Day Tuesday: Men’s Magazines
Y’all are one intriguing bunch. Who knew that visitors to a site for Girls by Design would have so much to say about men’s magazines? 
So in that spirit, I present to you a study about – you guessed it – men’s magazines.
Jennifer Aubrey of the University of Missouri conducted a series of studies examining how the content of men’s magazines (such as Maxim, FHM and Stuff) affected the self-image of male readers. In the first study, she examined how exposure to men’s magazines affected body self-consciousness and appearance anxiety among male readers. What she found was that after a year, reading these magazines led to greater body self-consciousness. Aubrey was surprised by this result because these magazines weren’t dominated by idealized images of men, but of women. Since it is unlikely that most men want to look like the women they see in these magazines, she wondered what the reason was for the higher body self-consciousness among male readers.
And so, curious social scientist that she is, Aubrey conducted a second study, along with Laramie Taylor of the University of California-Davis. This time, the male participants were divided into 3 groups: Group 1 viewed magazine layouts featuring objectified women; Group 2 viewed layouts featuring male fashion, with fit and well-dressed male models; and Group 3 viewed appearance-neutral layouts with topics like technology and film trivia. What the researchers found was that, as a group, the men who viewed the layouts of objectified females had the most body self-consciousness. And get this…the group with the least amount of body self-consciousness was the one that viewed the male fashion layouts.
So what to make of this? Aubrey hypothesized that men ended up feeling like they needed to look as good as the women they saw in men’s magazines in order to have a chance at becoming involved with an attractive woman.
Ever the curious scientists, Aubrey and Taylor conducted a third study to test this theory. This time, the men were divided into 2 groups: Group 1 viewed magazine layouts with sexually idealized females; Group 2 viewed the same layouts with average-looking “boyfriends” added to the photos, with captions stating that female models are attracted to average-looking men. What they found was that the men who viewed the layouts with the average-looking boyfriends had less body self-consciousness. Why? Maybe because they felt less pressure to conform to certain appearance standards when they saw that the models liked average-looking men.
There have also been a number of studies showing how media images negatively influence women’s body image. Last year, a study by Laurie Mintz of the University of Missouri-Columbia found that all women – regardless of their size, shape, height or age – were equally negatively affected after seeing models in magazine ads for just 3 minutes. Another study that came out this past May analyzed previous studies (this is called a meta-analysis) encompassing more than 15,000 subjects, and found that “exposure to media depicting ultra-thin actresses and models significantly increased women’s concerns about their bodies, including how dissatisfied they felt, and their likelihood of engaging in unhealthy eating behaviors, such as excessive dieting.”
What is so interesting about the studies Aubrey and her colleagues conducted is that idealized images of women also seem to negatively affect the way men perceive themselves, even more so than idealized images of men. What do you all think about that? Surprised? Not surprised? Convinced that you too should study a social science in college? (I studied sociology in college. Yay sociology! Well, that was after a stint with electrical engineering. Long story. Let’s just say that circuits and I…we didn’t get along too well.)
And what’s all this about “objectification”? A lot of the studies and a lot of your comments mentioned that word. What does it mean to “objectify” something and is it always a bad thing? Is it possible to have media representations of people that don’t objectify? For example, many argue that men’s magazines objectify women because they’re presented as sex objects. What about the paintings and photographs that hang in the most revered museums throughout the world? When people are portrayed as art, is that objectification or not? What about when people provide entertainment through acting or music? Is that objectification?
jessica f
December 2, 2008whoa. That’s so weird to know that these magazines, featuring good looking women, got men to feel self-conscious about themselves. I am seriously surprised!
I use to glance through my ex’s Maxim’s and FHMs. Those were pretty interesting articles, content wise. But, they made ME feel bad for not looking absolute, drop-dead skinny and gorgeous. I didn’t really know they had that same effect on guys too!
I do feel that these magazines objectify women. They make us feel like we’re SUPPOSE to look that way, and feel bad if we don’t. I hope the men reading them don’t expect REAL LIFE women to look that way. HELLO we have curves! The artworks of women in the nude within museums are art. They reflect the real curves of women, not some ideal “Hollywood” image we need to live up to. Those pieces of art don’t make us feel bad about ourselves.
Great article, Kathy! plus, I need to give shouts out to my school, UC DAVIS all the way!!
<3,
Jessica