In six high circulation magazines focused on fashion, fitness and sexual themes, researchers suggest that Asian men and black women were “rendered invisible.” Joanna Schug, Nicholas Alt, Philip Lu, Monika Gosin and Jennifer Fay found that “relative to the proportions of Whites, Asians depicted in the popular magazines examined in this study were more likely to be women, and Blacks were more likely to be men.”
The magazine titles included GQ, Vogue, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Maxim and Cosmopolitan. Researchers selected these types of magazines because prior studies indicate that they “tend to showcase culturally normative ideals of physical appearance, clothing and grooming, body size and physique.” The team coded five issues of each magazine, categorizing 8,124 individuals in images.
“Overall, this study finds that Asian men and Black women are proportionally underrepresented in popular magazines consistent with the predictions of gendered race theory, which suggests that Asians are viewed are prototypically female and Blacks as prototypically male.”
For those trying to include more diversity in publications, the authors note the “importance of taking gender into account when examining factors such as race and ethnicity.”
Schug, Joanna, et al. “Gendered race in mass media: Invisibility of Asian men and Black women in popular magazines.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture 6.3 (2017): 222.