First Name:
Rebecca
Last Name:
Swofford
Major Department:
Psychology
Thesis Director:
Doris Bazzini
Date of Thesis:
May 2013
This research is a content analysis of the covers of Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazines from 2006 to 2011 with the purpose of analyzing and comparing the information found on the covers through the lens of Objectification theory and Framing theory. Three types of information were assessed by four coders. First, the prominent caption of each magazine was categorized for type of frame; appearance, body competence, health, weight loss, or other/miscellaneous. Second, the number of body parts stated in captions were counted. Third, the images of cover models were coded for number of body parts revealed and presence of clothing. Women’s Healthwas expected to contain more objectifying statements than Men’s Health. Objectifying statements in Men’s Healthcaptions were expected to relate to muscular body ideal while Women’s Health captions were expected to relate to the thin body ideal. Furthermore, appearance frames were predicted to be the most common frame for the Women’s Health captions while body competence frames were expected to be most common on Men’s Health. Cover models on Women’s Health were expected to be depicted partially clothed more often than cover models on Men’s Health.Finally, it was predicted that cover models on both magazines would be more likely to have an exposed midriff on covers that had a greater number of objectifying statements present.