Magazine comparison

By: Kevin  Meyers, Mason VM, Josiah Blevins, Marlin Pickens, and Ollie Goss

Our group examined the men's and women's fitness magazines "Flex" for men and "Muscle and Fitness for Her". While White and Gillett's (1994) original study discovered that 83.4% of men's magazines had advertisements for technologies of the body, our magazine consisted of 99% technologies of the body and very, very little adornment and display of the body.
Our female magazine was similar, but had it's own differences. 76% of our women's magazine was technologies of the body with 64% dietary supplements and 12% bodybuilding equipment. Adornment and display of the body was more evident at 24% consisting of 24% cosmetics advertisements.
The three main themes we found in the Men's magazine were positioning reader as inferior, promise of transformation, and hegemonic masculinity. Examples that were found positioning the reader as inferior had advertisements of extremely large men flexing and appear to be looking down at the reader, as well as, men lifting weights and screaming. Promise of transformation advertisements were exemplified with before and after pictures for dietary supplements. Hegemonic masculinity were evident with an advertisement that was "The guide to the ultimate body" and showed a picture of a man carrying a woman on his back.
The themes we found in Women's magazine were positioning the reader as inferior and were illustrated as the woman in the ad looked down intensely at the reader. Promise of transformation that was evident in the women's magazine also had before and after pictures from using dietary supplements.
In conclusion, we determined that both magazines were dominated by the amount of dietary supplement advertisements showing in the Men's to build muscles and get "jacked", while the women's magazine showed dietary supplements that lost weight to get toned. As expected the women's magazine showed more cosmetics advertisements than the male magazine. In conclusion, our group determined that the female magazine aimed for the perfect female body to be more toned and fit and the male magazine dictated the perfect body to have gigantic muscles that bulged out of their shirts.