“A decisive narrowing of media representations of women”
A new study by Erin Hatton, PhD, and Mary Nell Trautner, PhD, assistant professors in the Department of Sociology, Buffalo University, has found sexualised imagery of women has increased a massive 89 percent from the 1960s to the present.
The authors of ‘Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone’ studied 1000 images on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine from 1967 to 2009 to see how women and men were represented over these 43 years. While many of us knew things were bad, the stats are still remarkable. As Science Daily reports:
First, representations of both women and men have indeed become more sexualized over time; and, second, women continue to be more frequently sexualized than men. Their most striking finding, however, was the change in how intensely sexualized images of women — but not men — have become.
In the 1960s they found that 11 percent of men and 44 percent of women on the covers of Rolling Stone were sexualized. In the 2000s, 17 percent of men were sexualized (an increase of 55 percent from the 1960s), and 83 percent of women were sexualized (an increase of 89 percent). Among those images that were sexualized, 2 percent of men and 61 percent of women were hypersexualized. “In the 2000s,” Hatton says, “there were 10 times more hypersexualized images of women than men, and 11 times more non-sexualized images of men than of women.”
“…What we conclude from this is that popular media outlets such as Rolling Stone are not depicting women as sexy musicians or actors; they are depicting women musicians and actors as ready and available for sex. This is problematic,” Hatton says, “because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women.”
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:29 pm
If this is what analysis of JUST the covers of just ONE magazine tells us, my brain is imploding just starting to think about the cumulative effect of sexualisation across our social and cultural landscape…
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:33 pm
18 months ago I was going to use Rolling Stone Covers in a project I was working on – however after looking through many, many covers for options, I quickly chose to dismiss them completely when I realized that EVERY cover I came across that had a female artist featuring, was a photo of her in an (almost stupid) sexualized, skanky pose or much the like. The vast majority of covers were of male artists, but those few that were of female artists were all skanked up carbon copies of each other. My summary – Pathetic and dismissed.
August 22nd, 2011 at 10:49 pm
What a surprise dehumanised sexualised images of women have increased a massive 89% during period from the 1960s to the present. Or rather not a surprise because men’s sexualised dehumanisation of women has existed for centuries.
What about the men I hear the cry? Men too are sexualised – no the percentage of males depicted as dehumanised sexualised commodities is a puny 2% compared to the percentage for women and this is evidence from just one misogynsitic porn magazine masquerading as a ‘music tome!’ Stil never mind the focus will as always be on claims ‘but men too are subjected to being depicted as sexualised commodities and reason we have these claims is because men are the only ones who matter. Women and girls? Well they are dehumanised disposable sexualised objects to be used, abused and then discarded by men.
Take a look at the sample images because they are all pornified images of women including the mandatory bondage of a female body.
August 26th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Not at all surprised! Whenever anyone tries to speak about the objectification of women we are told ‘what about men?’ Now we have the data to back up our answer! Women are far more often sexualised/objectified than men, across all media.
Just in case anyone is thinking that I’m a-ok with the sexual objectification of men…i’m not. Both genders should be treated and represented respectfully.