Race, Gender, Media

Going into this assignment I knew there would not be a lot of diversity shown when looking through magazine ads, but when I actually had to places numbers on what was actually portrayed in the magazines I have to admit that I was upset. I took four well known magazines (Instyle, Glamour, Self and Vibe), and two local magazines (Boydstreet and On the Oval) and counted the number of ads in the magazine and the number of ads that featured diversity and this is what I found:


Magazine: (Number of Ads feat. Diversity to Number of Ads in Magazine)
Glamour: (9:54)
Self: (4:32)
Vibe: (11:11)
Instyle: (18:105)
Boydstreet: (2:7)
On the Oval:(1:5)


The only magazine that featured a great number of ads featuring diversity was Vibe magazine which, is an urban magazine so I had already assumed that this would be the case. Granted I only counted the ads that had people in them, the numbers still speak for themselves. Even the ads that had minorities in them portrayed them minorities, especially women, in a sexually manner. Another thing I noticed was the people used in these ads were either well known musicians or actors and not just models in general. In fact, the three top minority faces I saw in these magazines were Rihanna, Halle Berry and Eva Longoria. Rarely did I see a new and up coming model who just happened to be a pretty face. A couple of days ago I was watching House on USA and realized that I had this assignment halfway through the show and decided that I would count and compare the number of commercials that aired and the commercials that featured diversity in some way. During the last half hour of House sixteen commercials aired and out of that sixteen, only three featured some form of diversity. That it is only 19% and even if the number was double it would still not even be close to showing a significant difference in how minorities are represented in commercials. When I noticed that there were more commercials showing diversity I was sadly interrupted with realization that I was on a “urban” channel that placed more of an emphasis on showing minorities in all aspects of advertisement. I am not saying that we should not appreciate these channels but if we set limits on where we can actually see more colorful ads and commercials then we are only setting ourselves up for failure. It is set up so that people who initially have an interest in a certain area will be the only ones to gain more knowledge about that particular area. We use to have this discussion all the time in my African American studies course. The fact that the only people who learn about “black history” are the people who sign up for the classes. It is not taught to the American children the way European history is taught in classrooms.

At the beginning of the semester we saw a film that showed a study about African American children and how they viewed things based on the concept of what was considered beautiful or intelligent. It hurt to see the little girl say that the black doll was ugly because it looked like her but when all you see on television is the complete opposite of what you see when you look in the mirror it is obvious to see how you develop a complex about your appearance, especially at a young age like that. Regardless of race and/or gender, it is up to those of us who will be going into the media business to find ways to change this. Stereotypes were created by the media and I think it is fair to say that the media is the only one who can turn it around.