Comparing Muscle and Fitness Magazines

We looked at two magazines as a group over the past week. The men's magazine was called Fitness Rx, and the women's was called Shape. The study done by White and Gillett (1994) found that dietary supplements are usually 52.7% of the ads, equipment 19.7%, knowledge systems 12%, clothes 8.5%, cosmetics 2.6%, and finally competitions 5.3% and this was for male magazines. For our male magazine we found that dietary supplements was still the highest at 70.6% while equipment and knowledge systems were both at 10%. Clothes had 5.1% of the ads while cosmetics and competitions were both 1.7%. Our numbers from the men's magazine clearly followed White and Gillett's numbers they found in their study. However, from the women's magazine we found something completely different. Out of the 99 ads we found in Shape magazine, dietary supplements and equipment both only had 6 ads a piece. This resulted in 6% each. Knowledge systems was also very low with it being only 8% of the ads. Clothing had 18 ads white resulted in 18%. Cosmetics was the highest of any category with it being 43% of all the ads. There was only 1 ad for competitions which is 1%. We also found that some of the ads didn't fit into any of these categories so we came up with our own. We came up with Transportation, Medicine, Normal Food, and TV. Normal Food was the highest of any of those with 13%, followed by Transportation's 8%. Medicine had 7% of the ads while TV took up only 3%.

The next part of the men's magazine we looked at were the three main themes. These were positioning the reader as inferior, promise of transformation, and hegemonic masculinity. On page 21 there is a man clearly looking at the reader in a very pissed off state of mind, and also flexing in the process telling you to take this dietary supplement. The next theme was promise of transformation and this can be found on page 1. There is an advertisement of a 90 minute workout saying that if you take the pill and push yourself to the limits of this workout then your body will be transformed in just 90 minutes. Finally hegemonic masculinity can be found on page 43. By using the machine found on page 43 you can expect your body to look like the ideal man.

We found a couple themes in the women's magazine called Shape, but decided to focus on two. These would be Sex Appeal and Style. The first theme of sex appeal can clearly be seen in almost every ad in this magazine. Every woman they have is attractive, has a great body, nice smile, etc. They never use girls that are overweight, but use what they think people is the ideal image of a woman's body. On page 72 they had a bra advertisement, and the girl they used show off the bra had an athletic body, and was very beautiful. I think they were trying to capture the reader by saying look if you wear this bra you can be like her too. On page 159 they had an ad about cold sore medicine. Once again a very beautiful woman was shown using the product. The words in the advertisement even said you can't look hot if your feeling cold. The next theme was Style. No matter what these girls were working out, or how sweaty they looked they always had the best clothing on for whatever they were doing. Target's ad on page 25 showed a girl working out, but she wasn't wear a sweatshirt and sweatpants, she was seen in a tight skin outfit showing off every curve. It was implied that these clothes could only be found at Target. Also on page 57 they showed a girl running outside in the snow, but once again she was found to be wearing a Northface jacket, which can be quite costly. 

For us we found way more differences than similarities between the two magazines. For instance the men's magazine followed the original study of White and Gillett (1994), while the women's was completely different and focused on clothes and cosmetics. Also in the men's magazine they were willing to show the male body before it got transformed more often. The women's magazine never showed what the woman looked like before working out, or getting on the right track she was always seen in her best condition. Some of the similarities consisted of showing the reader what they thought the ideal body was for each gender. The male was seen a muscle bearing brute, while the female was shown as a beautiful healthy woman. That is exactly how these magazines portray masculinity and femininity.  The male is seen as this gigantic, veiny, biceps the size of a basketball type man, while the women have a nice athletic, slim, fit body. This is what these ads focus on too. They want men to buy these supplements hoping to one day look like some of these guys and add muscle. While they focus on women losing weight, and having that tight body.

- Pat McFall, Adam Dolezal, Drew English, Jonathan Barone.