Examination of muscularity and body fat depictions in magazines that target heterosexual and gay men
Abstract
Previous content analyses of magazine images have typically examined within genres but failed to include comparisons between publications intended for various populations. The purpose of this study was to examine depictions of muscularity and thinness of male images in several widely distributed magazines that target male audiences from a variety of genres. Twenty-three magazine titles with the highest circulation rates that targeted heterosexual men, gay men, and general audiences were selected for image analyses. We found that magazines that target gay male audiences depicted images of men who were thinner in comparison to magazines targeting heterosexual men. Both gay and heterosexual magazines depicted male images with greater muscularity than magazines intended for general audiences. Differences in male image depictions in magazines may contribute to the promotion of an unattainable body ideal in some subgroups of gay culture.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The muscular ideal has long been propagated in Western culture through male models, film stars, computer game avatars, and action figures.
“The muscular ideal has long been propagated in Western culture as shown by the appearance of male models (Frederick et al., 2005; Lanzieri and Cook, 2013), film stars (Pope et al., 2000a,b) computer game avatars (Martins et al., 2011), and action figures (Baghurst et al., 2006).”
From The degree to which the cultural ideal is internalized predicts judgments of male and female physical attractiveness (2022) · cites this paper as Lanzieri and Cook, 2013
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 25 · Cited by 47
- Authors
- Lanzieri, N., & Cook, B. J.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- University of Kentucky (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lanzieri, Nicholas
- Venue
- Body Image
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-03
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 251-254
- ISSN
- 1740-1445 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1973577980
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 11.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Body Image (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Media, Gender, and Advertising
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Eating Disorders and Behaviors
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Roles and Identity Studies
- Keywords
- muscularity, thinness, gay men, heterosexual men, magazine images, body ideals, media representation, gay culture
- MeSH terms
- Adipose Tissue, Analysis of Variance, Body Image, Cues, Culture, Humans, Male, Periodicals as Topic, Personal Satisfaction, Thinness, Homosexuality, Male, Muscle, Skeletal, Heterosexuality
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
