Face-ism and Objectification in Mainstream and LGBT Magazines

<div><p>In visual media, men are often shown with more facial prominence than women, a manifestation of sexism that has been labeled <i>face-ism</i>. The present research extended the study of facial prominence and gender representation in media to include magazines aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) audiences for the first time, and also examined whether overall gender differences in facial prominence can still be found in mainstream magazines. Face-ism emerged in <i>Newsweek</i>, but not in <i>Time</i>, <i>The Advocate</i>, or <i>Out</i>. Although there were no overall differences in facial prominence between mainstream and LGBT magazines, there were differences in the facial prominence of men and women among the four magazines included in the present study. These results suggest that face-ism is still a problem, but that it may be restricted to certain magazines. Furthermore, future research may benefit from considering individual magazine titles rather than broader categories of magazines, given that the present study found few similarities between different magazines in the same media category—indeed, <i>Out</i> and <i>Time</i> were more similar to each other than they were to the other magazine in their respective categories.</p>