A majority of women : A quantitative study of images and authors on Aftonbladet’s weight site from a gender perspective

We have investigated the visual representation of men and women in Aftonbladet’s weight site. We have made a calculation of how many of the women and the men who were portrayed smiling/ not smiling, active/passive, looking into the camera/looking away from the camera and from which camera angle the picture is taken. We also kept statistic on the gender representation of the authors of the articles. Our investigation shows that Aftonbladet’s weight site has a distinct overrepresentation of women on their pictures, but also in terms of the authors of the articles. All of the authors were women and 78 percent of the pictures were pictures of women. Previous scientific results have shown that women often are depicted as passive, smiling and looking into the camera and men as active, serious and looking away from the camera. Our results were consistent with earlier scientific results, but in terms of activity and visual angle the results were not that different between women and men. As for the viewing perspectives, our study shows that the power relationship between the depicted and the viewer often is equal for both women and men. The power relationship is however more equal for women than for men, the power relationship for the men is more complex. The viewer both looks down on the men and looks up to them. Based on the theory of the viewing perspectives, Aftonbladet’s weight site portrays women as more equal to the viewer than men