Wednesday, October 04, 2006
A Craving for some Color
Quick, what do you think when you think "Asian woman?"
Chances are, either a fob, bookish sort, dragon lady or exotic beauty. Not so bad, you say? Now quick, think of all the Asian women you actually know. Do they fit your sterotype? If they do, you've got problems. If they don't, congrats, your eyes have been opened.
My eyes were reopened last night when I received a spam e-mail from Allure magazine advertising something at Sephora. The message had this banner at the top:
Now, usually when you see an ad with a photo depicting the range of women (see Prescriptives ads circa late 2005), there's only three: white, black, and middle. Whatever happened to yellow? Those of us that actually have to buy...er, I mean search for...make-up that actually looks natural know that there are more than just three colors. There are more than just three families of colors.
At last estimate (the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey), a little over 5 percent of the American Population identifies at least partly with Asian or Pacific Islander heritage. That's a lot of people when you consider the size of this country. And the number is growing steadily.
Last semester I did a case study on images of women in a year's worth of Allure magazines (because they claim to be "the beauty expert"). I'll give you a rundown briefly (the real deal is 20 pages long).
In twelve issues, I logged 3,645 women portrayed in photographs. Aspects of each photo logged: location in magazine, size of photograph, apparent ethnicity of the model (named if known), approximate skin tone, hair color, eye color, pose (face only, half-body, full-body), and purpose (ad or edit).
In total, 103 of the 3,645 women were of Asian or mixed Asian descent (let's call them APIs). That's only 2.8 percent of total photos.
Other findings:
-Of all API portrayals, over 60 percent were in advertisorial content. Compare that to the overall ratio of 32 percent advertisement, the rest editorial.
-Of all advertisements, API women made up about 5.5 percent. That's just about equal to the actual representation.
-Of all editorial photos, API women made up only 1.5 percent.
-As a comparison, black models made up 8.5 percent of advertisements photos and almost 11 percent of editorial photos. The actual representation of the black population in America is about 12.2 percent.
-Only two of twelve issues had an API woman portrayed within the first 10 percent of issue pages. A third of the issues had no APIs within even the first 20 percent of pages. By comparison, all issues had a black model within the first 20 percent of pages, with the majority (9 of 12) featuring a black model within the first 10 percent.
-API models were more likely to have only their faces shown rather than a half-body or full-body.
-The sizes of the photos were relatively equal in distribution between the total and API only.
If you want to see the full report or get a bibliography of resources (it has been written about before), just let me know.
Chances are, either a fob, bookish sort, dragon lady or exotic beauty. Not so bad, you say? Now quick, think of all the Asian women you actually know. Do they fit your sterotype? If they do, you've got problems. If they don't, congrats, your eyes have been opened.
My eyes were reopened last night when I received a spam e-mail from Allure magazine advertising something at Sephora. The message had this banner at the top:
Now, usually when you see an ad with a photo depicting the range of women (see Prescriptives ads circa late 2005), there's only three: white, black, and middle. Whatever happened to yellow? Those of us that actually have to buy...er, I mean search for...make-up that actually looks natural know that there are more than just three colors. There are more than just three families of colors.
At last estimate (the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey), a little over 5 percent of the American Population identifies at least partly with Asian or Pacific Islander heritage. That's a lot of people when you consider the size of this country. And the number is growing steadily.
Last semester I did a case study on images of women in a year's worth of Allure magazines (because they claim to be "the beauty expert"). I'll give you a rundown briefly (the real deal is 20 pages long).
In twelve issues, I logged 3,645 women portrayed in photographs. Aspects of each photo logged: location in magazine, size of photograph, apparent ethnicity of the model (named if known), approximate skin tone, hair color, eye color, pose (face only, half-body, full-body), and purpose (ad or edit).
In total, 103 of the 3,645 women were of Asian or mixed Asian descent (let's call them APIs). That's only 2.8 percent of total photos.
Other findings:
-Of all API portrayals, over 60 percent were in advertisorial content. Compare that to the overall ratio of 32 percent advertisement, the rest editorial.
-Of all advertisements, API women made up about 5.5 percent. That's just about equal to the actual representation.
-Of all editorial photos, API women made up only 1.5 percent.
-As a comparison, black models made up 8.5 percent of advertisements photos and almost 11 percent of editorial photos. The actual representation of the black population in America is about 12.2 percent.
-Only two of twelve issues had an API woman portrayed within the first 10 percent of issue pages. A third of the issues had no APIs within even the first 20 percent of pages. By comparison, all issues had a black model within the first 20 percent of pages, with the majority (9 of 12) featuring a black model within the first 10 percent.
-API models were more likely to have only their faces shown rather than a half-body or full-body.
-The sizes of the photos were relatively equal in distribution between the total and API only.
If you want to see the full report or get a bibliography of resources (it has been written about before), just let me know.
# posted by ange : 10:00 AM
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i did a paper on this too! but i did one month of issues from popular 'teen' magazines and the numbers are a lot worse there. =\
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