I was looking at different covers of magazines; some with women and some with men. I noticed a remarkable difference between what was displayed on covers depending on the gender of the person.

Within modern media, we don’t tend to notice the different language and constructs associated with certain genders, for example in the subtitles on the cover of magazines. Some of these for example for women, focus on sexual completion, sexual health, and getting a man’s approval. For men, some of these may be competition, power, and wealth. So no matter where we are, we see the colors of blue and pink blurring the lines of equality. Even though we have come a long way since women were not allowed to be seen or remain invisible, the contexts that are associated with women continue to put us as a supporting item to a man.

Almost all of the magazines with women that I have searched have sexual innuendo. If the taglines are not straightforward about sex, they are how to keep a man happy. The taglines associated with men are how to achieve success, or power, etc. I also noticed that when you type in “forbes magazine cover”, 90% of the covers contain men. It shows that when we think of success, we think of men or that men are the only ones recognized for their achievements.

I also observed that magazines and covers with men on them tend to have men of many different looks. Compared to the women on covers who tend to have similar qualities. The women have long hair, are slim, and are posing in a submissive, sexy way. It is very rare to see a heavy set woman on a cover, or even a woman of a minority unless they are extremely successful. The men are square to the camera and appear to be strong and dominant. They are also smooth looking. If it is not about success, it is about being strong with muscles.

These images help to keep the standards bout men and women in place. These taglines and images associated with each gender are what we see almost everywhere, so it almost becomes easy to associate these images with our expectation. It is interesting to see how men are so dominant in our society whereas in other societies, women are dominant and strong. What we have set in our society is problematic because as mentioned before, they create expectations.