“The Way Popular Magazine Publications Present ‘the body’ and the Standards they Promote”

This was a really interesting post by a student at UAL, and I thought it was really interesting to look at someone researching the same thing I am and her take on the subject. What this student does is look at major magazines such as Elle and Vogue and how they have not only in the past but also in the present shown the ideal body image and how this affects different levels, such as standards of identity, mental health, and inclusion.

This is seen through history: in the early 20th century, there was the idea of white femininity, and this was the beauty ideal and what was shown, which means thin white women, and this is what is in the covers as well as the editorials. In the 1960s-1970s there was the new idea of the supermodel and how they were expected to be super tall and thin and this is relevant because the editor of the magazine vogue at the time Diana Vreeland really promoted Twiggy which shows the new idea and the way that bodies were seen as changing this however had a lot of consequences because there started to be an idea of perfection and this lead to people lowering their self esteem and disordered eating because they started to think they had to look perfect as well (this is not everyones job and should not expect to look like the girls in magazines). In the 2000s, however, there were more conversations about how this could not possibly happen, and magazines began to include a wider range of body sizes and ethnicities. Unlike previous editors of these magazines, Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful wanted more diversity, not just the same girls over and over again.