BeautyBeforethe Eyes of Beholders: The Cultural Encoding of Beauty Types in Magazine Advertising and Music Television

Abstract

Although researchers have conceptualized beauty as unidimensional, modern-day cultural definitions of beauty are multidimensional. This paper focuses on two forms of mass media that play an important role in transmitting information about multiple and diverse cultural ideals of beauty—fashion magazine advertising and music videos shown on music television. We examine the overall prevalence of different beauty ideals and how these are distributed across specific vehicles within each medium. We also compare the emphasis placed on different ideals of beauty across these two communications media (print vs. television) and formats (advertising vs. entertainment). The implications of the findings for understanding the cultural construction of beauty ideals and for understanding how advertising and other mass media communications contribute to them are discussed. Several extensions of the present research are proposed.