Tyler Green
Diversity in the Media
Listicle-2

I decided to look at the evolution of Rolling Stone magazine covers that featured women. I look at the way the women are depicted in their covers and how the covers depict women in a sexual manner. I used a coding sheet to determine what elements were used in the photo that gave these cover a sexual appeal.

In the coding sheet that I used I analyzed the picture based on the woman's pose, gaze, background, colors, sexual references, appearance of the woman (is she skinny and if so, how skinny) and clothing or lack of clothing.


The first magazine cover that I looked at was an issue from 2003 featuring a bare-chested and scantily clothed Brittney Spears.

I categorized her pose as  having some sexual references, it looks like she is pressed up against a wall. The way she is posing herself (with her butt sticking out) adds to the sex appeal of the photo. Her gaze looks to me like she is enticing and she has a look of desire in her eyes which can be interpreted as sexual.

The colors used in the cover are very bright and the words are in a bright blue. This color scheme draws attention to Brittney especially her upper body. There was definitely some airbrushing done to enhance the tone and color of her body.

It's fair to say that this photo has quite a few sexual suggestions. For one she's topless and only has on underpants and a sheet to cover her self. I'm not sure I understand why they decided not to cloth her in this picture and I don't know what exactly it has to do with her story in the magazine, maybe it's just because Rolling Stone thought it would sell more magazines. Either way it catches the readers attention (whether or not that is a good thing I can't say).

While Ms. Spears probably was skinny when this photo was taken the way she arches her back makes her appear even more skinny than she really is. It's likely that photoshop was used on her back to give her even more of an arch, making her look even thinner.


This cover featuring Julia Dreyfus from May 2014 has a tattoo of the US Constitution written on her bare back. Her pose is suggestive because her body is facing away from the camera and she is looking backwards.

Her gaze has more of a surprised and open look rather than a suggestive or sexual look.
The color scheme is a light grey and the words are black which makes Julia stand out more. It looks like there has been airbrushing done to her body and there might have even been some photoshoping done to make her look more thin.

The biggest sexual reference in this one is that she's naked, once again I'm not sure why she is.  With her back turned to the camera it makes her appear very thin. There is a clear lack of clothing, since she obviously isn't wearing anything.

I understand how they tied in the constitution with the article titled "The First Lady of Comedy" but I don't see why she had to be naked. Again I think this is the magazine trying to catch the readers attention by being out of the ordinary.



This issue September 2014 featuring Taylor Swift was the one cover I could find where the woman was wearing a normal amount of clothing. However her shirt is wet and she looks like she is gazing very suggestively into the camera.

Like many in many of the other covers, Taylor has her back turned to the camera. I found this to be a very common technique used in the covers. To start, her gaze is very suggestive and she looks to have a sense of desire or naughtiness in her eyes.

The color scheme is also bright like all of the other covers however it doesn't look like photoshop was used to make her look more thin. However with her back turned it makes her look thinner and it looks like airbrushing was done to make her glow and stand out more.

I found the sexual reference in this one to focus on her gaze, and her clothing. While she is wearing clothing it is revealing, especially with her cloths being wet, which makes them skin tight.

The cover of this issue features Megan Fox from October 2009.

Megan's gaze is very sexually suggestive. It reminds me of the look on Brittany's face from the 2003 issue. This is the only cover I found where the woman didn't have her back turned but her pose still makes her look skinny. Notice how she arches her back to look thin.

The airbrushing on her face and her make up make her look very pale and this bring attention to her face, which is an example of faceism. I thought that the color of her dress and the color of the font gives her a kind of bad girl appearance.

Her clothing is very revealing and adds to the sexual suggestiveness of the picture. I also saw that the terms badass and sexiest are capitalized.


An overall trend that I noticed in these covers is that all were sexually suggestive and they all gave the women a thin appearance. What's so bad about these things? For one, the Rolling Stone is, or used to be, a well respected magazine that didn't focus on selling sex. Until the mid 1990's which is when these kinds of magazine covers became popular it was very rare to see Rolling Stone use these kinds of covers.

By using the women as sexual objects on the covers Rolling Stone degrades women by reducing them to objects to sell their magazines. All of the focus of the cover is on the women looking sexy instead of the articles themselves. Another trend that I noticed is that all of the women are very thin to start with and then through the use of editing and photo shop they are made to look even skinnier.

The covers are targeted at men but they present a standard that women must fit into. That standard is the "ideal woman", thin, attractive, sexy and essentially an object of the male imagination. The beauty standards held as a result of these covers are ridiculous because everyone of them uses either airbrushing or photoshop.