The Evolution of Covergirls (Or Lack Thereof)

As I was flipping through my most recent Glamour magazine this weekend, I had a "click!" moment where I realized that the last 10 issues that I had received had white women on the cover. I was disappointed by this lack of diversity in this mainstream magazine and decided to look into the trends among the other mainstream magazines as well. According to this Huffington Post Article about the lack of diversity on mainstream magazine covers, from September 2012 to September 2013, about 82% of cover girls on popular magazines were white women, while only a meager 18% were colored women. The article also includes a chart of mainstream magazines and each of their specific statistics when it comes to diversity. Of all the magazines, Teen Vogue is the most diverse, including a 50% divide of white and colored women on their covers, while Maxim is the least diverse, which shockingly includes 100% of white women on their covers. It's great that at least one of these magazines includes a fair amount of diversity, however, the rest are slow to follow in its footsteps. These unfortunate statistics prove that we do have a lack of diversity when it comes to the covers of these extremely popular magazines. What this does is give our society, and more specifically the young women in our society, unrealistic images of beauty by giving out the message that only skinny white women are beautiful. This causes young women to have lowered self esteems which could eventually cause eating disorders and/or depression. What's more, men also read some of these magazines and have false expectations of what a woman should look like. These magazines have millions of young readers who aspire to be and look like the cover girls and it is important to have diversity on the covers to preach that women of all sizes and colors are beautiful. Magazines have extreme influence on society and it is their job to use their power for good by promoting healthy images of women that are authentic and diverse in order to create health and happiness in all women and girls.