The Globalization of Beauty: How is Ideal Beauty Influenced by Globally Published Fashion and Beauty Magazines?

The current research examined the portrayal of female beauty worldwide through a content analysis of 5577 female models in four top beauty and fashion magazines from 12 countries/regions. Different magazines used different standards to frame stories and select models, suggesting that the image of beauty was more a result of the editorial rooms than derived from objective standards. North American and European magazines dominated the beauty standards. Asian countries were relatively independent particularly in terms of sexual frames and sexual model selections. Magazines distributed in Latin America and South Africa were in danger of being assimilated into the Western norms of beauty.