When you read a magazine, do you want to see everyone, or just a small group of people? How would you feel if when you looked at a magazine, you never saw anyone that looked like yourself? Read on to find out about what these magazines are really showing you. Colorism is the concept of bias against a skin tone through our media. 

This affects our world because if we keep letting companies get away with only putting one skin tone in our media, then that will discriminate against all other skin tones. Magazine companies have been getting away with only showing one skin tone for too long.

While learning about skin tone representation in our classroom this past month, we read lots of different articles, and readings about colorism, and what it truly is. I have found out that magazines have a bias against dark skin tone, and towards light skin tone because they use light skin in their articles much more than any other tone. We did this in order for everyone to understand what colorism is, and understand the concept before beginning our own research.

Scatter plot of skin tone, Griffin                   Bar graph of skin tone, Griffin

This scatter plot tells me that a majority of images that were collected from our 8 different magazines fall into the cluster of roughly medium. There are outliers that are very dark, and small clusters that are very light, but for the most part, the biggest cluster is in between the two. 

This supports our conclusion because we thought that there would be a lot of spots throughout, and at the end of the day there would be more light than dark.

My takeaways from the data is that advertisement companies make more light ads than dark. There is over 70 light, 100 light-medium, and another 90 medium, then a significant drop off to about 50 medium-dark, and about 20 dark. The drop off is visible, and it can not be a coincidence. For a majority of this graph, the trend is upwards towards light skin, and downwards away from dark skin. Our study could have been biased because we could have chosen magazine companies that may feature a certain skin tone of people that fits what we want. Also, when we begin picking the images, we could have chosen images that were extra light, and when we chose the spots on those images, we may have clicked the lightest possible part. 

Scatter Plot of skin tone, Griffin                                   Bar Graph of skin tone, Griffin

This scatter plot tells us that in the articles category across our magazines, there is a rather wide spread amount of plots throughout the graph. There is a cluster on the darker side, and a huge one as it goes from medium to light. Then, there is another cluster as it gets really light. 

This supports our conclusion because we concluded that there would most likely be lots of spots throughout the graph, with more light than dark.

My takeaways from this data is that it is a very even amount throughout the graph. For light-medium, medium, and medium-dark, there is a range between 120 and 160 which is very close, and light and dark are between 60 and 80. Overall, it is very even. Our study could have been biased because we may have chosen certain images, and magazines that are dominated by a certain skin tone.

Works Cited

Better Living, 01 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1pn1iu0mK-2Rw9A5fLvN7QAhJWQRmnvbk/view?usp=sharing. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Bloomberg Businessweek, 07 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1W7uiuSoI7c0EhNBPYXSYB2B3SWxbYrKz/view?usp=sharing. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Conde Nast Traveler, 01 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1m4CmDViODFnjA_Q4tGDilloDPec4CQ7b/view?usp=sharing. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023. 

Essence, 01 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/17nw_F5Ivj8QU76VrowSASX90GeQftuAp/view?usp=sharing. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

People Magazine, 27 February 2017, drive.google.com/file/d/18q-e8o-hOX3I9NfEdg_08Cm7hP1X1hyi/view. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Play: The Official PlayStation Magazine, 01 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1cSlUlsgoBs3s0vN1KPBwt_ktllvlZwvF/view. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Sports Illustrated, 01 December 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1SnqCQ3txcShSVgpXbXyYvr19l3UFMhoN/view. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Vogue Magazine, 01 October 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/12LDun6ciH6C9Ft6YyQXpVHoHa1a-9-UX/view. Accessed 2 Feb. 2023.

Appendix-Raw Data

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XNrsfme7qL6Prg9UASLsYROCD4Lc0Q-qkKtI83PxvSs/edit#gid=956536319

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