Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cover Guys: Masculinity, Sexuality, And Representations Of Men's Bodies In Popular Magazines For Men, Trenton M. Haltom

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Scant research puts magazines into conversation with sociological theories of masculinity or sexuality. Yet, magazines have long projected idealized images of masculinities, the male body, and men’s sexuality. In this dissertation, I examine representations of men in popular magazines, highlighting the multifaceted ways magazines have marketed masculinity and the sexualization of men.

Using an explanatory sequential mixed method content analysis, I analyze 38 years (1980–2018; N=2,750) of magazine covers from GQ (n=516), Men’s Health (n=277), and Sports Illustrated (n=1,671). Each cover was coded using a standardized coding form developed for this dissertation. The coding …