Award Date
5-15-2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Communication
First Committee Member
Tara Emmers-Sommer
Second Committee Member
Tara McManus
Third Committee Member
Tzu-Chiao Chen
Fourth Committee Member
Gregory Borchard
Number of Pages
139
Abstract
Magazines play an influential role in shaping cultural understandings of health, fitness, and gender, yet differences emerge in how health is framed across media outlets. This study examines how Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazine covers construct and communicate gendered ideals of health through visual and textual elements. Guided by gender role theory and framing theory, this research explores how these magazines frame health in ways that reinforce expectations of masculinity and femininity. Using directed qualitative content analysis, magazine covers published between 2014 and 2024 were coded across visual and textual categories, and chi-square tests of independence were conducted to examine differences between the two magazines. Results show that visual representations demonstrate clearer gender differences than textual messaging. Men’s Health more often emphasized muscularity, action-oriented poses, and physical strength, while Women’s Health more frequently highlighted slimness, aesthetic presentation, and controlled poses. Although textual coverlines showed greater overlap in themes related to self-improvement, performance, and appearance, differences in tone, language, and emphasis still contributed to gendered messaging. Overall, findings suggest that while both magazines promote health as a form of self-improvement, visual framing more strongly reinforces traditional gendered ideals, while textual framing maintains these distinctions more subtly. Additional results, discussion, and future directions follow.
Keywords
gender role theory; framing theory; health magazines; gendered messaging
Disciplines
Communication | Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences
File Format
File Size
1449 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Marquez, Gracie, "Picture of Health: Visual and Textual Gendered Ideals and Media Framing on Men’s Health and Women’s Health Magazine Covers" (2026). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 5579.
https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/5579
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/