Search

The mass magazine industry offers new role images for women in contemporary magazines, assuming that they reflect the psychological needs of women's changing sex-role identities. To determine whether women classified as androgynous by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) would prefer nontraditional models of femininity, 101 college women were asked to complete the BSRI and rate 55 magazine covers on their interest in reading the magazine. All subjects preferred the traditional women's magazines, suggesting that androgyny may not reflect a change in sex-role identity as in values and standards of behavior. Of the four magazine clusters related to sex role, androgynous women gave high ratings to sports and science magazines. In contrast, stereotypic females gave high ratings to fine arts/sophisticated magazines, with a slight edge to magazines oriented to the home. The findings failed to confirm the hypothesis that psychological androgyny would be related to diverging sex-role images. (Author/JAC)