When flipping through the latest issue of Vogue or skimming the recipes in Bon Appetit magazine to find an exciting dinner to make, discrimination does not cross our minds. However, skin tone representation is a much bigger issue than we assume, with racial bias and discrimination commonly being present behind the scenes of media production.  

Colorism is prejudice and discrimination against people with deeper skin tones. In our unit of looking at images from magazines, our goal was to analyze and pay closer attention to skin tone representation. By analyzing the skin tone representation in the British Chees Magazine, it helped me think more about colorism, racism and bias. Overall, the British Chees Magazine really lacked diversity. 

We started this process by going through the magazine and collecting images to base our data on. When doing so, we noticed an overpowering majority of people with lighter skin tones. However, these different graphs and plots show more diversity than was actually present. The reason for this would be because we selected 3 different spots from each person's skin tone to include in the data. We collected data points where lighting, shadows, or any other factors were impacting the skin tone. 

First off, in order to understand the scatter plot below, we have to understand the term RGB. RGB is a color model where red, green and blue light are combined to form any color imaginable. All 3 colors go up to 255. For example when there is 255 red, 225 green and 255 blue, the color formed is white. When there is 0 red, 0 green and 0 blue, the color formed is black. This is why the lightest dots are closer to the “200’s” and the deeper colored dots are closer to where the “100’s” or “0’s” are. 

ADS AND ARTICLES COMBINED SCATTER PLOT          

Ads and articles in British Chess Magazine, Created by author                                  

 ADS AND ARTICLES COMBINED BAR GRAPH 

Ads and articles in British Chess Magazine, Created by author

These bar graphs were created by using the clustering technique where we used the RGB numerical values. 5 clusters were created and each of these bars depicts the color of the middle of the cluster. In other words, the average of the cluster is the color that is shown in the graph.  Based on this, both the 1st lightest cluster and the 3rd lightest cluster were the most represented. The deepest skin tone was dramatically the least represented in the magazine meaning it had the fewest dots in the cluster . 

While this in-depth study of skin tone representation did give me a lot more insight on issues of racial biases and discrimination, it did have its flaws. First of all, as a class, we only analyzed 6 magazines total. We were able to pick whichever magazine we wanted to closely study and also the photos that we included in our data. This definitely impacted our results and the noticings we made because every magazine and photo we chose was very intentional. Another thing that we had to consider was lighting. When collecting the dots of data we had to think about the real skin tone in comparison to how it looked when the light was hitting the skin, making it appear lighter or when no light was present, making it appear darker. 

If was to keep researching this issue of skin tone representation in magazines, I would accumulate much more data by looking at more magazines and potentially more types of media such as movies or books. I would look more into the reasoning for discrimination or why the most common skin tone in the magazine is the most common. This research was only a very small piece of a potentially huge research project that could bring change within media discrimination. 

Work Cited: 

British Chess Magazine, 01 September 2021, drive.google.com/file/d/1JHLfzdpeOyhB_M9YeeZMzCo_ngi9ipRU/view. Accessed 2 Feb. 2022.

Emmert, Don. Daily News, 16 Sept. 2013, nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/models-call-diversity-runways-article-1.1457700. Accessed 14 Mar. 2022.