Women and Femininity in U.S. Popular Culture

In addition, the reigning elements of femininity and their effect on women resonate according to one's class and race, criteria that can locate a woman along the continuum of behavior and attractiveness. Class is a fluid or changeable category; race is generally not, though beauty treatments can "standardize" ethnic features like hair color and texture (see below) or influence acceptable limits of body size.

Related to class are the awareness of and access to proper nutrition as well as the availability of leisure time for exercise, factors associated with the maintenance of lean body mass. The proportion of lean mass to body fat contributes to the impression of overall girth and therefore health. Few men, young or old, strive to be gaunt, and fewer men than women are dissatisfied with their bodies even if they are somewhat overweight. Instead, they value size especially if the bulk is muscle rather than fat. Men's "perceptions serve to keep them satisfied with their bodies, whereas women's serve to keep them dissatisfied," writes Sarah Grogan (pp. 144–145). American women of any age, however, find thinness the only tolerable size, despite evidence that men prefer somewhat rounder female bodies than women think they do.

Preferred body size and proportion reflect class-related tastes or expectations. Researchers have suggested that different social classes have distinct ideas of attractiveness, and magazines gear to these readers. The fleshiness of magazine models varies according to the social class of the targeted audience, be it male or female. Magazines for upwardly mobile homemakers have trim but not skinny models. Family-oriented magazines present more modest images typical of pleasant-looking housewives. So-called pulp magazines feature curvier bodies: "the lower the social class ranking of the magazine the bigger the chest and hip measurements of the models," observes Nora Scott Kinzer (p. 165). Magazine models are rarely if ever overweight; in fact, compared with their counterparts from the 1950s, they generally weigh less and have smaller measurements.