This study examined how women and men and people of different ethnicity are represented in the photographs found on the front screens of websites of colleges and universities offering four-year degrees and above in the United States. A content analysis analyzed 1,677 images of men and women found on the front pages of 412 colleges and university websites. A six-point Body Index Scale coding instrument was used to determine if emphasis was placed on the face or the body of the human image, determined through an analysis of where the images were cropped. Frequencies of men and women were moderately split, with images of women representing 53.2 percent of the images and images of men accounting for 46.8 percent. Caucasians were more frequently depicted than people of other ethnicities. The face-ism theory, which asserts that images of women in photographs are cropped to emphasize their sensuality rather than their intellect, was not supported in this study.

This study examined how images of people of different genders and ethnicities were represented on Fortune Global 500 website front-screens. The front-screens produced 975 images of men and women. The images were analyzed using frequency counts and a six-point Body Index Scale. A major finding was that images of Caucasians dominated Fortune Global 500 front-screens. Caucasians represented 66.3 percent of the total images. Another major finding was that images of men were depicted more frequently than images of women on Fortune Global 500 website front-screens. Images of men comprised 51.9 percent of the total iamges, whereas images of women accounted for 48.1 percent of the images. The face-ism theory, which asserts that images of men and Caucasians are cropped to emphasize their intellect and dominance and images of women and people of minority ethnicities are cropped placing emphasis on their bodies, was not supported in this study.