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The whiteness of Australian junk mail
This is obviously not a scientific study, but I hadn't emptied my mailbox for a while and I decided to look at the ethnic makeup of the models used in the unsolicited mail that had built up. My theory: Australian advertisements are incredibly white dominated, with a few Asian people and the odd exoticised person of African descent for pseudo-American coolness. Indigenous people only show up in tourism ads, you're more likely to see people pretending to be American Indian etc. This theory is moderately supported by the junk mail.
Note: I'm not very good at judging ethnicity, and about 5% of the "white" models could plausibly be of middle eastern descent, but are also plausibly of Italian descent or just tanned Anglo people(*). Whether or not they appear white to a white Australian consumer like me is a significant issue I think, since it allows racist white consumers to feel comfortable, but obviously their actual ethnicity is important too and not something I'm in any position to judge.
Catalogues with entirely white models: Coles, Spotlight, Homy Ped, Australia Post, Kmart, Dick Smith, Big W
These vary from 1-15ish distinct models per catalogue with up to 50 photos, though I'm not very good with faces and may have gotten confused with some of the babies and generic looking blonde women.
The Target catalogue has a picture of Halle Berry advertising makeup but all the inhouse models are white so I'm not counting it (it's also worth noting that pretty much all the faces on packets of hair dye etc are white, but they're not included in the count).
Shiels (a jewelry company) has four "mum and daughter pairs", one pair appear to be of north east Asian descent, and another appears to be of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern descent.
Total number of distinct white models: approx 95
Total number of photos of white models: approx 185 (plus some stockinged feet)
Total number of distinct non-white/POC models: 2-6ish
Total number of photos of non-white/POC models: 2 definitely (well, one of two models), up to maybe 7
So. Australia is 90% white, 8% of Asian descent. By my unreliable judgement, the models hired for these catalogues are about 95% white and 2% Asian, but the bodies you see in the photos are like 97% white and about 1% Asian. It's worth noting that the models who had the most photos taken of them tended to be the most unambiguously Anglo looking, mostly blonde or moderately pale brunette adult women plus some very pasty babies.
Oh, and: none of them had any visible disabilities (lol, as if), almost all of them looked under 40, and there were maybe 2 or 3 photos of "plus size" models who I doubt were even over the average weight for Australian adult women.
I realise you can't draw any real conclusions from such a small sample and I'm sure someone has done a proper study of this somewhere but it was still an interesting exercise!
(*)Being of Italian or other Mediterranean descent is more of a big deal here than some other places since we're so ethnically homogenous.
Note: I'm not very good at judging ethnicity, and about 5% of the "white" models could plausibly be of middle eastern descent, but are also plausibly of Italian descent or just tanned Anglo people(*). Whether or not they appear white to a white Australian consumer like me is a significant issue I think, since it allows racist white consumers to feel comfortable, but obviously their actual ethnicity is important too and not something I'm in any position to judge.
Catalogues with entirely white models: Coles, Spotlight, Homy Ped, Australia Post, Kmart, Dick Smith, Big W
These vary from 1-15ish distinct models per catalogue with up to 50 photos, though I'm not very good with faces and may have gotten confused with some of the babies and generic looking blonde women.
The Target catalogue has a picture of Halle Berry advertising makeup but all the inhouse models are white so I'm not counting it (it's also worth noting that pretty much all the faces on packets of hair dye etc are white, but they're not included in the count).
Shiels (a jewelry company) has four "mum and daughter pairs", one pair appear to be of north east Asian descent, and another appears to be of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern descent.
Total number of distinct white models: approx 95
Total number of photos of white models: approx 185 (plus some stockinged feet)
Total number of distinct non-white/POC models: 2-6ish
Total number of photos of non-white/POC models: 2 definitely (well, one of two models), up to maybe 7
So. Australia is 90% white, 8% of Asian descent. By my unreliable judgement, the models hired for these catalogues are about 95% white and 2% Asian, but the bodies you see in the photos are like 97% white and about 1% Asian. It's worth noting that the models who had the most photos taken of them tended to be the most unambiguously Anglo looking, mostly blonde or moderately pale brunette adult women plus some very pasty babies.
Oh, and: none of them had any visible disabilities (lol, as if), almost all of them looked under 40, and there were maybe 2 or 3 photos of "plus size" models who I doubt were even over the average weight for Australian adult women.
I realise you can't draw any real conclusions from such a small sample and I'm sure someone has done a proper study of this somewhere but it was still an interesting exercise!
(*)Being of Italian or other Mediterranean descent is more of a big deal here than some other places since we're so ethnically homogenous.
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