Do Male Politicians Have Big Heads? Face-ism in Online Self-Representations of Politicians

Abstract

Headshot portraits of all U.S. Governors, Senators, and Representatives and members of Parliament in Canada, Australia, and Norway are analyzed. In all countries, male politicians are represented with higher facial prominence than female politicians, paralleling a pervasive gender bias in media portraits. For American Congresswomen, high facial prominence is associated with a more pro-feminist voting record. Finally, anthropometric data show that gender differences in the facial prominence in portraits cannot be traced to gender differences in actual body proportions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Dave Foldes and Meredith Brooks for coding the U.S. Congress pictures and collecting voting records, respectively. Daniel Albo, Anise Hayes, and Kevin Francies coded pictures from Canada, Australia, and Norway, respectively.

Notes

¹In the interest of staying consistent with prior research, we use the term “face-ism” throughout this manuscript to refer to what may more appropriately be called “body-ism.” As one helpful reviewer pointed out, the use of the term “face-ism” is backward from the way we usually describe disadvantaged groups in the classic “isms” (e.g. sexism, racism, etc.). Emphasizing someone's face has been shown to be advantageous whereas whole-body portrayals are the disadvantaged state, thus “body-ism” may be a more descriptive term for this phenomenon.