2016's magazine covers increased in diversity, but nowhere near enough

While buying fashion magazines seems to be going out of ~vogue~ if sales figures are anything to by, nothing quite beats the prestige of being the cover star of a glossy magazine.

That's why representation and diversity are so damn important.

According to The Fashion Spot, 2016 was the year that a growing number of people of colour graced the covers of major fashion magazines. Great news!

But how many, exactly? Just 29 percent. In other words, not nearly enough.

Of 679 cover models across 48 top international fashion publications surveyed, 29 percent of them were women of colour, an increase of 6.2 per cent from 2015's results.

There were also some publications that only booked white stars on their covers, according to the survey, including Harper's Bazaar U.S. and LOVE magazine in the U.K.

Among the list of the most diverse publications were the likes of Vogue Taiwan and Vogue India, who mostly featured non-white stars.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Magazines also lagged behind when it came to featuring women of different body types.

Only six models were size 12 or above, representing 0.9 percent of magazine covers.

These included Adele for Vanity Fair, as well as Ghostbusters' Leslie Jones and Melissa McCarthy for ELLE.

Women aged 50 or above made magazine covers 34 times in 2016, which is 5 percent of bookings.

That stat was helped along by the mammoth cover for Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue in February, which featured Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren.

As for transgender models, they were the least represented group at 0.7 percent, even despite the immense popularity of Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover in 2015.

Four of the five magazine covers featuring a transgender star were Transparent actress Hari Nef.

Here's hoping 2017 will be better. You can do it, magazines.