Yonit Shames
Published: February 8, 2006
While today’s print media offer us a huge variety of material to read, the biggest growth is in the magazine market. Magazines tend to target younger audiences and are consumer-savvy enough to be able to compete successfully with the newer media.
But “compete successfully,” is misleading. “Compete successfully” should mean that magazines offer a great deal of articles of substance and interest, thus appealing to wide audiences.
Some do. However, certain genres of magazines, women’s magazines in particular, are often surprisingly prosaic in their offerings. Quality reading has nothing to do with their uniformity; the focus is on providing commercially successful reading.
The formula for a successful women’s magazine, it seems, is a brightly-colored web of teasers on weight loss, fitness, beauty and sex.
Looking for substance in a women’s magazine? Forget it. Take a look at the topics that dominated the latest women’s magazines- topics that the editors of these magazines think that we care more about than anything else.
The February 2006 edition of Shape magazine has a huge “Exclusive!” dominating the upper left-hand corner of the cover. “Ten days to a better body! Knock off winter pounds now!” it continues. “Flat abs, firm butt- eight simple moves anyone can do,” “Clear skin- what REALLY works,” “Drop a jeans size!”
Behind all of these enthusiastic statements, the perfectly smooth-skinned, thin, tanned and beautiful model poses in a bikini. And although it goes unsaid, the most obvious teaser of all glares through: “You’re not good enough!” the magazine exclaims. “Read our magazine and we’ll make you look like her!”
The story is the same with other popular women’s magazines. Cosmopolitan cries, “Tight Butt, Abs and Thighs- trainers use this trick themselves,” and “60 sex skills- guys reveal the most mind-blowing bedroom moves women have ever tried.” Glamour asks, “Are you normal about SEX? Intimate details on what everyone’s doing.”
The same goes for Allure (“Lose 5, 10, 15 pounds- stop obsessing, start seeing results,”), Marie Claire (“Why America Hates Fat Women,”) and Elle (“Can a makeover change your love life?”).
Even magazines that do focus on other things (Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Circle) still manage to push these ideas on us in one way or another.
It’s all about the marketing, and it works. You make the consumer feel as though she is lacking in some way, and then enthusiastically offer to help her become less fat, ugly or pimply, or reduce the size of her thighs/abs/bottom, fill in the blank.
This is actually effective, because we buy this crap. And not only do we buy, we listen. Studies have shown that girls and women respond to women’s magazines with a drop in self-esteem and a more critical view of their bodies. Why else would we feel the need to buy unpleasant products that promise to fix our “problem areas?”
Granted, it is good for us to be realistic about our bodies and to live healthfully. But the key words there are realistic and healthy- not “Live up to our expectations by starving yourself- a how-to guide.”
Read between the lines.
Would you take a stranger seriously if he or she walked up to you and told you he or she knew how to fix your life for only $5.95?
There’s really no difference here.