Yonit Shames
Published: February 22, 2006
Women’s magazines cater to a growing consumer base, one that publishers are more than happy to sell to. What they have discovered in the process is the winning formula, and boy, are they sticking to it. As the rest of the magazine market expands and specializes, many women’s magazines contain the same sort of messages they would have 50 years ago.
Sure, the articles are packaged differently, but underneath is that same, commercially-tested message: you’re imperfect, but we can help.
It works, we buy it, and everyone- meaning the magazine staff and the advertisers- is happy. This ignores one crucial element: us, the consumers.
Does the formulaic content that women’s magazines insist on printing really reflect women’s interests? And if it doesn’t, why do magazines insist on the endless “You’re fat, you’re ugly” chant that is harming women’s body image and self-esteem, and more importantly, completely ruining our credibility as having more mental and emotional depth than a teaspoon?
As unfortunate as it is to be cliche, it really is all about the advertising.
Magazines are businesses. Most of their revenue is not from subscriptions. No, your $20 really does not cover production costs. What does cover the production costs is the fact that you’re reading the magazine, or, in other words, absorbing the advertising contained in it.
Not only do magazines operate primarily using advertising revenue, advertisers have, shall we say, certain “expectations” of the magazine. Advertisers often press for complementary copy, or articles that extol the products they are advertising. Magazines are expected to portray all advertised products positively. Some advertisers will pull their ads if their products are not favorably exposed.
This is industry fact, not conspiracy theory. Chrysler, for example, once pulled their ads from a magazine that wasn’t portraying Chrysler vehicles favorably enough.
So there you have it: it is dubious that advertisers would have such explosive marketing power if magazines did not take on this task. A powerful dieting drug advertised on page 78 would probably not sell very well if the editorial on page 75 said that it was okay to be overweight, or if page 76’s Did You Know? box explained the dangers of crash dieting and dieting drugs.
While it is difficult or impossible to prove that magazines actually slant their coverage in favor of their advertisers, it is crucial to their business interests that they do.
Modern women are industrious and increasingly successful and educated. Current figures show that over 60 percent of undergraduate college students are female, even though they comprise only about 51 percent of the population.
You’d think that women’s magazines would have shifted gears and provided us with articles about world politics, education, volunteering, business, legal advice. well, pretty much anything other than what they provide now! Yet, many of them continue to feed us a stream of mindless drivel about beauty, weight-loss and physical perfection.
So let’s take some responsibility, as the third and most important party in this weird threesome in which the two less important parties tell us what to do. Insist on substance, and insist on balanced coverage. Advertisers that don’t respect that don’t deserve our business.
Magazines that try to tell us we’re only worth our weight or looks aren’t worth their content either.