The representation of feminity in women's magazines {[Hollie]}

David Gauntlett was the first person to come up with a theory as to the content of women’s magazines. He states that the ideology of such publications is centred on five key elements, these are; Fashion and Beauty, Men as Sex Objects, Sex and Sexuality, Relationships and Empowerment. This ideology is very prevalent today and it is easy to categorise almost all magazine editorial into one or more of these groups.

I chose to look at the Cosmopolitan website (www.cosmoplitan.co.uk) as well as the website for Sugar (www.sugarscape.com/channel/sugar-mag)

On the Cosmopolitan website, the homepage the main feature is on how to get a celebrity makeover. This fits in strongly with Gauntlett’s views. It suggests that women must look good in order to fit in with society or get a man. This stereotype has not changed much over the years as it still centres on the idea that women are there to be looked at.

The ideas surrounding women looking as glamorous as possible are also frequent in teen magazine, Sugar; it includes articles about how to look like certain celebrities and how to make your hair look great as well as step by step guides. This demonstrates that even from a young age, girls are socialised into thinking that they must conform to these fashion and beauty trends. This means that it’s not surprising that the beauty industry for women has revenue of £8.9 billion annually.
Although the old stereotypes for women are not all still as strong, empowerment features heavily in the same edition as there is also an article about Rihanna after her attack from her ex boyfriend. This article includes her thoughts and feelings on the attack and what she did afterwards. The magazine said “We're so glad she had the strength to move on.” This shows that women no longer have to be controlled by men and these days women have a voice and can stand up for themselves rather than being governed by patriarchy.

Another example of female empowerment features in Sugar. There is a competition for people who get bullied and have overcome this obstacle. Perhaps the reason they have this competition is to help girls self esteem and give them the confidence and the strength to stand up for themselves which is a skill they will need throughout life.
In the magazines, a vast majority of content was about fashion and beauty, as well as most of the advertising and advertorial space being given over to fashion and beauty. This could be because, the writers of female magazines are often female themselves and so they write about subjects that interest them, this is mostly fashion and beauty because in today’s world women are socialised into believing that they should look as glamorous as possible. This is why they use so much space in the magazine for fashion and beauty copy. There seems to be much less space given over to editorial on female empowerment. The only editorial on empowerment in ‘Cosmopolitan’ was roughly three pages in the entire magazine of approximately 300 pages. This shows the severe lack of empowerment and real life stories in such a publication and it may suggest that they don’t think that it is as important as other aspects within the magazine such as fashion and cosmetics. However, I have noted from other research that often the ‘glossy’ magazines such as these focus more on fashion, whereas, cheaper magazines such as ‘Take a Break’ have many more real life stories about women’s trauma and how they have overcome it which suggests that different types of magazines focus on empowerment but it would appear that editors and readers alike focus more on fashion than on empowerment.

The magazines include a lot of fashion and cosmetics editorial and advertisements because they get most of their revenue from such advertisements. Most of the advertisements in these magazines are for fashion and beauty products which will mean that the magazine will feature more on these companies as a way to secure that advertising revenue. Which when considering that a single page ‘run of paper’ advertisement in a magazine costs around £21,000, the magazines will want to keep this revenue as otherwise they will not be able to keep publishing. The magazines may also get clothing and makeup from the companies which advertise in them for photo shoots and copy to ensure that the reader is constantly bombarded with the idea that this company’s product is a ‘must have’ item.

Some female readers do not like the way that magazines are set out, this is because the first 20 pages of the magazine are filled with advertisements and there are many more throughout the magazine. But this is done because on average women read or scan each page at least twice and this means that they are constantly picking up the messages given by the advertisements and therefore aspire to look like the models in the adverts. This can have two effects; one is that the women will go out and by this product so that they too can look as glamorous as the models in the advert, this is what the advertisers intend to happen. The second consequence is that some women are always bombarded with the ‘perfect’ body image and therefore feel as though they are not good enough and there have been some reports that such intensive advertising can cause problems such as bulimia and anorexia in women.

In most of the magazines studied, there are still traditional representations of femininity. The majority of copy is still dedicated to fashion and beauty along with cosmetics. However, there is an increasing amount of the magazine turning into a modern representation of femininity using such ideas as ‘men as sex objects’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘sex and sexuality’ which were proposed by Gauntlett. Magazines in the 1970’s such as ‘Jackie’ did not really include any articles about empowerment or sex and focused mainly on finding a husband. Today’s magazines, however, include copy on finding a career and self gratification rather than finding a husband and domesticity.

Hollie x