Already a member?
Sign in
Welcome! Wikis are websites that everyone can build together. It's easy!
Judging a Magazine by its Cover: How Women are Defined
by Lauren Gregory, posted November 14, 2007.
Judging women’s magazines by their covers produces a narrow and limited notion of what it means to be a woman, what women should be concern about and what their lifestyles should entail. The choice to place similar looking celebrities and models on magazine covers and print articles on consistently devaluing topics, the magazine does more than just sell their product but consequentially the reader consumes a culturally validated definition of femininity.In 2006, popular women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Redbook, Glamour, Vogue, and Essence continued to add to the unified ideology by composing their covers with a limited disparity of issues and an unvarying image of cover models.
Findings:
The magazines chosen for this research were in the top 100 average total circulation and the top 50 average single copy circulation for Audit Bureau of Circulations magazines. All six of the popular magazines can be found on magazine racks across the country and all have
| 2006 | Magazine | Rank and | Average | Circulation |
Magazine | Rank in Avg. Circulation of ABC Magazines | # of Magazines in Avg. Circulation | Rank in Avg. Single Copy Circulation of ABC Magazines | # of Magazines in Avg. Single Copy Circulation |
| Cosmopolitan | #18 | 2,928,041 | #1 | 1,937,685 |
| Redbook | #25 | 2,389,456 | #42 | 285,926 |
| Glamour | #26 | 2,275,324 | #9 | 837,725 |
| Vogue | #70 | 1287887 | #19 | 434,838 |
| Essence | #85 | 1090238 | #43 | 274,877 |
| Marie Claire | #96 | 958624 | #24 | 404,378 |
Cover Titles:
An average of six titles outline the covers the magazines and are meant to give the reader a glimpse of what articles to expect inside. Titles like "How to Heat Up Sex: Naughty (but Easy) Tricks to Try Tonight" (Cosmopolitan, June 2006), “The Lazy Woman’s Guide to a Better Body” (Glamour, December 2006), and "Simple & Sexy Hair in Seconds" (Essence, November 2006) are meant to captivate the reader into buying the magazine.
The graph shown to the left displays the top 10 article title topics of the magazines in 2006. Out of 72 magazines (each magazine published 12 issues in 2006) articles about sex, weight loss, and hair were advertised on the cover the most. Article titles that did not make the top 10 list were topics pertaining to current events (displayed 10 times), rape and domestic violence (displayed five times), and articles about work (displayed five times). Each month women's focus of attention is placed on the similar cover stories which limits their scope of awareness because of the lack of disparity the issues cover.
Cover Models:
Like the article titles on the cover of a magazine, celebrities and models are photographed for the cover to influence the consumer into buying the magazine. However, images differ from words in the fact that the reader is instantly given an image to compare herself too. Cover models are posed with their eyes, low cut shirts, and skinny bodies staring the reader in the face. This image gives women elite guidelines for how beauty and self should be defined.
The length in time between monthly issue does not allow readers to clearly see and connect the homogeneous image pictured on magazine covers. However, when all 72 issues from the six magazines in 2006 are lined up next to each other a trend is easily seen.
In the graph to the right cover models and celebrities are broken down by frequency of appearance according to race and gender. In all but four issues the cover contained only one person and covers that pictured more than one person were special editions. Essence's December 2006 "Exclusive: Real Love" issue featured a black male and female couple. Three black females were feature on the cover of Essence in January 2006 for their "Be Happy: Take Control of Your Life in Your 20s, 30s, and 40s" issue. Similarly, three white females in Glamour's September 2006 were modelled for their "Supersize Special: Look & Feel Sexy at 20, 30, 40." Lastly, Essence's March 2006 magazine had the largest number of models on a cover, a black male and three black females, for their "Exclusive Tyler Perry" issue.
As seen from the data there were 53 white females on the covers of the six magazines in 2006 (67%). The representation of women who are not white is comparably low. There were 16 black females on the covers of the magazines (20%) but 14 of those instances occurred in Essence which is written for black women. Furthermore, only two bi-racial females and three Hispanic females made the covers of the magazines.
Why This Matters:
Jean Kilbourne in her documentary Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women reviews and critiques how advertising and mass media use images of women. She speaks on how the consistent devaluing sells more than just the product but “it sells values, it sells images, it sells concepts of love and sexuality, of romance, of success and perhaps most important of normalcy... telling us who we are and who we should be.” By accumulating a mix of images from magazines and commercials, Kilbourne explains how these images maintain the concept that “women are acceptable only if [they] are young, thin, white, beautiful, carefully groomed and polished.”
The six magazines that were studied portray this single unified picture of what an ideal woman is expected to be. The lack of representation for those who do not fit into the white, sexual, skinny, and beautiful haired category is limited and nearly nonexistent. An unrealistic definition of femininity is created by the topics of interest that magazines think women should be concerned with and the cover models that they should relate to.
Editors and advertisers, as Kilbourne points out in her documentary, have a “powerful force that keeps us trapped in very rigid roles and very crippling definitions of femininity.” A sense of exploitation is created as magazine covers focus on the insecurities of women and allow advertisers to place their products as solutions.
Michele Kort, senior editor of Ms. Magazine, explained in an email interview that part of the "editorial mission of women’s magazines is advertising-based and if you’re selling “beauty” products, you have regular articles that promote a standard of beauty that requires lots of products.”
“Women’s magazines prey on women’s fears rather than their hopes and confidence. Women don’t want to be “less than” the standard (for sex, body image and hair),” said Kort. Ms. Magazine in contrast to the more popular magazines “tries to rile women up about injustice and move them to action,” explains Kort. Kort gives an example as to where “women’s magazines appeal to women trying to nab a man; a magazine like Ms. almost ignores the romantic aspect of women’s lives” and instead focuses on issues of women's status, rights, and points of view.
Jennifer Pozner, executive director of Women In Media and News, agreed that the advertiser holds power and in collaboration with editors they can create a definition of womanhood. Pozner explains that, “advertising drives the content of women's magazines, explicitly and implicitly, dictating that content be fluffy rather than hard hitting, sex and beauty obsessed rather than political or investigative.” In an email interview Pozner responded to the question on how magazine covers can influence women's vision of themselves by stating that, “magazines by and large feature impossible to achieve, dangerous, not-even-human airbrushed, stylized, composite images of women as the ideal of beauty.”
As women's magazines continue to follow this formula for their future covers the construction of what they think femininity should entail furthers into the minds of women. With white female cover models dominating the scene, women's magazines promote areas of interest for readers to consume relating most to sex, weight loss, and perfect hair. Readers of such magazines are subjected to the unrealistic goals set forth by editors in order to keep their continued readership and advertising revenue. A magazine cover's construction of a woman that harps on looks and relationships, creates a market for advertisers and magazines to sell their products to women who are looking to change themselves to fit the unattainable definition.
Sources:
Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhally. Host Jean Kilbourne. 2000. DVD. Media Education Foundation, 2002.Kort, Michele. Email interview. 11-12, November 2007.
Pozner, Jennifer. Email interview. 11-12, November 2007.
Latest page update: made by laurengregory
, Nov 14 2007, 9:11 AM EST
(about this update
About This Update
Rename
- laurengregory
No content added or deleted.
- complete history)
Rename
- laurengregory
No content added or deleted.
- complete history)
Keyword tags:
advertiser
magazine
women
More Info: links to this page