What's glossy, colorful, and makes women hate their thighs? In a 1992 study by Stanford University social psychologist Debbie Then, 68 percent of the women responding said that fashion and beauty magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Vogue, Glamour, and Seventeen made them feel worse about their looks. Nearly half felt less confident after reading such magazines. Advertisements and photographs using highly idealized images of female beauty were cited as the main culprits.
The advertisements are doing what they're meant to do: Point out or create in the reader a feeling of insecurity ("You know the type. Totally together...Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.") and then offer the product that will temporarily alleviate the ad-induced anxiety. But as magazines have become more commercialized, ads and editorial content are increasingly interwoven and mutually shaped, with the division between the two blurred or obliterated. Since advertising is the source of financial survival for most magazines, advertisers have great power in pushing for a "supportive editorial atmosphere."
In her book Decoding Women's Magazines, University of Massachusetts literature professor Ellen McCracken analyzes several ways that covert advertising appears in magazines. These include placement of ads adjacent to articles related to the product; products mentioned in cover credits, fashion features, and advice columns; ads that mimic the format of articles; and "informative" articles that promote products.
However, most of the women in the Stanford study still avidly purchase fashion and beauty publications, as do several million women each month. They value information in the articles--including some that is not easily available elsewhere in society--on topics such as sex, health, and relationships. Women's magazines provide some space for dialogue, connection, and community among women (a rarity in mass media). And in some of these publications, there are articles with feminist and intellectual substance that directly counteracts and contradicts the messages communicated by the ads and photos with which they are interspersed.
For example, the June 1993 Glamour featured articles on Paula Coughlin, the Navy admiral's aide who pushed for the investigation into the Tailhook scandal; acquaintance rape ("Too Dangerous to Dismiss"); and genetic links to ovarian cancer. (Of course, there was also "Great Hair: The Secret to Shine.")
TAKEN AS A WHOLE, women's magazines are light entertainment, purveyors of sexist societal values, clearinghouses for valuable information, and nurturers of consumerism, all at the same time. They are a powerful cultural force, especially among girls and young women. Says Then, quoted in the L.A. Times, "[Women's magazines] are reflecting the standards of society as a whole."
The average American girl starts reading magazines (usually fashion and beauty publications such as Seventeen, YM, or Sassy) at about age 13. From these they receive many messages, some mixed, but most disturbingly consistent--appearance is what counts in life, and it's bought, not given. The cultural expectation framing much magazine copy is that being a woman means having a warm credit card and never quite being all that you could be.
Ads break young women's bodies into fragments to be brought up to spec by the right purchase, show women stared at by men (who serve as both the implied judges of true attractiveness and prizes for making the right consumer choice), and associate childlike qualities with sexuality. In the June 1993 Seventeen, a cartoon of bright red lips with a pacifier stuck in them is accompanied by the caption, "And now, from Cutex, a long-lasting lipstick that makes your lips baby soft."
Magazine editors (and some readers) defend exaggerated images of beauty as a form of motivation to improve oneself. But if a person ever attained the standard of beauty being promulgated, she would no longer need either the magazines or the products in them. It's not to the magazines' or advertisers' advantage to have images that are within reach.
So for the foreseeable future (until the collapse of capitalism or the cosmetic industry), women who want the information and entertainment that these publications offer will also get ads and photographs that chip away at self-esteem. The sad irony is that a young woman might find a life-saving article on eating disorders among the same pages that are filled with fashion wraiths, diet plans, and butt-firming exercises.
There is always the option of not buying these magazines and searching out other sources for women's information (such as ad-free Ms. or alternative publications). Communicating displeasure over offensive ads and magazine features to the editorial staff and product manufacturer is another step toward changing magazine content. And for those who choose to buy them (or who have a teen-age daughter or friend who does) these magazines can be a chance to hone a skill that no woman should be without: sorting and tossing away the trash in our culture's expectations of women.
Julie Polter is associate editor of Sojourners.
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