There’s an exquisite combination of fear, excitement and nausea that comes with picking up a “women’s interests” magazine. The glossy cover boasts “Ten Easy Ways” and “385 Easy Ideas” to do a number of things printed in boldface, from losing weight to seducing a man (in their words, not mine).
The table of contents is buried within the first fifty pages of advertisements for expensive leather purses, birth control, and perfume, and is conveniently divided into the subjects “Health,” “Beauty,” and “Relationships.” Apparently, this is the trifecta of femininity, and as some magazines would like to have you believe, feminism. Between articles on how to tweeze the perfect eyebrow and dress to hide a protrusive stomach, there are oftentimes quotes from Gloria Steinem and career advice punctuating the pages.
If they’ve successfully hooked you in with a bright cover, overloaded you with sexually explicit advertisements, and told you how to be a successful independent woman within the first few seconds of picking up a magazine, you are theirs. Their point has been made clearly and effectively. Confuse the hell out of a consumer and she’ll do whatever you say.
Between articles on how to attain confidence and self-acceptance, there are advertisements for perfect skin, perfect clothing, and perfect bodies that make up one third of the magazine’s contents. The other two thirds of the magazine are made up of paid product advertising for dresses no one can afford. What these magazines sell best is a series of mixed messages and pointed questions that leave a reader so self-doubtful, ashamed, and borderline self-hateful that she will buy any product thrown at her between “articles” and perfume samples that emanate from the pages, combining to make a noxious smell.
These magazines present solutions to problems that they present as universal, as if they are doing a service by solving the very “beauty epidemics” that they’ve caused and diagnosed in the first place. And they do it cunningly well. A woman presented with a four-page spread on “Get Fuller Lips Now” will not skip over these pages satisfied with the lips she has. She has been commanded to change and to want what she doesn’t have, even though she never knew that she didn’t have it until she read this article.
Magazines have forced me to consider my collagen, wrinkles, short eyelashes, and droopy skin. I am 19. There is no way that I have any of these things, and if I did, I would not care. But when engrossed in these magazines, when they tell me what I should do and who I should be, I am a consumer and I am momentarily detached from reality.
Articles addressing how to “dress for your body type” present several options: do you have a round stomach, round thighs, big hips, a small frame or small breasts? They appear to come off as reader-friendly. They tell me it’s OK to have a real body. Several problems come from taking this reading at face value, however. Firstly, these articles don’t tell me how to accentuate my round stomach or dress to feel good about my small frame. They are instructing me on how to look thinner, taller, and, apparently, better. Secondly, the fashion advice for each body type contradicts the others. You are not allowed to have small breasts and a round stomach, or big thighs and small shoulders. Pick your flaw and dress for it. You are only allowed one. One is your limit.
And this is just the magazine’s section on how to dress. There are sections on how to cut, style, wash, dye, and brush your hair, and how to wash and make up your face. From pedicure to split ends, you are flawed. Everything about you can be better. There are a million products for you to buy. Buy them.
The magazines’ covers sometimes boast articles like “300 Ways to Look Natural For Spring.” At this point, I think, if I open the magazine and don’t find in big type “STOP WEARING MAKEUP,” I’m disappointed and angry.
I remember reading an article once that said how I should dress as a petite person (under 5’4“) and as a plus size (over 130 pounds). So I’m suddenly both too small and too big. Suddenly, my inadequacies are not just prevalent, but contradictory, and impossible. And, the editors of these magazines hope, suddenly I’m willing to take whatever advice they’re willing to give me.
”Celebrity lifestyle“ magazines contain ridiculous features such as ”Who Wore it Better?“ in which photos of two celebrities wearing the same dress are rated by a reader poll. With two women wearing the exact same dress, what basis does one have to compare the two looks? Apparently, the extent of one’s emaciation. Because when it comes down to it, the woman with a more protrusive clavicle always wins. The caption always reads something like ”Nicole Richie’s silver shoes won this outfit for her“ as if they’re not selling the dress, but they’re selling us the body, and the shoes make her look so thin. A few pages into the magazine, Nicole Richie is featured again in an article about how her friends and relatives fear for her life as she struggles with Anorexia Nervosa. And I have to close the magazine. I’m starting to feel sick.
I won’t even begin to dissect the articles on ”How to Get a Man,“ ”Please a Man in Bed“ or ”Dress for your Man.“ I can’t bring myself to read them. All I can say is that these articles tell women that their number one goal in life should be to ”Get a Man“ (whatever that means), and the way to ”get him“ is by doing everything she can to please him (sexually, is what that means). I should also add that these magazines denounce sluts and call women whores. Mixed messages yet again. At this point I am starting to feel stupid for reading so far.
I have never purchased one of these magazines, but I read them at the gym, which I attend regularly. I definitely prefer Bitch and Entertainment Weekly, but I’ll read what’s around to get me through workouts on the Stairmaster. I’ve reconciled my reading them by saying that if I bought the magazines, I’d be supporting their ideas, but just reading them on someone else’s dime does no harm. I have come to realize that I’m lying to myself. Even without buying them, I’m endorsing warped messages and ideas about females just by turning the pages. I’ve frequently become so temporarily obsessed with how I look when I’m reading these magazines that I forget about things that actually matter. I think that from now on for my gym reading, I’m going to start plunking down the five dollars for some less offensive escapist material if the alternative is ”women’s interest“ magazines. For those, I may not be paying in cash, but I am definitely paying the cost of my sanity.
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