MY MAGAZINE COVER

I’m not a photoshop wizard, however I am very pleased with the way my magazine cover turned out. I used greens and blues to break the stereotypical binary code of women’s magazines using pinks and purple fonts. I used the picture of a woman with a mug to show that she is just an ordinary woman and not a made up, airbrushed size 0, but more like an average woman that could easily be your neighbour or co worker.

The stories on the front of the magazine are what I think real women would like, and need to know.

I tried to make the stories empowering to woman while not making them seem too stereotypical or bias of femininity. I do like my magazine cover and when I look at a copy of Good House Keeping sitting on my kitchen table they look and read very differently, however when I look at the stories on my magazine again, I realise that they do only seem to show one tiype of femininity, it has made me realise that although I have slated female magazines for only representing one type of female, it is an incredibly difficult publishing rut to escape from.

magazines

magazines

GQ

GQ represents many types of males; old, young, rugged men next to clean shaven men. 

This doesn’t categorise the audience into one ‘normal’ group, like woman magazines.

Articles from ‘GQ’s most influential men’, business news, and cultural stories from around the world makes sure there is something directed at every reader.

Unlike Men’s Fitness and Nuts, GQ represents many males in one publication. Although many male magazines focus on one type of male gender if we look at male magazines as a whole, they represent more types of masculinity within the male gender that most female publications do of femininity put together.

Unlike for women's magazines, I found it hard to find videos on youtube expressing the way men felt about how masculinity is portrayed in male magazines. 

Along the way i found this video from Jennifer Strickland.

NUTS MAGAZINE

This montage I made of a nuts magazine is one stereotypical representation of males. It shows the behaviour we often expect of men.

With its content based on football and girls. This magazine silently excludes larger woman and the gay community. Gay innuendo's are used throughout the magazine from everything to ‘love corner’ highlighting men hugging, to ‘funny pics’ of footballers caught in the wrong positions on the football pitch and in computer games.

  

David Gauntlett suggests that these articles are humorous to account for the fact that men do not like to show vulnerability within the ‘crisis of masculinity’.    

“I argued that men’s magazines have an almost obsessive relationship with the socially constructed nature of manhood. Gaps in a person’s attempt to generate a masculine image are a source of humour in these magazines, because those breaches reveal what we all know – but some choose to hide – that masculinity is a socially constructed performance anyway.”                    – David Gauntlett 

 David Gauntlett’s theory of men’s masculinity in crisis can easily be linked to articles in stereotypical lad’s magazines such as Nuts.

magazines

Men’s magazines view of what ‘a man should be’ is open to interpretation. In comparison to woman magazines view of gender, men magazines express many different types of masculinity, Men in magazines such as ‘Nuts’ ‘Mens fitness’ and ‘GQ’. show many different types of masculinity compared to female magazines that only represent one type of femininity.

Many different publications focus on one type of masculinity. This could be argued to be like female magazines, however if you look at several male publications, men’s magazines show wide diversities in male gender.

These magazine covers for example all look different, different types of men and articles are on offer compared to the identical covers of womens magazines.

magazines

Although female readers may feel that as individuals they are not swayed by a magazines content,  we are  subconsciously subject to hundreds of pictures a day from posters to billboards. we would be fools to think we are not  influenced by what we see.

I made this montage of woman’s magazines to show how identical the articles and models are throughout different publications. (Marie Claire, Glamour, Grazia and Woman’s Fitness). These articles create a false sense of sisterhood by telling the audience what they should be wearing and looking like if they want to fit in and be ‘normal’.

Not many women’s magazines break this binary form which helps in their goal of reinforcing the idea of the perfect female gender.

A video taken from 999Sugarplum999 about womens magazine covers.

This is a video taken from melrose1390 which highlights our strive for unattainable beauty.

The second half of this video shows how women felt about themselves when looking at magazines.

Magazines compare normal woman to A’ list celebrities with articles about celebrity diets and ‘Steal her Style’ These articles often show no regard to the fact that a working mother finds it difficult to feed her two year old a tofu salad or that the handbag in which they are advertising is £2000, again hinting towards the fact that their idea of ‘perfect femininity’ for the average woman is also outrageously out of the question.

The picture of a normal woman on the left was published by Glamour Magazine when the editor asked;

"With all the six-packs out there, do you even know what a normal belly looks like anymore–other than the one you see in the mirror?"

 

One type of celebrity is being represented within female magazines. Tall, thin, gorgeous bodies are what we are told to aim for, these magazines help us idolise celebrities. 

However when not looking so thin and perfect these women are pointed out and ridiculed, these unflattering photographs of imperfections are put to the public to judge, when actually it is just a photo of a celebrity looking more like a real woman. 

This warped look on how woman ought to see themselves is again reinforcing the idea that woman’s magazines only want to represent one type of femininity.

“Marjorie Ferguson believes that magazines perpetuate a beauty myth. By myth she means the belief that every woman can achieve idealized femininity through the proper regimes of dress, diet, exercise, skin care and surgery. This groups females into a consciously cultivated female bond  “ 

  

Theorists such as Laura Mulvey, author of the male gaze theory, believe that media can be interpreted as the 

‘the subjective male construction of feminine identity, the subjective female is constructed for males.’  

This is easy to see in magazines with several articles on dating advice, sex and relationships. These articles are about making you the perfect woman for the right man. Which of course is key if you want to be percieved as normal. However these articles are written by woman so how do we define between writing articles on how to please your man, with men’s ideas that we should please them, when we happily oblige to either.

 

‘A magazine is like a club. Its first function is to provide readers with a comfortable sense of community and pride in their identity’                                                                                                    - Janice Winship 

Janice highlights that most woman like to feel at their best. To be on trend and ‘perfect’ is important to the readers and if a magazine telling you how to look can achieve this feeling then most woman find themselves quickly part of the magazines following.

Typical woman’s magazines such as ‘Glamour’ and ‘Marie Claire’ arguably only represent one type of femininity for females. These magazines print articles on shopping, sex, cooking, beauty, health and retail. Magazines can easily target one type of femininity as Woman’s magazines spend a long time making the reader feel a part of a community. These magazine covers easily show how these magazines are seen to target one type of woman.