Women’s magazines, not surprisingly, came into their own with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Helen Gurley Brown, the first editor of Cosmopolitan as a women’s magazine (it was previously a family magazine), ushered in a new era of Cosmo, turning the magazine into a handbook on empowerment through sexuality. Brown once remarked “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.” This adage sums up much of her attitude and even her life story. Catilin Flanagan explains “She also took an attitude toward men that was 180 degrees from that at the heart of second-wave feminism: she viewed them, not as oppressors to be vanquished, but as resources (economic, sexual, professional) to be tapped.” Some fourty years on, Brown is almost lauded as a saint. Former Australian Cosmo editor Mia Freedman’s obituary of Brown is fairly typical.
- Helen Gurley Brown
“My own philosophy is if you’re not having sex, you’re finished”, Helen once remarked. This attitude has spread far and wide in our society, leading us to the point where “Sexiness is no longer about being arousing or alluring, it’s about being worthwhile.” (1) A study conducted in America showed that contemporary women’s magazines are read by 60% of college aged women and 75% of white teenage girls at least once a month. (2) Cosmopolitan alone, according to their website, reach 78 million readers worldwide. Australian statistics indicate that magazine readership is prevalent here too. “Australians buy 5.5 magazines every second, spending $894 million dollars on a total of 172 million officially-audited magazines in the past 12 months.” (4) One in three Australian reads magazines. Of course, this readership reflects a range of interests but these statistics indicate that a high number of young girls and women read magazines and, even for those who do not have direct exposure to magazines, that magazines are a significant media influence in our society.
Selina Enwing, writing about the Faking It project, which investigates the broader social impact of magazine readership, comes up with some troubling statistics. The message, she writes, is clear: “to be happy and normal, young women should be thin, sexy, and beautiful.” (5) Many studies establish a strong relationship between magazine readership and “poor body image, lower self esteem, anger, anxiety, shame [and] self-surveillance”. This, she writes, has become a health issue. A local chaplain and school teacher who I spoke to confirmed worrying trends with young girls, in early primary school, being fixated on weight and developing unhealthy relationship with food. This is a well documented phenomena.
- Nikki Webster, the young voice of the Sydney Olympics, posing for Zoo Magazine to show her development as a woman and honour her grandfather on Anzac Day.
Studies also confirm that magazine readership directly impacts sexual behaviour. Kim and Ward, in a study of women’s magazines, note that “the amount of sexual content in these magazines has increased significantly over the past three decades. In Seventeen magazine, for example, sexual references appeared in 30.2% of the articles in 1974, and 52.6% in 1994.” (6) Enwing writes, furthermore, that the objectification of women “has become normalised through hypersexualised pop culture” objectification being “idea that your body, how you look and your sexual parts are your whole body.” (p. 100) Research shows that reading Cosmpolitan leaves readers with a similar impression to playboy, namely that “women have an insatiable appetite for sex, and should be constantly available to men.” (Enwing, p. 103) Kim and Ward’s study shows that reading magazines leads to a decreased sense of sexual risk and an increased acceptance of male stereotypes. At this point, some feminists rejoice. Eating disorders and poor self-esteem are bad, but increasingly risky sexual behaviour is, according to the Sex and the City generation, “empowering” and progressive. I would argue that self-objectification and a degraded view of sex and the body probably go hand in hand. Which brings us back to the legacy of Helen Gurley Brown and the bigger worldview that shaped and informed her whole career. But before we delve into that, I would like to take a quick look at some of the social impacts of other forms of media: television and advertising.
(1) Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Simon & Schuester, 2006), 31.
(2) S.R. Thompson, et al., “Motivations for reading beauty and fashion magazines and anorexic risk in college age women.” Media Psychology 4, 113-135.
(4) http://www.bauermedia.com.hk/Website/acp-magazines-australias-1-magazine-publisher.htm
(5) Selina Enwing, “The Faking It Project: What Reearch tells us about Magazines in Young Women’s Lives.” Getting real, ed. Melinda Tankard Reist (Melbourne: Spinifex, 2009), 100.
(6) Janna Kim and L. Monique Ward, “Pleasure Reading: Associations Between Young Women’s Sexual Attitudes and their Reading of Contemporary Women’s Magazines”, Women’s Quarterly (March 2004), vol. 28, no. 1, 48-58.
Media and society 