Are women's magazines the root of all evil?

[geniph]

One of the things I delight in pointing out to people is that all women aren't born crazy (as so many men love to joke), women's magazines make us crazy. And I can prove it. Stand in any grocery store checkout line. Let your eyes roam over to the women's magazines - you know the ones I mean, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, etc. We won't even go into the fact that most of them have male publishers and editors, we'll just look at the covers.

Every single month, every one of them has two things: a foolproof way to lose 10 pounds/two dress sizes, and a picture of a fattening dessert, usually a chocolate cake, on the cover. Every month. Go look.

"Lose 10 pounds fast with our new Urine Diet!"
"Get praise from the family with this Triple Chocolate Torte!" but for chrissake, don't eat it yourself! Your job is to look like a fashion model and cook like Julia Child!

My husband was at first skeptical of the truth of this, but now he points them out to me. "Look, this month it's Flatten Your Abs Without Exercise and Make The Best Chocolate-Chip Cookies Ever!"

Women's magazines are EVIL.

[cally]

1. They are evil

One of my favorite books is "For Her Own Good." It chronicles how women's magazines promote the current image of womanhood. When women were needed at work in WWII, then the magazines all had articles about how good women worked. A few years later, good mothers and wives cared for their home and children.

As a teen and young adult, I devoured women's magazines. Now, I almost never read them. I don't need nor want to know the latest diet craze or how to dress in the latest styles or how to please my man. I include the parenting magazines in this. They are just as bad.

[redqueen]

7. That reminds me of a thread bloom started in the other forum

This link in particular... anyone who hasn't read it should.

The Beauty Myth
by Naomi Wolf

Reviewed by Laura Bryannan

Note: while Wolf admits that many of the statistics she put forth to support her thesis were overstated, the main premise of The Beauty Myth remains sound. Thus, I have decided to post my 1991 review of this book.

This month's column is for women who believe their thighs are too big, their breasts are too small, their hair is boring, their skin is flawed, their body is shaped funny, or their clothes are outdated. This month's column is for women who believe their life would improve if they could lose 15 pounds; if they could afford contact lenses, that new perfume or anti-cellulite concoction; if they got a nose job, a face lift, a tummy tuck, etc. This month's column is for women who feel shame or unhappiness when they ponder some part (or all) of their body. In other words, this month's column is for 99.9% of the women reading it!

Why is it that so many women feel they just don't measure up when it comes to their looks? A new book entitled The Beauty Myth--How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, provides some answers. If you are a woman who recognized herself in the above paragraph, or if you are a man who wants to understand more about the dynamics of media vs. self-worth, then run, do not walk, to the nearest bookstore or library and read this book.

The author, Naomi Wolf, has provided us with a very thoughtful and well-researched treatise on the feminine experience. It is full of studies and statistics to back up her claims, which makes her message hard to deny. The issue she is bringing to our attention needs to be addressed by both sexes, for women are not the only ones being manipulated by the media into feeling insecure and unhappy with themselves. This book will hopefully spark more discussion and research on how our culture cultivates the stereotypes of women as sex objects and men as success objects, to the detriment of all of us.

Wolf's basic thesis states that there is a relationship between female liberation and female beauty:

"The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty... pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers."


http://homestar.org/bryannan/wolf.html


This book is definitely on my 'to read' list...

[Desertrose]

2. Haven't read 'em for years...they make me gag.

Just more attempts at continual "brainwashing" us all into being Stepford women.

Don't know if they are evil per se but they sure do whatever they can to further the mind fluff so women won't think about the lies & crap & trivial BS being shoved down our throats....and to make sure we "shop til we drop" to get that latest whatever......sigh

I could starve for a month and do a zillion crunches and I would never look like the emaciated gi-normous boobed "women" they seem to think is ideal...ya know what I mean???

[Chovexani]

3. That's a great line

I went through a phase in junior high when I religiously read the teen women's rags (mostly to fit in), thank Goddess it was just a phase. They really do make you crazy.

My least favorite thing about women's mags is the creepy fascination with men. It's not even in a sex-positive way, it's all about how to get a man, what to do with him once you've got him, how to keep him, how to please him, etc. What cracks me up are the "How to Tell What He's Thinking" type articles, inevitably written by the same neurotic women who are addicted to these rags. Doesn't it ever occur to these women to...you know, ask?

Also, according to these magazines, lesbians and bi women do not exist. Except as a curiosity. You know, it's okay to "experiment" in college, but that's it. :banghead:

[Eloriel]

4. Well, it may be true that that much banality IS evil., come to think of it

:evilgrin:

Like Desertrose, I haven't read any in years either. I think I picked up one within the lat 5 years -- Woman's Day perhaps -- and it was as if I'd gone back into the 1960s or 70s. SAME DAMN ARTICLES you could've read back then. The phrase, "Will we never learn?" springs to mind.

[Chovexani]

5. That's just scary.

Now that I think about it, I see pretty much the same covers on all those mags when I'm standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. Same anorexic-looking white women, airbrushed to an inch of her life, only in different outfits (once in a blue moon there will be a token light-skinned Latina or black woman for variety). Same articles: "The Diet That Will Change Your Life!", "How to Meet Mr. Right", "10 Ways to Shock Him in the Bedroom", "Is He Cheating On You?", "Dress for Less!" (featuring such bargain conscious deals as $150 skirts made from $5 worth of fabric).

"Will we never learn?" indeed. :(

[BlueIris]

6. Wow. I clicked on this thread expecting a diatriabe about "Cosmo."

Though maybe that one would be better designated a "women's 'magazine.'" I really despise "Cosmo."

[geniph]

9. Cosmo is really freakish

I've never understood its appeal. Maybe back in the early days, when there was something defiant about a magazine that declared that women had sexual desires and needs, too, but so much of its content is so repellent. It's all training women to be painted, outwardly helpless, manipulative little dolls, using sex to get men to do everything for them. <shudder>

And the images on the covers have created an entire generation of women insecure with their own body image (The Beauty Myth, as referenced earlier in the thread, is a great book). What's really sick is that those images are FANTASY. There's the famous photo of the model Gia - one of their favorite cover models when she was still living - where Scavullo had her tuck her bone-thin arms under her poufy skirt to hide the track marks and open sores. THIS is the image we're being sold - sick, unhappy little girls posed, painted, and airbrushed to become some sort of fantasy ideal. <shudder>

[donsu]

8. men are the trouble makers

evil is a religious construct

[geniph]

10. I don't know that I can agree with that

I'm not a religious, or even a spiritual person, but some things seem objectively evil to me. Deliberately causing harm to other living creatures without a good reason is the only real definition of evil I accept. I used it hyperbolically in this thread, however.

Oh, and I definitely won't agree that men are the trouble makers. SOME men are trouble makers. So are some women. Neither gender is always guilty, or always blameless. It's too simple to just blame a gender. People are individuals.

[donsu]

11. I'm blaming a gender - history proves me right

nt

[Warpy]

12. Those are LADIES' magazines!

Jaysis, women read Ms and Harper's and The Nation and all sorts of trade magazines, but they don't read the mixed message, crazy making crap that male editors push at them.

Those magazines are for the poor girls who got brought up by wildly sexist parents to believe they were worth less than their brothers and only their bodies had any value.

Life is too short to waste time on that garbage, not even bored to tears sitiing in a doctor's office.

[atommom]

13. They do seem to promote a really weird worldview.

On the one hand, they give lip service to strong, independent women. But on every other page, there are the articles on losing weight, on finding and/or pleasing a man, sometimes even features where men critique pictures of women and explain just exactly what's wrong with their appearance. Last time I got my hair cut, I read a hair-raising feature written by men who were dissatisfied with their sexual partners. The overall effect is that the magazines can undermine their readers' confidence.

And then there are the ads ... painfully thin teenagers, Photoshopped to perfection, wearing clothes that would make an average woman look freakish.

Sometimes I wonder whether these magazines are helping to fuel meanness and competitiveness between young women (who are really just afraid that someone else will turn out to be more successful at being sexy.) If the most important things in our lives, beauty and men, are in such scarce supply, we have to fight each other for them, no? :crazy: