This is a study of more than 50 glossy publications for women in the United States today, including the beauty and fashion titles, the service and home magazines, those aimed at minority readerships, new female workers, and women with special-interests and spending power. The analysis focuses on the strategies by which the commercial structure shapes the cultural content, the magazines' repetitive attempts to secure a consensus about the feminine that is grounded in consumerism and the contradictory semiotic structures at work within and between purchased advertisements, covert advertisements and editorial features.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Though somewhat dated and burdened by academic prose, this book can provide much ammunition for those seeking to analyze the complex messages embedded in women's magazines. McCracken, an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, argues that such magazines help shape a happy consensus about the role of women. She examines the role of the front cover, "the most important advertisement in any magazine," then shows how various promotions and articles serve as "covert advertisements." A savvy look at actual ads shows how many invoke an implicitly male vision. McCracken then reports on the history and operations of several magazines, including the contradictions of "wholesomeness and consumerism" in Seventeen ; Glamour' s use of social issues to sell fashion and beauty; and Family Circle 's role in encouraging supermarket spending. Her analysis of new women's magazines is hampered by her focus on the early 1980s, as is her look at the problems of that decade's version of Ms. However, she does add astute comments on how magazines like Big, Beautiful Woman and Essence sell consumerism to readers outside the mainstream. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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