Mixed Messages in Women's Magazines

In my last blog post, I was a little simplistic in my opinion of women's magazines like Cosmopolitan. However, after reading a chapter in David Gauntlett's book Media, Gender, and Identity and having a discussion in my media class, I kind of rethought some things.

First of all, I haven't really spent enough time reading a magazine like Cosmo to really recognize different nuances...I usually get frustrated after flipping through for a couple seconds and want to throw the magazine out. But today I actually spent a couple minutes looking at the articles and, even though I still felt frustrated, it turned out to be a little more complex.

I never realized that there are so many mixed messages in these magazines. This must confuse some readers, or at least make a homogeneous decoding of the material basically impossible. There are multiple articles about maintaining a healthy diet, being independent, and saving money to avoid debt. However, on the opposite page there are representations of incredibly thin women, articles about molding yourself into someone else's ideal "woman", or tips on spending money to buy fashionable clothes. So what are they really trying to say?

Guantlett describes this strange juxtaposition of messages by stating that "the magazines spell out the secrets of beauty, but then encourage readers to disregard it all in the name of emotional and physical health; but, in any case, it's true that these elements don't sit comfortable together."(Guantlett 205)

There is also a section of the chapter that displays a selection of women's personal interest in or reactions to magazines. These varied from what I suppose is the intended purpose of a magazine like Cosmo, feeling inadequate and dissatisfied with their current image and possesions, to reactionary feelings of superiority over superficial models. Some can simply read these magazines as a fantasy disassociated from their actual life and decisions.

I would have originally said that women's magazines have no effect on me, but during my class I realized that that is not entirely true. Instead, it must be a reactionary view of the magazine. Briefly looking at articles and images in these magazines, I sometimes decide exactly what I don't want to be because I'm so frustrated at how they represent women. It makes me so angry to see the shallowness of the magazine that I don't even want to touch it. I realize this is somewhat irrational because, as I mentioned before, a lot of women may just read it for fun and it doesn't dictate what they do every day. But still, just seeing someone flipping through Cosmo makes me want to turn around and buy Foreign Affairs.

I think it is important that we recognize that media can effect us in different ways, even if its the unintended outcome of the people encoding messages into the advertisements and magazine articles. I would hope the formation of my identity would be completely unrelated to a magazine, but sometimes it can happen in a roundabout way. Its not really being independent to form parts of my identity just because I'm reacting in opposition to someone or something telling me what to be.