I wrote this essay for an english project. It focuses on one particular magazine, but the ideas apply to all types of media. I would have written more, put in more evidence, etc. had I been without limits. It is incomplete in many ways. There are still many spelling mistakes and such, which have already been changed. I'd appreciate some comments 
The Glamour Project
I tried looking at this issue with no biases, no motives, and no idea of what to expect. My purpose was research, and my goal was to create a clear picture of the situation regarding Glamour magazine and it's effect on it's target audience. The magazine is intended for young women, with a median age of about 33, and is meant to “inspire” and “empower” readers (Condé Nast, 2007). However, a more thorough analysis of the magazine's content makes me wonder just what about it is supposed to inspire and empower me. With nothing more than elementary articles and flashy pictures of beautiful women, the magazine leaves me feeling drained, not empowered. My own response to it's content leaves me wondering: are we, as women, stuck inside some kind of media driven competition to be beautiful, thin, and sexy for men? Are we nothing more than mere sex objects, playthings to be manipulated into believing we should become sexy in order to stay feminine? It seems that this magazine, and many others like it (such as those owned by its parent company CondeNast, names such as Vogue and Vanity Fair ring a bell?), are part of a backlash against the feminist movement, a punishment for being bad. As I began to read the magazine, it became clear to me that there was a nice variety of articles. Although most of them were rather boring and unimportant (topics featured include “The Secret Lives of Men” on page 294 and “Wow, they were oscar dates?” on page 239) there was a small selection of pro-women articles, such as “Real Life Drama” (which features an Afghan woman forced to live as a man to feed her family on page 222) and “Global Diary” (an interview with a chinese female politician on page 216). Included in the selection were a few (2 to be exact) articles focused on body image and how it needed to be changed – a real life issue which I'll address shortly. The first to make an appearance was “Let's change the 'dream' body,” page 50 , which, for all intents and purposes, was a decent article about celebrities and their weight – or lack there of. What concerned me, however, was some of the claims – such as the appearance of fat women like America Ferrara (Ugly Betty) that are starting to make a comeback on TV. The Editer-in-Chief, the author, didn't mention that America was chosen for the role because she was big, and because she was less than perfect when it came to beauty. Afterall, she's supposed to play an ugly woman. The next article to be scrutinized was on page 306 with the catching title “How to stop punishing and start respecting your body” which also masquerades as a decent article. It addresses the real issue of body image and it's negative affects on women. However, what really bugged me about this one was it's bold claim that the fat women on the next page were normal. The only picture they had of a bigger woman was a medieval painting.
The overall image however, is that the articles are unimportant. The most controversial of the articles, the ones that were political and moving, were near the end of the magazine, where the reader is less likely to pay attention to them. They are hidden. When I flip through the magazine, certain pages pop out (through the use of thick paper, short paper, coloured paper – anything to grab attention) and these were nowhere near the interesting articles. Infact, when trying to find these articles, I had to go through the magazine three times before finally giving up and looking in the index for the page number (which is also hard to find, since half the pages aren't numbered). To add even more complication, the articles often start on one page, and end at the end of the magazine. So even if you do accidentally read one, it won't keep your attention for long. As you swing through page after page of ads, celebrity gossip and dieting tricks, you lose your focus, and the thing that peaked your interest to begin with is lost in the folds. When reading the highly interesting and heartbreaking story in “Real Life Drama,” I was attacked by an 8 page spread of age-defying advertisements right smack in the middle of a woman's rights controversy.
The advertisements work to ensure the reader, a woman, is feeling inferior and intimidated. Afterall, you can't sell a product if the customer feels they don't need it (Beauty and Body Image in the Media, 2007). The ads, the majority of which are about beauty and fashion, use skinny models, the female ideal, to promote an impossible idol for girls. The women shown are mostly caucasion and young, very very young. As discovered by MacKinnon and Moore, advertisements tell young girls and women to be sex objects (2001). They discovered that girls do in fact feel pressure from the media, and that they are in fact aware of it. They feel that the media is consumer driven, that “we construct, and are constructed by, the media.” (2001). It has been shown in a wide range of studies that the thin ideal is linked to depression and health problems, and that 90% of women are unhappy with their body – a serious cause of serious health problems (Body Image and the Media, 2007). The marketing gurus that dream up these ads have taken into account the uprise in feminism throughout the recent decades. They often use “pro-feminism” terms, such as “Do it for yourself” (Bordo, 2006). By simply flipping through the magazine I found several ads using the same scheme. “You have radiant skin, you just haven't discovered it” appears on page 115 in an Aveeno ad. Funny, I thought having radiant skin was a bad thing, like I'd just come out of a nuclear war zone or something. The photographs shown in the advertisments are often airbrushed and touched up (Dove, 2007). I flip through the glossy photos of the magazine and can't help but see Naomi Wolf's proclamation, “... we as women are trained to see ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women...” (1997, p 105). It scares me, but it's true.
The magazine, using it's trashy articles as well as its images of lust, the advertisements, brainwash the reader into believing that they exist solely to please men. It's a harsh accusation, but the evidence is bountiful. In the study by MacKinnon and Moore, young girls no more than the age of 10, believed that girls can't dress the way they want to, they have to dress the way boys want them to (2001). By showing images of sexy celebrities, dressed to impress, and by using articles such as “Two steps to sexy!” the magazine ensures that the reader feels in order to be feminine, she must be beautiful and sexy. Advertisements such as the Nivea ad on page 175 feature a woman and a man, in love and happy, with the words “Touch and be Touched” at the bottem. It creates an illusion in which the reader feels that in order to be loved, she most be young, beautiful, sexy and submissive. In the words of John Berger: “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves” (Wolf, 1997, p. 58). This phenomenon is not present in only magazines, either. As found by Goodman, TV and movies enforce importance of a thing body as a measure of a woman's worth. It seems that fat men are okay and should be loved for who they are, but in order for women to be loved she must be beautiful. We as women are forced into the belief that we exist solely to please men. In a religious context, we saw this as Eve being born from Adam. A woman from a man, secondary, made of flesh not of God's image, a replica of a replica. It is this mindset that drives the media and the society it represents (Wolf, 1997). Women can be carved into whatever image man decides, and treated accordingly. It's common to hear, on a woman's crisis line, the words “What did I do wrong?” (Rape Relief, 2007). Why?
The beauty ideal promoted by magazines, including Glamour, encourage girls to dress like little vixons, prime targets for rape and abuse. MacKinnon and Moore discovered that girls had succumbed to the cultural ideal that women be submissive towards men, and that they should always appear sexy (2001). Bordo found that young girls are more likely to be raped by their close family, and that very few men were not affected by the advertisements of sexy young women (2006). Girls often see their own mothers dressing erotically to impress their fathers, and it's been proven time and again that girls find their mothers and peers more influential than any other source (Patnode, 2005, MacKinnon, Moore, 2001). By allowing ourselves to be manipulated by the magazine, by allowing the brainwashing to continue into our children's lives, we are allowing these young girls to be abused. The mission statement of Conde Nast Publications is to bring readers to what they call “the point of passion,” their method of advertising (2007). The campaign states that they want to create “[a] more engaged reader [and] a connection that drives culture [using] the most effective media-choice” (2007). Oh, it's effective alright. It's effective at creating depression in teens and promoting the rape of children. They are in fact driving culture, promotting the oppression of women through the more subtle means of beauty and weight control. Actually, it's more like mind control.
So what's the average age of Glamour readers again? Oh yeah, 33! The age of motherhood. Readers beware, this magazine is full of malicious tactics to brainwash it's victims into believing women are nothing more than expendable tools. It lures people in with it's promises of beauty and love, it's pictures of glorious women, but fails to provide a fair warning that it will lead to serious physical and mental health issues. Year after year it publishes the same type of content, never swerving from it's disastrous course, leaving nothing but destruction in it's wake. We are trapped in this media net.
