Invisable Narrartives in Cosmopolitan Magazine Degrading Women

In general, media (newspaper, commercials, some books, magazines, and etc.) has brainwashed women. We are set to believe that by dressing a certain way, wearing the kind of brands, and etc. is “cool, wrong, good, or bad.” When it comes to reading a magazine, it is quite entertaining plus they are pretty much sold everywhere now a days. Magazines contains all kinds of articles, illustrations, and often covering a specific subject of interest. For an example, Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for woman. Cosmopolitan has been around since 1866 and is very popular until this day. In its early days, Cosmopolitan used to include articles about home, family, cooking, and fashion, and art, but it definitely has changed over time. Cosmopolitan magazine now includes fashion, sex advice, dating, and celeb gossip, fancy cocktail drinks, and etc., it is obviously targeting female audiences. How has Cosmopolitan magazine influence and change the way woman think? This particular magazine is a GRIP, women subscribe and love to read this magazine because it is made up of diverse people (usually includes people from different countries and cultures), makeup tips, fashion tips, relationship/sex advices, and etc. All these topics keeps a woman engaged ad want to further read more but recently, I noticed how the multiple invisible narratives behind this magazine are shaping the way women think.

 17-year-old Dakota Fanning on the Jan. 2012 Cover (Image from NYmag.com)

This magazine emphasis on how woman should be towards men. Inside the Cosmopolitan magazine consists of how to be more attractive, desirable, and successful through advertisements, images, and manipulative articles. Appearance is a very big and important deal in the magazine, women are photo shopped, perky boobs, exposing breast and legs. When the magazine talks about health, it basically meant weight loss=fitness=sex appeal. The invisible narrative here is that everything in this magazine is saying we must look like this, do this, drink this kind of cocktail, think like this, etc. to be considered an “untouchable woman” that all men would fall for. This magazine creates unrealistic beauty ideals and studies shows women are constantly overestimating men’s’ preference for thin bodies. These kind of invisible narratives make women feel like they will be better because it is very persuasive. Small key words and phrases go a long way, an example would be, “you are capable of much more than being looked at than eye candy.” This kind of statements make readers think deeper and question how they can make that statement true. Whether it is an advice or product for sale, women will tend to think that by following the advice or buying the product, it will make us much more feminine, sexy, and desirable. 

Women are starting to believe that we have to continuously fix our flaws to be happy, healthy, and successful. The message in this is, by losing weight, changing hair color, getting tanned, lightening skins, and etc. is what will make you worthy and desirable. Instead, the magazine is implying that if you don’t look like the models on the images, then you are a complete rejection. It is wrong to be brainwashed to thinking we MUST strive to reach the standards of beauty and fashion. We are supposed to believe that being happy means to live, be free, and love yourself. Cosmopolitan magazines may be a good read for entertainment but bottom line, many women are starting to take context/phrases heavily and internalizing it causing lower self-esteem and other risky behaviors.

Men Prefer Curves, not skinny. (Photo from Skinny2hunk.com)

One of the big issue I noticed is that the Cosmopolitan magazine has an impact on women’s sexual attitude. They have a whole section about sex and relationship tips, and the constant focus is being able to please your man or changing your body to attract a man. An experiment was conducted by California State University and the results showed that when women read a sexual script in Cosmopolitan magazine, women are more likely to strive for sexual desires and have a higher control/power for their own sakes. The invisible narrative behind this is that it’s saying we must do this to make yourself resistible, act a certain way towards the man, use a specific sex position to please the man, and it goes on. Everything then becomes an excuse for bad sex if you’re not following the sex tips. When we think about this logically, imagine the people who had great sex without needing to even read these trash articles that are supposedly going to “benefit” you and your partner. Another invisible narrative behind these articles is everything revolves around men, and we should submit to men, some of the example headlines are: “What Guys Secretly Think of Your Hair & Makeup. Truth Revealed!”, “20 Dress He Will Love”, “78 Ways to Turn Him On.”, “How To Be a Total Magnet.” Even though, these might be catchy and attract readers, but consider this, when did the purpose of life become attracting a guy? 

 

Cosmo Magazine: The Best-Seller That Sells Women Short (Photo from: http://www.beautyredefined.net)

Cosmopolitan magazines only offer narrow minded images of women, fashion, and attitudes to their subscribers. Everything in the magazine is only for advertisement and profits. It’s interesting to see how Cosmopolitan magazines shifted how women think about themselves and their definition of beauty. Cosmopolitan magazines should be more open-minded, feminine friendly, and promote that it is OK to not have to live up to these unrealistic standards of beauty. Because these little phrases, headlines, keywords mean a lot, and it does degrade women on many levels especially when they are being objectified. I suggest other topics should be promoted in this magazine to help women feel more empowering in other ways than sexually.