Project Two
Magizine 1:
US Weekly
Make up: 0
Clothes: 8
Hair: 0
Sex and Dating:0
Diet and Exercise: 13
Food and Recipies: 12
Home Decor: 0
Self Help: 5
Work:0
Politics: 1
Current Events: 0
Magizine 2:
Cosmopolitan
Make up: 4
Clothes: 16
Hair: 2
Sex and Dating:7
Diet and Exercise: 6
Foor and Recipies: 0
Home Decor: 0
Self Help: 5
Work: 0
Politics:0
Current Events:0
Dear Bloomingdales,
I am writing to you on behalf of an ad that you placed in the June Elle magazine. I found it rather interesting because of the size of the models in the pictures. You are advertising “Clarins Paris” skin products for summer. Your ad is targeting a specific size, telling your customers that in order to achieve this certain summer look you have to be a certain size. The quote in the middle of the ad says “Bikini Bootcamp, shape up for summer with these top-to-toe, start-to-finish suncare essentials from Clarins.”(pg.114). Throughout the magazine I counted 14 swimsuit ads, all of which contained models who were no more than 105 pounds. The message you are sending can be extremely detrimental to women all around the world. The models also contain perfect breasts that tend to be “bigger” than average. Another article in the magazine targets women with smaller breasts and how they can be beautiful too. (pg. 210). Why can’t you put women like these in your swimsuit ads? Why do the women always have to be extremely skinny? Maybe you could change it up a little bit to target all of your readers not just the ones who fit the ideal image of how a woman is supposed to look. Thank you for your time and I look forward to reading your magazine in the future.
Sincerely,
Kyle Reasinger
Concerned Reader
Email: julie.pinkwater@meredith.com
May 31, 2006
Julie Pinkwater
Vice President, Publisher
Ladies Home Journal
125 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Dear Ms. Pinkwater:
Thanks to you, your advertising team, and Playtex for the advertisement that appears in your May 2006 issue. I am a returning adult student enrolled in a Women Studies course at the Pennsylvania State University. An assignment in our course curriculum encouraged us to review magazines, paying particular attention to the manner in women are represented in advertising.
I picked Cosmopolitan to write to and I addressed the whole magazine not just one article. And here is the link, it is the only one i could find to write to them
http://magazines.ivillage.co
To whom this may concern:
First off my name is Josh Stravinsky and I am a male. After reading your magazine (Cosmopolitan) for the first time in my life I am not all that surprised at what I saw. Although I find some of it somewhat over the edge. It seems to me like every ad in there is addressed to younger girls to make them either feel pretty or to help them “become fit”. Which in your magazine is depicted by all these size 1 models. I feel as all of this can be really impressionable on young women/teenagers. Makes them feel that they have to be either gorgeous or a size 1 to be deemed “wanted” by society. I feel that this is part of the problem with so many young girls either being bulimic or anorexic because they feel as if they have to look this way. When young women pick up one of these magazines this is all they say and they are at an age where they are still somewhat unsure of themselves and exactly who they are in life. And when they see this and read all these articles I feel that this affects them and their image of how they feel they need to be perceived by everyone when in fact this is not true. A girl does not need to be a size one or extremely fit to get by in America today and I think that that is the message you are trying to relay to them and this is one step in fixing the problem that many young women have. Because we all know that it is not achievable for everyone to be a size 1, so lets be more realistic. So it would be nice to possible see these articles and models addressed in the future and maybe we could help out many young american girls.
VOGUE
www.vogue.com
Editor in Chief – Anna Wintour
Magazine Editor – Laurie Jones
Editorial Director – Thomas J. Wallace
Makeup-8
Clothes-33
Hair-7
Sex and dating-0
Dieting and exercise-3
Food and recipes-2
Home decoration-2
Self help-1
Work-0
Politics and current events-7
Addresses women, mainly young and single with money to burn. This magazine is light on dieting and exercise implying that you must already be as skinny as the models on the page to even pick up this magazine. With such a heavy emphasis on makeup, hair, and clothing, looks and beauty are clearly the most important aspect of life by VOGUE standards. And according to VOGUE, when you are skinny and beautiful you do not need any advice about sex or dating because the readers are just too beautiful for that, and there is no need for working either. Current events were involved but nothing more than socialite activities and music events. Only one political article was there. The most difficult thing to stomach is the many pictures of outrageously tall and thin models, scantily clad donning not much more than a seductive look.
