Beauty Myths and Magazines

By Karen Sternheimer

I’ve recently reverted back to an old teenage habit…sort of. Last year I got a letter saying that my frequent flier miles would soon expire and that I could easily convert them to magazine subscriptions. I hadn’t subscribed to a magazine in years, so I went nuts. I ordered magazines about politics, technology, business, travel, and fashion.

In my teen years I devoured fashion magazines like Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and the now defunct Mademoiselle, and swapped them with friends to make sure no beauty advice would pass without my knowledge. I saved old issues in my closet for years just in case I would ever want to look at them again, like the reference books that are on my shelves today. When my old house went up for sale years later, my mother told me to take them or toss them. I tossed them. 

After I graduated from high school I stopped reading the magazines cold turkey. I don’t remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with a lack of time to read them and (more to the point) the lack of disposable income to buy them. When the first fashion mag showed up in my mailbox last year it was like reuniting with an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in years. Yes, I had perused a magazine or two while waiting to have my hair cut, but it’s not the same if you can’t tear out the samples and dog-ear the particularly relevant advice about hair products to revisit later. Unlike the other magazines I ordered, the beauty ones required very little concentration or commitment to read since they are mostly filled with ads. They could be my secret escape.

As a sociologist, I am also deeply aware of the very narrow version of beauty these magazines typically promote. Yes, most of the women are impossibly thin, white or near-white in complexion, tall and blonde. Many of the articles are about getting/keeping/pleasing/marrying a man, and more than anything, they promote the idea that women’s worth is forever linked to how we look. If that’s not enough, in the world of most fashion magazines, beauty is something that comes from consumption, not necessarily from character.

That said, I think we often sell readers of these magazines short when we presume that they are merely victims of the beauty industry. I have known a fashion victim or two in my years (and spot them regularly on the streets of Los Angeles), but let’s not presume that all women and girls simply read these magazines passively. In a now classic 1984 cultural studies text, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature author Janice Radway interviewed women who read romance novels and found that rather than just internalizing the messages of idealized romance they contain, readers used them to escape the drudgery of everyday life. Likewise, we cannot presume that fashion magazine readers just mindlessly adopt the perspectives of the magazines. How readers make meaning of texts—a central goal of cultural studies research—often depends on the social context that each person lives within.

Looking back on my own relationship with fashion magazines, I read them more as a fantasy about what my impending adult life might be like, and for instruction about how to best be ready for that life. The magazines I read in the 80s, like many today, provided advice about careers and living independently in cities. They told stories about having grown-up relationships with men, which my friends and I had no real frame of reference for (and let’s be honest, most seventeen-year-olds would rather not talk to mom and dad much about this topic!).

So why my excitement today? I have had enough experience with being a grown-up to know that the magazines’ advice is just a guess, as much advice often is. Fashion magazines offer the promise of self-improvement, or as historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg describes, a body project. Brumberg’s study of adolescent girls throughout the twentieth century reveals that these projects continually shift. Unlike the nineteenth century, when girls wrote in their diaries about being better morally, most of the projects today focus on the external. 

Why did this happen? We can’t blame fashion magazines for the changes, since the ones that existed then bore little resemblance to those of today. Brumberg argues that as women have gradually gained more political power and experienced less external regulation that they have been encouraged to regulate themselves internally. For instance, nineteenth-century women were often discouraged from exercise, but wore binding corsets. Starting in the 1920s women shed these physically restricting undergarments, but took up “slimming” in order to restrict their body size.

So the magazines both reflect and reproduce images of beauty—if we took them away, girls and women wouldn’t necessarily feel better about how they look. From my personal experience, I read the magazines from the perspective that I was one of “them.” Although not tall, tan, or blonde, as many models in the magazines I bought were, I saw myself as like them in some strange way. And the advice in the magazines about make-up tips and products to try helped me feel part of this thing called beauty. Yes, Marx might say I was experiencing false consciousness—you might say I was deluded. And certainly there might be people who read the magazines and feel inadequate, but we can’t make generalizations either way. 

That said, I can’t say that I disagree with many of the critiques of the beauty industry author Naomi Wolf offers in her book The Beauty Myth or with Jean Kilbourne's analysis of advertising in her book Killing Us Softly. But we can’t analyze magazines and presume to know how people make sense of them. Sometimes we think that criticizing things we like makes us hypocrites or killjoys. We don’t have to be either; we can both enjoy and deconstruct forms of media culture we consume creating the best of both worlds: critical consumers who can have fun reading a magazine once in a while. And learn new make-up tips.

Comments

[searchingwithin]

In my opinion, the problem arises when the women who allow these magazines, and those images of what is beautifull, or attractive, fuel an already wounded self-esteem and self-image.

Great article.

[Leslie P]

I identify with Sternheimer’s description of pouring over magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue as a young teenager, I too thought of, and I still do think of myself, as one of “them”, one of these hypothetical women: in a steady job, working to advance my place at that job, and going through a myriad of romances, from a casual one night stand to a long term relationship with a guy who could be “the one”. The problem I have with this is that these magazines set up precedents for how to feel about and deal with these situations. If magazines constantly tout “10 Things he Craves in Bed” or “What Men Want in a Woman”, I, in my inexperienced desire to appear experienced, take their word as God’s. This is the internalization Sternheimer uses as a disclaimer at the beginning of her post. Another interesting link I found with these magazines to religious faith (is that stretching things too far?) was the desire to believe in something preordained. To listen to this advice that seems so official and tested, so much bigger than oneself, something to strive to, as with Brumberg’s “body project”. Overall I enjoyed the article, it was refreshing to here a point of view other than that young girls are all, “victims of the beauty industry”. Although in some ways I think we are.

A book readers of this post might be interested in is called "The Lolita Effect" look it up on barnesandnoble.com. It honestly changed my life and the way I view the media and womanhood.

[Lyndsie]

I think that it is wrong for people reading magazines to have to feel the need to replace their selves with the models on every page in order to feel like they are better. To feel like they are pretty and perfect. No one is perfect like the models portrayed on these magazines. This is usually where the problems come from women. Women feel like they need to become perfect so they resort to eating disorders or even plastic surgery to get that Barbie-like look. This is why so many people who are the slightest bit overweight feel like they need to get a gastric bypass surgery to become these models. So many women strive to become the image that has been set out there for us. When in reality, this image is not real at all. We should start using real people for magazines and not these phony photo shopped models. Also, women shouldn’t be told how to please a man or how to become better looking. This advertisement is looking down on women, not trying to help us. Just imagine if someone told you, “you can look better by doing this.” Yeah, we would jump to the opportunity because we women always want to look better, but really if you think about it, its kind of a slap in the face. Well to me anyways. All I am saying is people shouldn’t be thought of as lower than someone else because of these stupid magazines that aren’t real. Yes, it is a fantasy but actually, its reality.

[Ashley Flowers]

While reading through all of the blog’s, I found this particular one to be most interesting. While growing up I have always been interested in beauty and fashion magazines. I found them to be a source of escaping from my everyday life and entering into a fantasy lifestyle. I feel magazines can give people a sense of hope and encouragement in their lives.
Not all magazine ads can persuade me to make choices to be like others just to be with the in crowd. I read the magazines for enjoyment, as do many others, however there are those that peruse them to know what is in for social status. It is important to remember the reality of it all and not to get caught up in the fantasy it portrays.

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[Sanjana]

I am working on the notions of beauty in India and how the media images come to shape one's idea of beauty... and there is no denying that the media and the market do operate in tandem to create certain images of beauty and women are continuously told to match up with the ideals! It is very interesting to note that certain people do internalize the images and strive to achieve them by all means, even plastic surgery. But there are others who are more balanced in their views about themselves and their beauty. These are people who do not go to extreme levels to attain the "ideal" beauty.

[Academy Salon Professional]

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[tracy c]

i believe the true beauty is deep within your heart
and soul it shouldnt matter how others think
beauty is in the eyes of the beholder with or with out face enhancement people should be accepted as they are and not judged on the outside

[S Wells]

I agree with your implication, that the fashion magazines are just a reflection of women's attitudes towards themselves. All change comes from within - and when enough individual women want that change, the beauty industry will change also.

[Magdalene Mwangi]

Interesting information. thanks for sharing

[angar]

usefull article

[haider]

usefull tips