Ozaki: Media Analysis

"Fun, Fearless, Female”: What It Means To Be a Woman
A Media Analysis of Cosmopolitan Magazine

Boasting a phenomenal readership of nearly eighteen million readers every month in the United States alone, Cosmopolitan magazine, with its provocative sex advice and relationship tips, along with its beauty and style recommendations and “real-life” articles, certainly warrants a meticulous examination in regard to the portrayal of women in mass media and mainstream content from a feminist perspective. Cosmo, having been published beneath the saucy mantra “fun, fearless, female” for over forty years, has received both praise for empowering women by embracing sexuality and criticism for objectifying women through mindless articles and superficial advertisements. As a magazine targeted for and primarily read by women, Cosmo’s content focuses on our society’s ideals of femininity, but it also offers articles promoting self-reliance and encouraging self-esteem and self-love. In this analysis, careful attention is given to both the potentially feminist aspects and possibly degrading content of Cosmo, and more specifically, I both examine from a feminist perspective the ways traditional, oppressive gender roles are promoted or rejected in its text on sexuality and explore any possible social implications.
When confronted with the headline “Be A Sex Genius!” at a bookstore’s newsstand, it was hard for me as a young woman, especially a college-aged woman, to resist the curiosity and intrigue tempting me to purchase this month’s issue of Cosmo, a tactic certainly formulated by marketing and sales strategies. But even though the cliché “sex sells” is undeniably a valid argument for the consistently sexually explicit articles in Cosmo, there seems to be other underlying social forces at work that drives the magazine’s success and continues to build its loyal following. In the wake of a third wave feminist emphasis on women’s sexual empowerment and freedom from the demeaning connotations associated with being sexually active, Cosmo’s sex and relationship advice could be acclaimed as progressive and liberating for women, with its willingness to discuss female sexuality candidly and unapologetically. On the other hand, however, there is also criticism that the magazine’s risqué “how-tos” cross the line beyond sexual empowerment and go so far as to actually objectify women and reinforce the gender stereotype that women should be sexually attractive to men and able to satisfy their sexual desires. As I flip through pages and pages detailing ways to become an irresistible sex goddess, I laugh at the entertaining aspect, which most likely plays a prominent role in Cosmo’s success, but I also feel a curious sense of pressure: there seems to be an underlying push towards seeking validation and self-acceptance through sexual gratification and frequent companionship in the bedroom, as if a “real woman” meant to be admired and emulated is a heterosexual having lots of wild and inhibited sex. This seems to me to be a troubling concern in regard to the gender roles constantly reinforced in our society primarily because, with content so saturated with sex advice and stories and male rulebooks, Cosmo presents to the nation’s women an unrealistic female model that requires that they change themselves in order to truly be feminine. Rather than embracing female sexuality as a vehicle for empowering women, its articles seem to further oppress them and seem to trap its readers more into a double-bind. Furthermore, looking at female sexuality in a broader scope, I often feel that the sexual revolution of third wave feminism can easily become a dangerously slippery slope: it seems that it is likely for female sexual empowerment, like that portrayed in Cosmo’s material, to divert attention from women to men as a result of the heteronormativity, or standard of heterosexuality, in our society. As Catharine Lumby points out in her book Bad Girls, there is a belief that “sex as we know it is inextricably linked into the patriarchal structure of our society and that gender inequality is directly promoted by heterosexual behaviors” (Lumby 15). While this view leans a bit to one extreme, I do think that there is a substantial point to this claim that sexuality can perpetuate typical gender roles and stereotypes and that dialogue concerning female sexuality, as exhibited in Cosmo, can easily become focused on men.
Despite its classification as a “women’s magazine,” much of the content appearing in Cosmopolitan places considerable emphasis on relating to and pleasing men, which is implicitly linked to the formation of self-esteem and self-confidence in women. Beneath the headline for step-by-step guidelines on how to become a “sex genius,” there is subscript that reads, “these poses will double his pleasure-- and yours too,” as if men’s sexual gratification bears more importance than women’s (Cosmo 138). There are numerous other examples in one issue alone of articles in which the writers place obvious emphasis on winning the approval of and pleasing men, and there is even a seven-page section entitled “If Men Edited Cosmo” focusing solely on men’s desires. When I examine this aspect of Cosmo more closely, I become more aware of the ways the magazine reinforces the gender expectation that women should be attentive and accommodating, even nurturing to men, and I begin to see the underlying forces at work behind the seemingly feminist guise that dupes and traps so many women. Even the self-help article entitled “Love Him…Without Losing Yourself” seems to be inherently focused on the gratification of men and seems to further promote a female gender stereotype, despite a pretense of empowerment: “cultivating your own interests makes you incredibly alluring,” it states, suggesting that independence and female empowerment are for nothing but to become more attractive to men (Cosmo 158). Though Cosmo does have some articles with a similar theme of promoting a certain degree of self-sufficiency and independence, I doubt that such triviality and debasement could ever be aligned with a truly feminist agenda.
Also promoting an unrealistic image of the ideal woman in regard to sexuality is the advertising strategically placed within Cosmo’s juicy contents. Between each page turn of the magazine’s lurid text, readers are bombarded with ads that urge them to purchase products that will give them shinier hair, smoother skin, and sexier abs, indicating tacitly that its female readers are not acceptable in their own unaltered skin. As Higginbotham points out, “teen magazines make millions off of girls by assuming that girls need improving, and then telling girls how to make themselves prettier, cooler, and better” (“Teen Mags”). There seems to be an underlying connection between the sexual content of the magazine and the beauty ads dispersed throughout, a undeniable link between being visually attractive and being sexually desirable, which brings the focus back to men once again. Also problematic is the pressure that these ads exert on women to fulfill an acceptable standard of beauty and femininity and their perpetuation of a double-bind, for the pressures on women to be beautiful and thin are often blamed on their own lack of self-esteem, rather than on the oppression we face in a patriarchal society (“Teen Mags”). I am even skeptical of advertisements that apparently attempt to break down barriers and to defy the beauty myth, such as Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” and Olay’s ads with the slogan “Love the Skin You’re In,” because the focus is still physical beauty for all women. It is as if these ads are implying that even natural beauty should be the focus, that being unattractive is still not acceptable.
The social implications of “women’s magazines” such as Cosmo that feed relationship and sex advice and beauty tips regularly to such a wide female audience are quite disturbing and not at all surprising. As women, we are constantly subject to contradicting messages about who we should be, what identities are socially acceptable, and how to gain respect and validation, as Douglas emphasizes in the following quote:
“…the mass media helped make us the cultural schizophrenics we are today, women who rebel against yet submit to
prevailing images about what a desirable, worthwhile woman should be” (Douglas 8).
When I began my research and analysis of Cosmo, I was unsure what to make of the magazine, but the qualities that make it seem both empowering and demeaning clearly personify the recurring cycle of oppression that women face through the mass media. We see images and read stories that glorify a particular female persona that we are pressured to become, and as long as Cosmo and other such publications maintain such a massive readership, we continue to let ourselves be subjected to oppressive gender roles and debilitating expectations. In her analysis of women in the media, Cynthia Lont calls for a change in the criteria used to define a so-called “women’s magazine”: she suggests that they “encourage women to control their own expressive media,” “celebrate women’s collective struggle and success,” and “avoid harming women’s interests,” all of which would give women the unifying and empowering voice necessary for overcoming oppression and achieving equality (Lont 105, 106). Women have for too long now struggled with this media “schizophrenia”, as Douglas labels it, these “mixed messages about what women should and should not do, what women could and could not be,” and they are subsequently limited in the extent to which they can overcome inequality and challenge gender roles (Douglas 8). Through my analysis, it seems to me that Cosmo is simply a modern-day version of former magazines that once reinforced gender roles by offering up home-decorating tips and crowd-pleasing recipes, only now the way to man’s heart seems to be acrobatic sex positions and strategic flirting rather than home-cooked meals and a well-kept house.