How do you win female readers? According to some, the answer is to talk down and to talk dirty. Kamal Ahmed reports from London
We have had new man and new lad; yuppies, buppies and dinkies. Now a new species is stalking society – Magazine Woman.
A report by the Social Affairs Unit, published recently, accuses women’s magazines of patronising their millions of readers with a constant diet of sex, fashion, and articles on the intricacies of getting into or out of serious relationships.
It says that publishers are out of touch with their readers, and think them “selfish, superficial and obsessed with sex”.
They are lazy, incompetent, live in a value-free world, and like to treat tragedies as entertainment.
Criticising publications such as Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle and Tatler, the report by the right-of-centre think-tank says that instead of empowering women with a positive image of themselves, the magazines actually create an unflattering, demeaning picture.
“Magazine Woman has escaped from the kitchen only to get as far as the bedroom,” said Kenneth Minogue, former professor of political science at the London School of Economics, who is one of the authors of the report.
“The likely response to these magazines would be astonishment at the extent to which sex is king. My impression is of bitterness and triviality.”
The report, which studied 11 of the leading British women’s magazines, said that they rarely dealt with serious issues, such as politics or bringing up children, and that they painted a picture of women as rude and vulgar louts.
“Magazine Woman will leave her husband or partner if she takes the slightest fancy to another man,” the report says.
“Men, for her, seem to be nothing but sex objects, to be alternately hankered over, desired, scorned or ridiculed. In short, she is as crude, offensive and unpleasant as the most obnoxious of men.”
The women’s magazine market is huge and expanding. More than 3,7-million people buy the magazines the report analysed every month, and it is likely that at least double that number read them.
Traditional titles such as Woman and Woman’s Own were joined in the 1980s by a plethora of magazines aimed at younger, affluent women with careers and short-term relationships to juggle.
The report splits women’s magazines into different groups. Readers of magazines such as Bella and Frima tend to be in stable relationships or married and have traditional values.
Magazines such as Tatler or the Lady had little sexual content, but the former was criticised for a cult of celebrity that was described as “obsequious”. Most of the criticism was reserved for magazines such as Elle, Cosmopolitan and Company, which were said to contain the “full range of sex, trivia and self-indulgence”.
Lynette Burrows, the writer and broadcaster and co-author of the report, said: “Company seems to have decided to attract a young audience.
“The solution is to talk down to them and talk dirty.”
Magazine publishers have tried to broaden the women’s market. Frank, which styled itself as a new type of women’s magazine and carries features on politics and finance, was launched earlier this year.
“The problem is that women’s magazines are so predictable,” said Rowan MacKinnon, aged 29, who has worked for Private Eye and GQ, and is launch editor of a new erotic magazine for older men, the Erotic Print Review.
She added: “They tend to be patronising and now look very old-fashioned. I wouldn’t want to be seen reading one on the train.”
She said that they needed to have a greater variety of features and should experiment with putting men on the front cover rather than the more predictable female model.
Magazine editors hit back against the report, saying that the publications were very popular.
“We are only talking to a specific type of woman,” said Mandi Norwood, editor of Cosmopolitan. “The 28- to 29-year-old who is single, intelligent and affluent.
“No, we do not talk about being married or having children, just as we wouldn’t talk about being dead or gardening.
“I would like to get those academics that wrote the report and rub their noses in the piles of correspondence we get about how helpful and enjoyable the magazine is.”