Glossy Magazines Research Articles

Old Title, New Traditions

This article examines Krest'ianka magazine, a former Soviet women's publication, which has been transformed into a post-Soviet glossy magazine. The analysis explores how the Soviet past is used in the magazine as a discursive tool for articulating ideals for post-Soviet femininity. Furthermore, the article discusses how the magazine negotiates the neo-traditional gender ideology of twenty-first century Russia with the legacies of the Soviet period. Drawing on Maija Töyry's idea that women's magazines communicate existing social norms and values through “negotiable relations,” the article addresses the representations of three central themes found in issues of Krest'ianka published between 2000 and the present. These themes include, gender differences, cultural nostalgia, and consumption, and they form the contours of the “new” Russian woman who emerges from the pages of this magazine.

Urban appetites: food and culture in nineteenth-century New York

Glossy magazines write about them, celebrities give their names to them, and you'd better believe there's an app (or ten) committed to finding you the right one. They are New York City restaurants and food shops. And their journey to international notoriety is a captivating one. The now-booming food capital was once a small seaport city, home to a mere six municipal food markets that were stocked by farmers, fishermen, and hunters who lived in the area. By 1890, however, the city's population had grown to more than a million, and residents could dine in thousands of restaurants with a greater abundance and variety of options than any other place in the United States. Historians, sociologists, and foodies alike will devour the story of the origins of New York City's food industry in Urban Appetites. Cindy R. Lobel focuses on the rise of New York as both a metropolis and a food capital, opening a new window onto the intersection of the cultural, social, political, and economic transformations of the nineteenth century. She offers wonderfully detailed accounts of public markets and private food shops; basement restaurants and immigrant diners serving favorites from the old country; cake and coffee shops; and high-end, French-inspired eating houses made for being seen in society as much as for dining. But as the food and the population became increasingly cosmopolitan, corruption, contamination, and undeniably inequitable conditions escalated. Urban Appetites serves up a complete picture of the evolution of the city, its politics, and its foodways.

The rhetorical construction of the third place in Fitness first magazines

Custom magazines are public relations publications that target a select customer base in order to foster loyalty to the brand. This article examines how the Fitness first custom magazine mimics the conventions of a glossy consumer magazine to sell a message about healthism. It also examines how the magazine facilitates the construction of a brand community and promotes the Fitness First gyms as third places (safe, accessible, neutral and social). It argues that custom magazines play an integral but underresearched role in advertising campaigns and in Australian print culture more generally.

Paleofantasy: what evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live

We evolved eat berries rather than bagels, live in mud huts rather than condos, sprint barefoot rather than play football-or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived-and why we should emulate them-are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us the cutting edge of biology show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors. Contrary what the glossy magazines would have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the insects our forebears snacked on. And women don't go into shoe-shopping frenzies because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans. As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we're stuck-finished evolving-and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything from adults' ability drink milk the texture of our ear wax show that we've actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were meant to fail recognize that we were never perfectly suited our environment. Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs. From debunking the caveman diet unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future.

Glamorous politics or political glamour? Content analysis of political coverage in Russian glossy magazines

This article analyzes political and social themes of Russia's glossy magazines which represent the few remaining public spaces for surviving freedom of speech and expression in that post-communist country. As authoritarian nature of Russian political system deepens, the democratic openings often appear in unexpected places. Content analysis of two glamour monthlies, one (GQ-Russian Edition) intended for male audience, another (Cosmopolitan-Russia) – for female readership, shows consistently oppositional (anti-Putin) thrust of both publications, but also persistent political gender stereotypes. Analysis of these publications, intended for Russia's nascent urban class – traditionally a social strata most associated with democratic impulses – provides an important explanation behind recent democratic protest activities in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

GLOSSY MAGAZINE АS A PRODUCT OF SOCIAL PERCEPTION OR “I’M HAPPY TO DELUDE MYSELF”

This article analyzes the glossy magazine as a product of social perception, which is the central component of the interaction of the reader with glossy magazines. The study is held in the context of sociopsychological ideas, symbolic interactionism, social perception; empirical methods are the focus groups and the semantic differential. The mechanism of causal attribution, through which the "glossy effect" is created, is the key to social perception of glossy magazines. It happens at the deepest levels of the psyche, is not reflected, and is the main force in the influence of glossy magazines on their readers. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-8-7

Slash Manips: Remixing Popular Media with Gay Pornography

Slash Manips: Remixing Popular Media with Gay Pornography

Nonlegacy PCBs: Pigment Manufacturing By-Products Get a Second Look

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were commercially manufactured in the United States from about 1930 until 1979, when their production was banned under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) because of concerns about their extreme environmental persistence, ability to bioaccumulate, and adverse human health effects. PCBs were used in numerous industrial and consumer applications, most notably as insulation fluids in electrical transformers and generators but also in products including fluorescent lamp ballasts, caulk, and carbonless copy paper. These now-discontinued manufactured chemicals have received a great deal of attention in terms of research and environmental remediation. But other, lesser-known PCBs continue to be generated and released into the environment, not from intentionally created commercial products but as unintentional by-products of manufacturing processes including, according to recent studies, those used to make certain pigments used in dyes, inks, and paints. PCBs do not occur naturally, and once in the environment they can last for decades. Until recently, PCBs that were being detected in the environment were thought to come entirely from “legacy” sources. Yet developments in analytical technology have given researchers a better understanding of PCB sources, of the patterns of individual PCBs (or congeners) that are being detected environmentally, and the fate of PCBs in the environment—how they move between soil, sediment, water, and air. These advances have also enabled the detection of individual congeners at very low levels and the identification of many new and ongoing sources of PCBs beyond those resulting from historical commercial mixtures. Unintentionally produced PCBs were known to be present in inks and dyes when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the final rule barring commercial PCB production in 1979. A rule allowing exemptions for PCBs in controlled manufacturing processes and as unintentional contaminants was promulgated under TSCA a few years later. This rule allowed for PCB concentrations of up to 50 ppm in certain products as a result of manufacturing processes.1 Recently, manufacturing by-product PCBs have been identified in wastewater, sediments, and air in numerous locations. They have also been positively identified in testing of new products colored with such pigments, so it is clear these PCBs are not occurring as a result of legacy commercial mixtures. What is emerging is an increasingly complex picture of the prevalence of nonlegacy PCBs alongside the persisting environmental presence of legacy PCBs, and a concurrent and likewise complex picture of how PCBs can affect human health at very low levels of exposure.

Forgetting the Bodies

44 With David, in Havana I wanted to forget the bodies just as I have forgotten the doors, the half-closed books that I held against your chest and mine, during a summer that I knew was going to be final and eternal. I looked at the stairs of the Hotel Monserrate. And I thought: Reinaldo Arenas was the light in its darkness. The music in the bar on the hotel’s ground floor was now unbearable. Darkness and noise. A black page to also understand Cuba. I’ve never felt such breathlessness in any other setting. The asthma born in my childhood returns, like a mood. If I could bequeath it to one of my characters, I would write it a frail and sudden death: a tragic oxymoron for its disappearance. An operatic ending. I now understand how I’ve lost the peninsula, the pretexts I held before streets and professions that I misplaced. Profiles on the map. You believed that life was a color. And you now understand: it’s the absence of color. A chiaroscuro. I know that I’m repeating the movements of someone now absent, that my steps in Havana are nothing new. That my words, in the glossy magazine that you’re reading admiringly, were already spoken by someone. That this urgency is a fallacy. That I’m as dead as the man who, in a few years, will copy my last gesture. You used to read your diary softly so I could hear the silences instead of the words. The way you erased my presence from your life. The hushed formula by which you annulled my love. I no longer have an embrace against that cruelty. Tell me that you need me, here, in Havana. In the photo torn from the album of your dead. That this delirium is love, and that you’re with me as we enter the theater, for a performance that is only light. Mere atmosphere. Without actors or dancers. Emptiness and dampness. Tell me that the dampness is your need for me, that I drain like water, and like water I’m oblivion. A last word and I’ll have forgotten everything. On a corner of Havana, as the Hotel Monserrate collapses behind me, I know that the word will be your name: Reinaldo. Arenas I drank to imitate you in the darkness. And thus forget the bodies. Forget. Forget myself. Translation from the Spanish By George Henson Poet, playwright, and cultural critic Norge Espinosa Mendoza (b. 1971, Santa Clara) holds the distinction of being the first Cuban to participate in the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program. Founder of the Jornadas de Arte Homoerótico and co-organizer of Cuba’s annual Jornada contra la Homofobia, he is widely considered one of Cuba’s most important LGBT activists. His poem “Vestido de novia” was the first poem on a homoerotic theme to win the Premio de Poesía from Cuba’s state cultural magazine El Caimán Barbudo and has since become one of the most anthologized poems by poets of his generation. His most recent book, Cuerpos de un deseo diferente (Ediciones Matanzas, 2013), is a collection of poems, reviews, and essays on topics related to LGBT life in Cuba. For a biographical profile of George Henson, see page 42. Editorial note: Visit WLT’s website for another poem by Norge Espinosa Mendoza. Forgetting the Bodies Norge Espinosa Mendoza cover feature top photo : zoriah ...

Sensationalising the Female Pudenda: An Examination of Public Communication of Aesthetic Genital Surgery

We live in a society where beauty and sensations are important. Advances in medical technologies have brought on waves of new notions of beauty where commercial interests both in the media and the health industry spurred by fashion, advertising and celebrity promotion have tended to popularise body modifications and enhancements. In recent times, through offerings on cable television channels and glossy consumer magazines, medical procedures hitherto only in the precincts of medical schools, gyneacological clinics and medical journals have now pervaded the population. More seriously, on the Internet particularly, medical experts now offer services and graphic details of labiaplasty, clitoral hood reduction or enhancement, vaginal rejuvenation, etc. Here, we examine the public communication of the phenomenon of aesthetic genital surgery and interrogate thus; is it decent, honest, balanced and ethical? Relying on textual analysis, personal observation and literature review for data gathering, we observe that besides tending to commercialise and medicalise the female genitalia, a coalescence of medical, advertising and fashion interests as played out in the media sensationalises the benign science of plastic surgery and robs it of its truthfulness, genuineness, and purposefulness. The conclusion is that in Africa, where the effect of the development crises is telling, the hype surrounding cosmetic or aesthetic genital surgery is a damaging distraction particularly when the continent is waging a battle against female genital mutilation. The recommendations are that media and medical regulatory bodies should impress it upon media and medical industry operators that glaring commercial promotions of cosmetic genital surgery in the public media be checked, and that such communication should bear equal weight of facts related to risks, short comings, complications, and threats; in physical, social, and psychological terms.

The Attitude and Perceptions of Work–Life Balance: A Comparison Among Women Surgeons in Japan, USA, and Hong Kong China

Being a Swedish female surgeon should be a walk in the park, right? One of the most egalitarian countries in the world, where glossy magazines feature stories about stayat-home daddies pushing prams while drinking cafe lattes with their buddies. We have paid parental leave for 480 days, where 2 months are reserved for each parent. Day care is subsidized by the state and accessible for all. Women are even more educated than men, and most women return to their previous job when the children start day care, and this right is protected by law. Although Sweden might seem like heaven on earth for an egalitarian, the truth is that according to Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyran) 64 % of all the cooking, cleaning, and washing up in the home is carried out by the women, 76 % of the parental leave is taken by women, and women have only 82 % of the income of men. In medical school the female students are now outnumbering the men, even if by just a few points over 50 %. Some of the medical specialities have even become predominantly female, like gynecology, geriatrics, general practice, and pediatrics. Other specialities have only slowly changed toward a more equal distribution between the sexes, and a few seem to be very hard for women to get into. Those are mainly surgical specialities like neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, and orthopedic surgery. In general surgery, women now make up about 20 % of the consultant surgeons. Among the surgeons in training, the number is around 40 %. Surgeons work on average no more than 45 h per week. The working hours are strictly regulated by law. So even though the situation in Sweden may seem very different from that in Hong Kong, Japan, or the United States, the three countries represented in this article by Kawase et al., there are issues linking the experience of female surgeons around the world. Some of those issues seem to be more about being a woman than about being a surgeon. I have read this scientific article like it is a diary of my life. I recognize almost every quote and every explanation. These are my female colleagues’ experiences, and mine as well, although to a lesser degree. These choices have been and are being made by me and my surgical sisters, all the time. This is so because the surgical profession may be one of the last remaining bastions of male hierarchy, and it serves as a magnifying glass for structures hidden or diluted in the rest of the society. Women in surgery is quite a new occurrence, and the old ideals are still in place, waiting to be ousted. I have yet to see a female surgical boss! (Here I have to include something about my male colleagues of the last 10 years: each and every one of them has taken parental leave for at least 3 months with every child born to him. Hurray for them!) This article about the surgeons in Japan, Hong Kong, and the United States, can be divided into two principal parts:

The Effect of Law School Marketing Materials on U.S. News and World Report Rankings

In the last few years, law schools have inundated each other with glossy brochures, postcards, magazines, and other marketing materials in an attempt to influence their “peer assessment scores” in the annual U.S. News and World Report rankings. This article describes a study that attempted to determine whether law schools’ print marketing efforts to one another have an impact on their U.S. News rankings data. From June to December 2011, the author’s school collected and coded all of the materials it had received from schools, including materials that it itself had sent to others. In total, 427 unique pieces of marketing were received from 125 of the 191 schools that were the subjects of this study. They varied considerably in size, format, content, and audience. A number of statistical tests were conducted to compare a school’s marketing efforts with its overall rank, overall score, peer assessment score, and tier, along with any change in those variables from the 2011 rankings to the 2012 ones. The results showed that there was some correlation between a school’s marketing efforts and its U.S. News data. Schools that sent marketing materials had, on average, higher tier placement and peer assessment scores; however, there was not a significant change in year-to-year rankings variables. The number of pieces a school sent during the study period was, for the most part, not significant. On the other hand, the number of pages in its materials was correlated with a number of U.S. News variables. Schools that sent longer, magazine-type publications geared towards a specific audience had higher U.S. News scores and also showed a slight improvement in their overall score between the two years of rankings data in this study. However, it is possible that a co-variate, such as institutional financial resources, may be causing the results. Additional study is needed to determine whether marketing materials have a longer-term effect on U.S. News ranking variables that cannot be captured in a one year study.

Patients in their homes: seeing the big picture

As I whizz around the lounge plumping the cushions for the fifth time and shrieking, ‘Don’t sit on the sofa!’ at my rather startled but beautifully presented children with their freshly washed hair and matching socks, you would be forgiven for thinking that the queen was dropping by for tea. ‘Why are you making this much effort for Grannie Annie? Do you think she even notices all this stuff?’ asks my son, James, and — momentarily — my temporary domestic Goddess impression falters. ‘What a good question’ I note, basking briefly in a warm glow of motherly pride at having raised such an insightful son while simultaneously completing a postgraduate diploma in nursing. ‘Because.... I would rather she didn’t see how we really live!’ I respond emphatically and recommence my tidying spree. Hours later, lying in bed utterly exhausted from the efforts of presenting a false image of my perfect life, I wonder why I feel it necessary to put myself under such pressure. She gave birth to me, chased the monsters out from under my bed and dealt with my troubled teenage years. In short, nobody knows me better than my own mother and yet, I feel I need to put on a ‘front’ for her. In fact, I keep up appearances for anybody who steps over the threshold. There are many times I have considered inviting my friends around for drinks and then decided I couldn’t face the obligatory pre-event cleaning frenzy and spent the evening alone. If others do the same, I wonder how many social engagements I have missed out on for this reason? In the same way that the magazine fashion model is airbrushed to appear several pounds lighter and several shades darker, so property programmes and glossy magazines present perfect houses that are clearly not lived in. Despite this, my friends and I reinforce this image by ensuring the candles are lit and the cushions plumped when we visit each other’s houses. The reality of living with two messy children is far removed from this sanitised ideal and when no guests are expected, the place has a look that is very much ‘lived in’. When I am unwell or stressed out, the state of my house reflects that. I am reminded of a patient I visited while on a community placement. She had just days left to live having battled for many years with cancer. Her lounge had been overtaken by her hospital bed, medication and assorted equipment that was enabling her to spend her last days at home. When we arrived she

The Black Atlantic as Dystopia:

The Black Atlantic as Dystopia:

FRONTLINE: 'Blood Money': A NZ investigative journalism case study

Metro, the leading New Zealand glossy magazine reporting issues and society, published an investigative article ‘BLOOD MONEY’ probing the NZ Superannuation Fund (NZSF) investment in the controversial US-owned Freeport copper and gold mine at Grasberg as its lead feature in the December 2011 edition. Prior to this publication, the two Indonesian-ruled Melanesian provinces comprising West Papua on the island of New Guinea had remained largely ignored by New Zealand mainstream media for four decades. The mine has been at the centre of human rights and environmental abuse allegations for most of this period. In her investigation, the author sought to establish how the NZSF laid claim to being a ‘responsible investor’ while remaining involved in a mine with a long history of being implicated in alleged human rights violations and severe environmental damage. This exegesis considers the author’s reportage and methodology and how she included peace journalism concepts in the research and publication of ‘Blood Money’. It also analyses the public response.

Feeding the Family When the Wolf's at the Door: The Impact of Over-Indebtedness on Contemporary Foodways in Low-Income Families in the UK

In the UK, following the credit crunch, “quality” newspapers and glossy magazines were full of references to frugality. What was being offered by these writers in practice, however, was more a whol...

DNA typing from fluorescent powder dusted latent fingerprints

DNA profiles were successfully typed from four latent fingerprints deposited on glass plate, glossy magazine paper, and plastic surface that were dusted with red, green, and yellow fluorescent powder. No or partial DNA profile was generated from one latent fingerprint samples. In addition, two DNA extraction methods, i.e., QIAamp ® DNA Mini Kit and Chelex ® 100 were compared. Experiments demonstrated that the absorbance measurements by spectrophotometery were interfered by colors of the fluorescent powder extracts, although these did not affect DNA profiling and detection of the PCR-amplified products by the genetic analyzer instrument. Results demonstrated that QIAamp ® DNA Mini Kit was more suitable than Chelex ® 100 for recovery of DNA from fluorescent powder dusted fingerprints. The quality of partial DNA profiles obtained from fluorescent powder dusted fingerprints was improved through the application of low copy number (LCN) typing, by increasing the number of PCR cycles from 28 to 34. Surface type had an effect on the number of loci obtained, and fluorescent fingerprint powders used had subtle effect on the profile quality obtained.

The Quiet Rites and Riotous Hopes of a Graduate Student

The rites of passage that have most changed me as graduate student have been the hallways, crevices, secret alleys, and long passages of texts that I have been asked to read and write. I have had the best conversations of my life in graduate school. Reading the noise and necessity of Emily Dickinson's dashes, I have considered how one is able to communicate with silence. I have pondered the precarious relationship humanity has formed with our environment, amazed at Virginia Woolf's ability to write world where time passes without the intrusion of humans. I have thought about how democracy proceeds during an Indian election that is fraught with sectarian violence and whether or not the subaltern can ever speak. Is letterpress more radical technology than eBooks on iPads? What is beauty and why is it valued? Can changing the point of view of novel change the point of view of its reader? In graduate school my colleagues and I have asked these questions and so many more. My backpack has been full with the Exeter Riddles, Margaret Cavendish's A Description of New World Called the Blazing World, Plato's Symposium, Slavoj Zizek's Love Your Symptom! all tucked together at once. Yet, looking over the past seven years of my life and the $27,000 of debt incurred while pursuing graduate studies, one might ask what I have tangibly gained. Experience? Conversation? Nothing more than what everyone is given in this life: intangible and fleeting passages of time. My graduate scholarship has encouraged me, however, to ask what I want to do with this time. Images of mortarboards and gowns sprawled across Maclean's reports of Top Rated Universities miss the academic rites of passage that are most elusive and transformative. Quite simply--and far less glamorously than what is depicted in any glossy magazine spread--a graduate education has gifted me with the means to think: room in which to work, access to the greatest works of literature ever written in the history of civilization, and time to write. Oftentimes the rites of passage for graduate student occur in the silent hours of late nights. They have been induced by the panic of deadline (and uncountable cups of fairly traded locally roasted coffee) and have been accomplished with unreasonable dedication (at the cost, minimally, of missing movie; maximally, of watching as my non-graduate-school friends begin to own homes, have babies, put away for their retirements, while I still qualify for discount on my transit pass because, at the age of thirty-three, I am in the same category as high school students--a discount for which I am unbelievably grateful). My work as scholar is quiet. It is slow. It is often done in sweat pants and without makeup. I assure you that the real work of doctoral student is not the stuff of photographic montage taken by the marketing department of my university. Pursing graduate studies in the Humanities is the choice to spend good percentage of my life engaged in asking questions about how to live meaningful life, what the role of an individual is within society, and why humans create things that are beautiful. If I'm lucky this apprenticeship will give me the chance to be professor with my own students, to continue asking difficult questions about what we want our civilizations and communities to look like. As an idealist and novice (joyful positions I hope never to lose as an academic), to ask these sorts of questions is what I believe to be the role of scholarship in the Liberal Arts. How my federal government defines the role of scholarship is the transfer [of] knowledge into economic advantage with focus on industry-academic partnerships (Government of Canada np). To meet these federal demands for funding, tangible, consumer-based model of education has been established in nearly all of the universities across Canada. Students are called consumers. A degree is referred to as credential. To be an instructor is to be student's employee: a grammar janitor as professor Laura Penny words it, a language waitress (102-03). …

Avenue Literair: literatuur in de ‘glossy-aller-glossy’s’, 1967-1990

The glossy magazine Avenue (1965-1994) is famous for its pioneering combination of words and images. The luxuriously designed magazine successfully combined lifestyle topics with art and design. Little is known about the magazine's literary supplement, Avenue Literair (1967-1990). This supplement, which reached a broad, not specifically literary public, offered a remarkable mix of national and international literature, gathered or translated by editors that enjoyed considerable prestige in the literary field. This article provides a first exploration of the content, position and editorial background of Avenue Literair.

Дискурс глянцевого журнала: социокоммуникативные аспекты

В предлагаемой статье рассматривается один из субъектов современного дискурса потребления - женский глянцевый журнал. По результатам дискурсного анализа текстовых материалов журнала «Cosmopolitan» выделены специфические языковые средства и содержательные паттерны, с помощью которых существляется конструирование коллективного жизненного стиля.