Young Women's Magazines Research Articles

Temporality in British young women's magazines: food, cooking and weight loss.

The present study examines seasonal and temporal patterns in food-related content of two UK magazines for young women focusing on food types, cooking and weight loss. Content analysis of magazines from three time blocks between 1999 and 2011. Desk-based study. Ninety-seven magazines yielding 590 advertisements and 148 articles. Cluster analysis of type of food advertising produced three clusters of magazines, which reflected recognised food behaviours of young women: vegetarianism, convenience eating and weight control. The first cluster of magazines was associated with Christmas and Millennium time periods, with advertising of alcohol, coffee, cheese, vegetarian meat substitutes and weight-loss pills. Recipes were prominent in article content and tended to be for cakes/desserts, luxury meals and party food. The second cluster was associated with summer months and 2010 issues. There was little advertising for conventional foods in cluster 2, but strong representation of diet plans and foods for weight loss. Weight-loss messages in articles focused on short-term aesthetic goals, emphasising speedy weight loss without giving up nice foods or exercising. Cluster 3 magazines were associated with post-New Year and 2005 periods. Food advertising was for everyday foods and convenience products, with fewer weight-loss products than other clusters; conversely, article content had a greater prevalence of weight-loss messages. The cyclical nature of magazine content - indulgence and excess encouraged at Christmas, restraint recommended post-New Year and severe dieting advocated in the summer months - endorses yo-yo dieting behaviour and may not be conducive to public health.

Masturbation and the Media

This paper explores the important role the media play in informing young people about masturbation. A pilot study of focus groups with twenty-two young Australians aged between 14 and 16 explored what they know about sex and sexuality, and where they have found that knowledge. This paper reports on their knowledge about masturbation. Although researchers agree that masturbation can be a positive part of healthy sexual development, most young people reported that they received very little positive information about it from their parents or in formal sex education in school. These young people’s discussions around this topic were largely ambivalent, but also highly complex due to the varying levels and types of information that they receive. In this context the media play a vital role in providing information about masturbation through books and magazines for young women, and television comedies for young men.

‘A Shock to the System’: Feminist Interventions in Youth Subculture—The Adventures of Shocking Pink

For feminists of the second wave, feminism was understood to be a social movement ‘outside’ of, and usually in opposition to, mainstream popular culture. The idea that girls and young women were socialized into identifying with ‘false images’ of femininity through popular culture was a widely adopted view within feminism of this period. Magazines for girls and young women inevitably became a concern both for feminists working in academic disciplines and to those more widely within feminism. From this perspective, magazines demanded a feminist intervention that would show ‘real’ images of girls and young women. This article explores one such intervention—Shocking Pink, a magazine that appeared between 1981 and 1982, and then resurfaced between 1987 and 1992. Perceived as a challenge to commercial magazines for young women (e.g. Jackie and My Guy), Shocking Pink included articles on politics, sexuality and ‘race’, along with radical re-appropriations of mainstream teen magazine staples such as photostrip love stories. This article traces the history of Shocking Pink and argues that although being a feminist magazine, Shocking Pink engaged with and took advantage of a wider range of changes in young women's experiences, identities and expressions during the 1980s. In addition, it was also a contradictory text for many established forms of feminism of the period. Whilst it explored the ways in which gender inequalities are produced and reproduced through mainstream magazines, it also examined the ways in which feminism had reproduced other sorts of power relations. Shocking Pink was a magazine produced by a collective of young women, for young women, and, as such, it also offered a challenge to older (largely white, middle-class) feminist critics of popular culture, problematizing their distinctions between ‘real’, or ‘good’ young feminist identities, and ‘bad’.

Swimsuit issues: promoting positive body image in young women's magazines

This preliminary study reviews the promotion of healthy body image to young Australian women, following the 2009 introduction of the voluntary Industry Code of Conduct on Body Image. The Code includes using diverse sized models in magazines. A qualitative content analysis of the 2010 annual 'swimsuit issues' was conducted on 10 Australian young women's magazines. Pictorial and/or textual editorial evidence of promoting diverse body shapes and sizes was regarded as indicative of the magazines' upholding aspects of the voluntary Code of Conduct for Body Image. Diverse sized models were incorporated in four of the seven magazines with swimsuit features sampled. Body size differentials were presented as part of the swimsuit features in three of the magazines sampled. Tips for diverse body type enhancement were included in four of the magazines. All magazines met at least one criterion. One magazine displayed evidence of all three criteria. Preliminary examination suggests that more than half of young women's magazines are upholding elements of the voluntary Code of Conduct for Body Image, through representation of diverse-sized women in their swimsuit issues.

An Analysis of Cardiovascular Health Information in Popular Young Women's Magazines: What Messages are Women Receiving?

This study evaluated the consistency of cardiovascular health information in popular women's magazines against the American Heart Association's (AHA) guidelines for nutrition, physical activity, weight management, and smoking. Six issues of four publications, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue, and Shape (24 total) were reviewed for inclusion. Content analysis was performed by two independent raters on 162 articles (283 instances of priority-related information). Articles were rated using a questionnaire developed from the AHA-recommended priorities. Results are presented primarily in qualitative form, supplemented by analyses of variance and correlation significance tests when appropriate. Physical activity was the most common topic, followed by nutrition, weight management, and cigarette smoking. Information about weight management was less consistent than other areas. Although publications varied widely in the frequency of coverage, there was no significant difference among them in overall consistency of the information. No articles gave information directly contrary to the AHA recommendations. Limitations include the subjective nature of the content analysis and the limited number of publications and time period for review. Women are receiving information related to diet, exercise, weight management, and cigarette smoking in popular magazines. However, the information is variable to the extent that it is consistent with evidence-based prevention guidelines.

Victorian women's magazines: an anthology

Introduction Section A 1. The fashion magazine 2. The drawing room journal 3. The general illustrated magazine 4. Religious magazines 5. Ladies' papers 6. Feminist journals 7. Magazines for young women and girls 8. Cheap domestic magazines Section B Mastheads and covers Covers Discursive Prose 1) The article Discursive Prose 2) The short paragraph or 'Tit-Bit' Prose fiction Fashion and the fashion plate Poetry Political journalism Advertising Advice columns and readers' letters Reviews Competitions Illustrated biography The personal interview

Youth, sex, and government

For nearly twenty-five years, the field of youth studies has employed the same conceptual tools to explain the conduct of young people, tools that inexorably lead to the same recurrent conclusions-youth equals resistance, youth equals alienation, youth equals problem. This book offers a way out of this theoretical Groundhog Day. Starting with the familiar notion of youth subcultures, but also addressing topics such as young women's magazines, 'at risk' youth, anorexia nervosa, and HIV/AIDS programs, this book examines the way in which youth is produced as both a governmental object and a set of practices of the self. Employing the ideas of Foucault, Rose and Mauss, this new approach attempts to reinvigorate what is an important-yet slumbering-area of research.

Rebellion, modernity, and romance: Smoking as a gendered practice in popular young women's magazines, britain 1918–1939

In Britain, the feminization of the cigarette is a 20th-century phenomenon. Prior to 1900 few women smoked, but during the 1920s and 1930s smoking amongst women increased dramatically. Set in the context of the increased prevalence of smoking among women during the interwar years, and negotiations around the meanings of gender and gender relations in this period, this article examines some of the ways in which popular young women's magazines represented smoking as a gendered practice. An examination of the fiction and illustrations featured in popular magazines, as well as articles and advertisements, reveals that representations of women smoking were employed in the interwar years to convey and develop key gender issues—these were rebellion, modernity, and heterosexual intimacy.

Health and Nutrition Messages in Food Advertisements: A Comparative Content Analysis of Young and Mature Australian Women's Magazines

Surveys investigating adults’ sources of nutrition information have consistently found magazines to be nominated most frequently, particularly among women. A content analysis was undertaken to compare the advertisements in two magazines with a target audience of young women with those in four magazines oriented towards mature women. Seventy-two magazine issues having a 1992 publication date were sampled, and all food advertisements were coded. In the mature women's magazines, 47% of advertisements were for core (basic) food groups, and all five core food groups were addressed. Food advertisements in the young women's magazines addressed a narrower range of foods, promoted core foods at a significantly lower rate (12% of advertisements), and included only three of the core food groups. The noncore foods most commonly advertised were of low nutrient density and consisted mainly of alcohol, supplements, and cocoa products. Food advertising in young women's magazines frequently used images of lifestyle success and failed to emphasize nutrition or health information messages or dietary recommendations.There is a need to more fully explore attitudes to food and food purchasing behavior in young women and to develop nutrition education strategies to counter the advertising of predominantly nonmeal-type foods with low nutrient density in young women's magazines.