In the mid sixties, Helen Gurley Brown stepped in as editor in chief. She brought with her the message of sexual freedom for single women, and started replacing the cover illustrations with photos of young models in minimal clothing.
Sales increased as a result. Since then the magazine has become more sexually centered. It still features many articles on having pleasurable sex and maintain fulfilling relationships. There is a much greater emphasis on how women can make themselves more desirable to men. One look at the website reveals the tone of the magazine. These are the first three articles listed:. They have also been criticized for perpetuating a nearly impossible standard of beauty and for retouching models to make them appear thinner.
Today Cosmopolitan retains almost no reminants of its origins. It is fascinating to see how it has shifted with the culture and how our culture has changed because of it. Sources: here , here , here , here , here , here , and here. Lauren McGuire is a SocImages intern and an assistant to a disability activist.
She recently launched her own blog, The Fatal Foxtrot , that is focused on the awkward passage into adulthood. If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.
There's something touchingly quaint about the caption "Audrey Hepburn wears pretty clothes in her new movie. I am old enough to have read Cosmopolitan before Helen Gurley Brown took over. It was definitely a magazine for readers. Gradually the articles became more aimed at getting and pleasing a man and the fiction became snippets of erotic fantasy.
Now when I see an issue of Cosmopolitan I am saddened that it seems to be directed to an audience with the collective attention span of a gnat. Any portion that pretends to be an article seems limited to bullets and twitter-esque snark. And now it's out of business. Em, absolutely, i used to buy magazines all the time but decided to cut them out completely a few years ago, if i compare how i feel about myself after flicking through a mag like that to how feel when i don't, it makes me wonder why i ever bought them.
I used to read cosmogirl too, I from what I remember it was pretty good, I know I learnt a lot about sexual health and stds from it. I find the 70's issue the most interesting of these examples--it really shows the transition of the magazine from more serious content to "harrowingly explicit sex manual.
And in the recent one it's all sex, all the time, except for one article about not gettin' raped. Sal: All magazines are going in that direction. The last time I bought an issue of "Better Homes and Gardens" a magazine I used to love , I aged through the whole thing looking for an article and never found one.
It's all bulleted lists, multi-colored text boxes, and photo captions. I just love the "get a healthy, sexy vagina" headline. Like what, the primary sex organ of a woman is not inherently "sexy"? If a vagina isn't sexy, I don't know what is. Perhaps the article discusses waxing, or kegels, or labiaplasty, or some other way to sex up your sex. I'm ashamed to say that I read Cosmo as a teenager, shortly after I stopped reading Seventeen, and absolutely attribute a lifelong struggle with eating disorders in large part to these rags.
Thankfully, I can now find a perineum on my own and no longer need Cosmo's recycled sex tips. Really interesting how a change that reflected women's liberation and the sexual revolution in the 70s is now serving basically the opposite purpose. The sex articles are no longer there to empower women, but to remind us how woefully inadequate we would be as lovers without Cosmo's sage advice.
I remember in high school, when my friends and I thought it was hilarious to pick a Cosmo article at random and read it out loud to each other in a crowded bookstore. I think the worst was one going into great detail about how, exactly to move your hand around your guy's penis during a hand job.
Faux liberation strikes again. I bought an old copy of Cosmopolitan from for five bucks at a used bookstore. It features two short stories one a man vs. I assumed that it was a different magazine, even though it shared the name, until I looked up the Wikipedia article later. It might be "harrowingly explicit" but it's also completely useless as a sex manual.
The advice it gives is all horrible, and the way they present it by suggesting 'hot surprises' instead of encouraging you to talk to your partner and actually find out what you'd both like is even worse. It's a gender role indoctrination manual that encourages insecurity and discourages communication across gender lines.
Copies sold out within 24 hours as women lapped up its "lipstick feminism". One reader, a schoolgirl at the time, remembers: "Cosmo was fun, it was funny and it was the only kind of biology we were interested in! We weren't watching our backs, like women's magazines have to now.
Cosmo wasn't afraid to tackle sex and relationships head-on. Down the years, its headlines have included "Four ways to get more foreplay" and "20 sex tricks to try tonight". Issues such as abortion and sexually transmitted diseases were also Cosmo territory. And it produced some polarising headlines to match.
The line "I was frigid" on a poster provoked London Underground to demand the word "frigid" be covered with a black strip. Unfortunately, the tape left some posters declaring: "I was f--d.
Het eerste exemplaar van de Amerikaanse Cosmopolitan stamt uit en dat maakt het een van de oudste Amerikaanse life-style- en modemagazines. In de loop der jaren is het uitgegroeid tot een echt vrouwenblad.
Tegenwoordig ligt de prijs van het tijdschrift aanmerkelijk hoger. Er zijn tegenwoordig varianten op de Cosmopolitan, zoals de CosmoGirl!.
W r. Tidskriften ges ut av. Cosmopolitan grundades , och fick sin nuvarande utformning under talet. December cover featuring a pregnantEmma Roberts en. Comopolitan Magazine Logo. Female en. United States en.
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