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Remember how it's hard to tell the difference between British lad mags and rapists? Well, it's especially tough when said mags actually tell their readers to rape women. Which was apparently online mag UniLad's idea of a funny joke. More »
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A totally lame group of fun-hating parents demanding their children's minds be shielded from hypersexual content have banded together to petition that Cosmopolitan, the best magazine to read if you'd like to be sexually judged in airports, be concealed in the checkout area of their local supermarkets. Where's a girl got to put a scrunchie in order to get some fearless fun around here?! More »
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We've all watched Dakota Fanning grow up, and though she won't be 18 until next month the folks at Cosmo simply couldn't wait to put her on the cover of the magazine with the line, "His Best Sex Ever" near her head. Fanning's appearance on the cover isn't really all that scandalous. She's a freshman at NYU, and Miley Cyrus was considered an appropriate choice for the cover of women's magazines when she was just 16. However, New York Magazine notes that the cover story "Welcome to Your Cosmo Years, Dakota" creepily lists ways to tell she's quite the adult, and the caption on a photo of Dakota in bunny ears reads, "Two years ago this would have been cute. Now it's hot." Ironically, you aren't really a woman until editors decide it's okay to portray you in a sexy, infantilizing manner. More »
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2011 is already over in magazine-land, where January '12 issues are filling up newsstand shelves. This allows us to ask, and answer, the hard questions, like: did people buy a catastrophic number of magazines with Kim Kardashian's face on them this year, or just a distressingly high one? And what's the deal with Sarah Jessica Parker, anyway? SJP proved a reliable cover subject on Elle, Vogue, and Marie Claire, earning each magazine its second- or third-bestseller of the year. Kim Kardashian had Glamour and Cosmopolitan's bestsellers, but on the front of Harper's Bazaar, Self, and Lucky, Kim's face elicited only average sales. Women's Wear Daily reports that "a source said that her January 2012 Glamour cover with sisters Khloé and Kourtney is on track to fall below 400,000 sales — a really poor performance." Peering into the American id by way of magazine-buying habits has its interesting findings: people like Mark Sanchez more than they do Derek Jeter. They don't like Reese Witherspoon, but they do like Gwyneth Paltrow — just not on the cover of Bon Appetit. Heidi Klum did well, and so did Mila Kunis, who delivered 15% above-average sales for W and 10% above-average for Cosmopolitan. But people hate Justin Timberlake on a cover: with Mila, he had the fourth-best Elle of the year, but alone, he was Esquire's worst seller. Also unwanted on magazine covers in 2011: Justin Bieber. Nobody bought Bieber's Vanity Fair — it was the third-worst selling issue not only of the year, but of editor Graydon Carter's entire tenure — and his Rolling Stone sold 5% below average. Maybe all of those Beliebers who buy up multiple copies of his albums should show a little love to their local newsagent? And Lady Gaga had both the third-best and the third-worst Harper's Bazaar issues of the year (May being best and October being worst). Either people were all like, 'Wait, we just got a Harper's Bazaar with this lady's face on it, what gives?' or they prefer Gaga with makeup and weird facial prosthetics. (Her October cover was au naturel.) [WWD] More »
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After Lindsay Lohan's entire Playboy pictorial leaked online, Hugh Hefner decided to release the issue early. So how are sales? Well, the mag either "falls flat with consumers," or is "on fire." TMZ reports: More »
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Have you ever felt like women's health and fitness magazines seem to be addressing an audience that consists of unfrozen cavewomen from another planet who don't know anything of the ways of the earth-people? You're not alone. Today's inaugural entry in Fitness Advice Follies— the dumping ground for obvious, confusing, or terrible diet and exercise advice— addresses a topic near and dear to all of our hearts: cake. Specifically, is cake delicious? More »
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Were you aware that we live in a world in which Blake Lively has been on the cover of Vogue twice while Meryl Streep hasn't made a single appearance? Well, no more. Vogue has released the cover of its January issue, which features Streep (along with some groundbreaking jacket-wearing methods). Inside the 62-year-old says that when she was offered three different witch roles after turning 40, she felt it meant older women were "grotesque on some level" and told her husband, "It's over." The Associated Press notes that she "jokes in the magazine she's the 'oldest person'" to appear on the cover, but it's true. Priscilla Presley was 59 when she posed for the magazine in 2004, but she shared the cover with her daughter and granddaughter. Streep has appeared in international editions of Vogue, but in 2010 the average age of cover models in the American magazine was only 33. More »
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Fashionista has spotted a magazine mystery that will put those skills you developed while reading Highlights to good use. On the right we have Carey Mulligan's October 2010 Vogue cover, and on the left is the November 2011 issue of Elle France. The two covers obviously used the same photo, though it seems like the images may have been tweaked slightly in Photoshop. Mulligan's left arm, eye makeup, and smile look a bit different, but it's possible it's a scanner issue. More »
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At this point, we know that most, if not all, of the commercial, non-news images we see are digitally enhanced. Still, studies show that women — of all sizes — feel bad and/or think negative thoughts about their bodies after viewing pictures of models in magazine ads for just three minutes. And many magazine readers are not yet women; they are girls, with still-developing physiques, self-esteem and brains. Yet extensive Photoshopping persists. But what if you could measure just how much a photograph had been altered? Would it help in countering the effect of these misleading images? We may find out: A proposal for a program is in the works. More »
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Finally, we've found a magazine that doesn't lie to its readers with its cover lines. Yes, Amber Heard's torso looks strangely whittled on the cover of Women's Health, but the editors clearly labeled the image "Sculpt Sexy Curves." As in, you can't achieve this look from this month's silly diet and exercise tips, you'll need to digitally sculpt this silhouette in Photoshop. More »
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In the spirit of the DASH store vigil for Kim Kardashian's marriage, today a massive crowd of Ryan Gosling fans (okay, about 12 people) gathered outside People magazine headquarters to protest the editors' decision to name Bradley Cooper 2011's Sexiest Man Alive. When we last checked, the year was not 2009 and People wasn't a publication that caters exclusively to 14-year-old boys. The folks behind Time Person Of The Year should take this as a warning. Sure, Steve Jobs changed the world and stuff, but Ryan Gosling fans will be vindicated. More »
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Sales of tabloid magazines have been floundering for quite some time, and Ok! was hemorrhaging money until it was sold this summer. So, how do you maximize profits at a time when we're saturated with celebrity gossip and people are buying fewer magazines in general? Create a brand new magazine that follows the petty, producer-instigated arguments and Walmart excursions of America's least talented stars! More »
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The South African edition of Marie Claire put together a "body issue," and asked ad agencies to come up with concepts where the thing being advertised is loving your body. An interesting twist from a ladymag — usually such publications are blamed for fostering low-self esteem in women. More »
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While flipping through this year's Halloween issue of Martha Stewart Living, Mary Findley realized she'd seen this image before. While it would have been tremendously easy to switch the icing to white, swap the bat decorations for ghosts, and change the caption to "ghoulishly good," the editors decided to run the exact same "scarily sweet" cake that was pictured in the 2008 issue. The New York Times notes that publications repurpose content all the time — the problem is there's no indication in the magazine that many of the articles are republished. More »
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Many magazines are having a hard time attracting readers to their websites, so they're trying a new approach. Rather than just listing urls and hoping people will look them up online, magazines are becoming littered with mobile codes. The hope is that while readers don't care enough to look up an editor's blog, they'll bother to hunt down QR codes and snap them with their cell phones. More »
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The Vogue brand is no stranger to offensive missteps. In the past we've seen French Vogue do blackface, American Vogue portray LeBron James as King Kong, and Indian Vogue put a Fendi bib on an impoverished child. However, Vogue Italia always seemed a bit more enlightened than its sister publications. Just three years ago, the magazine put out its first "all black" issue, which (while not without its questionable moments) did more than any other edition to push for more diversity in fashion. More »
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As we now know, Cosmopolitan just launched an iPad-only magazine called Cosmo For Guys. It's like Cosmo, but … uh, for guys. As card-carrying guys ourselves, we took a look and learned a few things. More »
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The Awl has been reading the August issue of Seventeen for some reason and spotted this gem: A column called "LIES He Tells You Straight To Your Face." Maybe it's best that girls learn they can't trust anything guys say, from basic facts about their lives to their love of kittens. It paves the way for Cosmo to scare them them into thinking men are lying about what they want in bed and in all likelihood, sleeping with their best friend. More »
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Lady Gaga has openly discussed her physical attraction to women in the past, but in a new interview for the August issue of The Advocate, Gaga says firmly that she is not just a gay activist, but is an actual member of the LGBT community. "The b letter," she said. More »
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Earlier this month, three plus-sized models landed the cover of Vogue Italia. Velvet d'Amour — the plus-sized actress, model and photographer who famously walked the runway at the Jean Paul Gaultier show in Paris in 2006 — has some thoughts about the issue, and the fact that the women aren't actually wearing much in the way of fashion. More »
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Shudder-inducing fanfic of the week: The new issue of Newsweek features a story called "Diana At 50: If She Were Here Now," by none other than Tina Brown. The digital artwork on the cover reanimates Diana so that she is walking alongside daughter-in-law Kate Middleton, who is gazing adoringly at the People's Princess and ignoring the fact that if this is really happening, Di is a zombie. The Atlantic Wire asks, "How Creepy Is Princess Diana's Ghost on the Cover of Newsweek?" Answer: Very! More »
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This will shock you: The women portrayed in ladymags don't reflect their readership. In this case, when it comes to age. More »
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The woman who plays Betty Draper says: "I'll stop at McDonald's and get a strawberry shake and fries and not feel guilty at all, because I deserve it." More »
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Barnes & Noble recently took an unusual step — the bookstore chain required the magazine Dossier wrap its new issue in opaque plastic before agreeing to stock it. The problem with the cover? Nudity. More specifically, the nude torso of the famously androgynous male model Andrej Pejic. Barnes & Noble was concerned customers would mistake Pejic for a shirtless woman. More »
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In November of last year, the premiere issue of Pole Spin magazine arrived, and, as far as we could tell, it was the only magazine dedicated to The International Pole Dance Fitness & Lifestyle. But now! Meet Vertical, a new bimonthly publication about the "sport and performance of pole." More »
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I haven't read Cosmopolitan magazine since I was 16. More »
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Charles Laufer, the founder of Tiger Beat died recently. It reminded me of how I wound up posing for the teenybopper bible. More »
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American Vogue's fawning, and roundly criticized, profile of Asma al-Assad, the First Lady of Syria, got me thinking about the almost-funny and totally abject stupidity of so much of that luxury rag's "coverage" of "serious" world events. From puff-pieces about dictatorships to homeless chic, models posed as oil-slicked birds to an urban guerilla fashion story, Vogue really has done it all! Never mind the fact that nobody in their right mind would ever pick it up for its up-to-the-minute reports from Benghazi: willful obliviousness on this scale has to be seen to be believed. More »
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Some magazine insiders are irritated by how the industry's top awards reorganized the "general excellence" category: Women's magazines are in the "Fashion, Service and Lifestyle" category, while fashion-centric GQ and other men's magazines fall under the same category as "business, science and active-interest publications." Separately, about a third of the writer finalists are women. More »
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Details are hazy — so take this with a grain of her preferred Maldon Sea Salt — but word on the street is, Gwyneth may be getting her own glossy. More »
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Why do people keep buying beauty and fitness magazines if study after study shows staring at extremely thin models just makes people depressed about their own looks? A new study suggests it isn't just that we're gluttons for punishment. Readers who are unhappy with their looks will avoid comparing themselves to models, but they actually ogle them even more if they're told they can transform themselves into Gisele Bundchen. More »
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One researcher has found something that should surprise nobody: women want to buy clothes more if they see them on models who look like them. Will advertisers actually take notice? More »
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After a post last month about the gender disparity in magazine publishing, which was followed by VIDA's much more thorough and ultimately conclusive study, I, perhaps naively, expected to see a comment or two from the publications about the roots of this imbalance. Then weeks passed, and, well, basically nothing. For a while I thought that perhaps it was time to give this up. They had all likely seen the numbers; I didn't want to come off whiny. But then my curiosity remained, and I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. More »
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The design website UnderConsideration has created an incredible interactive graphic featuring 69 real cover lines featured on magazines in 2010. You can filter by magazine or by various keywords, including "burning," "crazy," "STDs," "thong," and "vagina," to generate a new graphic. It's an incredibly useful tool for figuring out whether you should consult Cosmo, Glamour, Maxim, Men's Heath, Redbook, Self, or Women's Health for expert advice on "His Burning Sex Need." (Hint: The answer is Cosmo. All of these lines are absurd, but no other magazine stoops to using the terms "va-jay-jay" and "hoo-ha" on its covers.) More »
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Prepare yourself for the shocking tale of how one tabloid deceived its readers for weeks, seemingly without remorse. I'm not talking about how the weekly gossip rags regularly print spurious rumors about Jessica Simpson's undying love for Nick Lachey or Suri's skincare regimen. OK! magazine broke a promise, and no amount of adorable Jolie-Pitt kid photos will ever make it up to me. More »
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They promise to tone, transform, fix, and whittle your body, but all women's fitness magazines really do is help you lose all that flabby self-esteem you've spent years accumulating. How are they bullshit? Let us count the ways. More »
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In light of a lengthy new profile of Hugh Hefner, a former editor muses on Hef's passage from icon to ghost. More »
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The March cover of Cosmo features Glee's resident "good girl" Lea Michele in a top that's cut nearly to her belly button. Cue the parental hand-wringing! More »
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VIDA has counted up the female writers — and female-authored books reviewed at a variety of publications — and these charts detail their dismal results (dudes are in red). So what's behind this inequality? More »
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Bon Appetit's "irreverent new ad campaign" is one thing. Getting Carrie'd away, quite another. More »
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