Race and Women in the Magazine Industry

  I read the article Get Real! Cultural Relevance and Resistance to the mediated Feminine Ideal by Lisa Duke, and I found it thought-provoking. Duke talks about how women are portrayed in magazines. However, unlike other blog entries that I have posted about women, she also discusses the topic of the race of the models in popular women’s magazines. She goes into great detail of how teenaged aimed magazines (Seventeen and YM) are some of the more acclaimed of the industry. She also discusses the different way that women read magazines such as having a few magazines for a couple of years to look at every once in a while or skimming the entire magazine and then reading it. One of the aspects of this article is that she quotes people of multiple age groups and their views on the topic. For example”Tonya, 17: I like reading the magazine, but it doesn’t have any African American or Hispanic or Asian models...So even though I like reading it, sometimes I can’t relate to all the things that they put inside. They could make it more realistic, with more culture” (288), and helps give more strength to the argument that there needs to be more of a racial diversity in the magazines. I wanted to apply what I have learned from this article by giving visual examples of the three types of models that she mentions:

1) The super model: an older woman with a lot of makeup and “almost a retouch to present an almost otherworldly beauty”. They have gained a reputation for the way that they look.

2) The fresh model: The less famous but still beautiful. Much younger but seem to look a lot alike. They are closer to the reader’s ages. The articles around them tend to be the advice theme. Another article I read, Just a Girl, Rock Music, Feminism, and the cultural Construction of Female Youth by Gayle Wald, may categorize this section for pop singers such as Gwen Stefani because it is glamorized women but still women taking pride in who they are as individuals.

3) The average girl or “the School Zone”: A much newer model. They are the “real girls who, though attractive, find their ways into the magazines because of their style and accomplishments” (290). I like to think of these girls as the “girl next story” because they are more of the type of girl that one will see on a daily bases.