Essay on Ad Bank Semiotic Analysis: Cosmopolitan and Maxim Magazines

In Breazeale’s text, “In Spite of Women”, he touches on how the magazine, Esquire, focuses on incorporating content that is solely directed to the attention of the heterosexual man. In the magazine, Breazeale states that it is an attempt to make men fantasize women only sexually which leaves men with the power and control that they believed that had lost post-depression era. Throughout Kenon Breazeale’s text, he shows how that for there to even be a male consumer, there must be women involved. So, while the magazine touched on things like food, apparel, and home décor, Esquire needed to incorporate erotic images of women in order to capture the attention of heterosexual males. In Breazeale’s text, his purpose is to focus on Esquire to emphasize men’s dominating nature over women in society. In my rhetorical analysis, I will concentrate on analyzing how Breazeale argues that Esquire magazine utilized erotic text, cartoons, and illustrations about women to place the consumer role on males.

These roles for females represent what the advertisement industry believe buyers deem as the real world. As Goffman asked," What messages about women have been given to society through magazine

The final two sections are the longest and are the loudest and most powerful. “Male Decorativeness in Cultural Perspective” mentions the history and notions behind men in advertising and the social influence. It traces examples of advertising and builds up to modern day representations of masculinity. Finally, the reader is left with a question and strong statements and thoughts in “My World…and Welcome to It?” This section is deliberately made the last because it allows the reader to reflect on the world in which they live where people are outwardly judged both now males and females.

The 1990s saw the continued success of magazines illustrated with wood engravings from the prior decade. However, with better printing technology magazine companies were able to evolve even further. “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” changed its name to “Leslie’s Weekly”. “McClure’s” and “The Century branched to accommodate the growing women and children demographic. “Once-A-Week” became “Collier’s Weekly” and the “The Saturday Evening Post” updated its look, evolving into country’s most popular magazine. In addition, “The Saturday Evening Post” transformed its Sunday women’s supplement into the “The Ladies Home Journal”. As a result, magazine’s shifted their attention to the female demographic, leading to the creations of “Cosmopolitan,

The audience for this magazine is generally women, as they are targeting them with their clever and adept choice in titles as well as their diction used. These articles are ‘hot topics’ and will never grow old. “How I Lost 30 LBS! (and got my life back)” is one of the main cover articles that obtain the attention of a great majority of women. This is because many women in today’s society feel they are overweight and/or can improve on their health by losing extra body fat. Furthermore, this article easily gets woman's’ attention with the title of the article, which says how she lost the weight. As a result, many women will buy this magazine to be similar to Jennie Garth and have a new, hot, and improved body. Another article in this magazine is “Anne Hathaway’s Sunset Wedding”, is another cover article in this magazine, this article grabs the attention of many people, who are wanting to get married, or have already been married. Furthermore, after the title in states ‘all details inside’. This creates suspense and a cliffhanger great enough to persuade somebody to purchase this magazine. Another featured article is “How My Heart Attack Saved My Life”. Before this title, in a brightly colored red box it states ‘exclusive’ boldly. This then creates the idea that People magazine is the only place to read this article. In summary through a clever written titles, that

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing he offers the idea that “to be a woman has been to be born...into the keeping of men.” He illustrates on page 46, that women are born to satisfy men, at least in terms of art for most European painters. He empathizes this point by pointing at nude portraits and oil paintings. I decided to analyze my own choice of advertisement to compare his theory in the modern world. I chose an American Apparel advertisement; the company has a history of invoking reactions from the public. The advertisement does not require much analysis to cause offense to the general viewer. American Apparel crosses the line in more ways than one. However, the advertisement I chose was rather tame in comparison to many others I considered.

Cosmopolitan magazine, also known as Cosmo, is a fashion magazine known to target the women audience, around the world, on issues such as beauty, sex appeal, health etc. The magazine appeals our audience through the use of celebrities, such as in the magazines below, Khloe Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Demi Lovato. Through depicting each magazines cover, we will see the common patterns, and analyze the content of the texts displayed and how they relate to women’s style.

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

perceived identity is reinforced.” (329). To understand how a woman is viewed socially, this paper analyzes representations of the female figure on the covers of magazines, specifically. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle and Marie Claire, were analyzed as a whole in the quest to understand how this phenomenon, composed by several genres, organizes and spreads the hegemonic female representation. First, it will be argued that magazines shape identity by selling the image of the perfect

When looking over issues of Cosmopolitan magazines, it is clear that every month similar patterns appear across the issues. These similarities are not only seen in the photos used on each cover, but they are also in the wording used by the editors.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the extent to which women are presented as sex objects in magazines. Previous research by Stankiewic and Rosselli (2008) resulted in 51.80% of advertisements in magazines that featured women, and portrayed them as sex objects. The particular way in which objectification is defined, and thus the resulting rates at which women are portrayed as objects, had varied by study. The objectification of women in advertisements also varied by magazine type.

No excuses, no bull@#*%, no regrets” (Cosmopolitan, Mission par. 3). The magazine most definitely does this by including positive and educational articles for women and presenting them in an entertaining way for young women to read. Their overall youthful style allow them to attract the young audience they target and keep them intrigues with the entertaining sections they include. For example, sections like Confessions and The Cosmo Guy are usually what pull young women towards the magazine (Khidekel, pg. 66; Mosely, pg. 72).

At first glance, you just assume it’s the same old stuff. Another magazine with an attractive person on the cover. Originally I saw it only as trying to make other women feel lesser about themselves because they don’t look like Kate Upton. I rarely even look at them anymore. I would have never thought twice at the way the model was looking into the camera either. It’s just something they have to do for a photo shoot. Berger’s book helped me see that there are always a deeper meaning to things. It is not always black and white, there can be gray areas. The way you look and the things you have will always define you. Ways of Seeing also helped me know the meaning behind

Redbook magazine are devoted to selling products ranging from shoes to shampoo. The entire magazine only has only 210 pages. Approximately 6-8 min of every half hour television show is produced by ad agencies. Americans are bombarded with advertisements. We see them everyday in many different forms and through different mediums. Advertisers study America’s population through a systematic breakdown and analysis of our likes and dislikes in relation to our differences. These differences include gender, sexual orientation, economic status, location, race, ethnicity, and more. Advertisers have substantial knowledge of what appeals to each of these demographics and how these demographics will respond to

The new social movement sweeping across America is the use of social media. Magazines are just one way that is put in the reach of men and women to communicate with each other. The “media and communications are a central element of modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities.” (Gaunlett, Pg.6) Although the outlets of communication are different they both strive to reach an audience that ultimately is affected by the media. Therefore reinforcing the idea that “magazines aimed at women, and increasingly those for men, contain all kinds of advice on how to live, look and interact. Even if we only read these items in an ironic state of mind, it must all sink in somewhere.” (Gaunlett, Pg. 7)