The Importance Of Visual Patterns In Cosmopolitan Magazine

The first factor she believes has influence on the body image of black women and young girls is the celebrities shown in the media. In her essay, she mentions celebrities within black culture that are shown in the media as beauty ideals. Her examples included actresses, musicians, and models who are thin. There are also TV shows and ads that are shown to consumers. She gives an example of a show called “The Parkers” which follows a woman with a full-figured body. The show portrays her as a loud, ghetto woman who is constantly denied by a black college professor. The man constantly squirms away from her and goes after women with thin body figures.

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough, our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

In the context of physical appearance, black woman are only featured with body parts- mainly their “large, rotund behind” (Perry 137). The presentation of the face is mainly limited to white or lighter-complexioned women. The highest idealization of women is one that possesses a “‘high-status’ face combined with a highly sexualized body read by the viewer as the body of a poor or working-class woman” (Perry 137). Perry further substantiates her claim by stating that “women are created or valued by how many fantasy elements have been pieced together in their bodies” (137). She debunks the opposition arguing that the bodies of black women are appreciated by pointing out that only a minority of black women have such attributes, and those without are pressured and struggle to achieve such proportions.

In the book Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield, demonstrates plenty of pictures of how society wants women to be. Furthermore, plenty of the pictures show women exposing their bodies. With the media promoting these pictures, women will constantly be worried about their appearance. Without doubt, these images put out by the media will affect women greatly in both society, and the work environment.

This may seem a basically simple task, though her spin and the overall diction she uses to describe what she sees in the first few sentences suggest what will follow. For example, “…slender body, flawless (and more often than not white) skin; delicate, even facial features enhanced by makeup, carefully coifed hair…” Para 2). She then provides anecdotes from teens regarding their own body image before delving into the beginning of the 20th century, where she draws upon Brumberg’s 1997 book, “The Body Project. An Intimate History of American Girls”; a starting point for the conversation ahead. Lipkin then begins a chronicle of certain diseases associated with poor body image followed by the response of a specific cosmetic branding company. Lipkin closes her article by not providing a clear solution to the problem, but rather reinforcing the idea that women are seen as, “…both bait and targets…” (Para

Cosmopolitan magazine, as it is today, is an international woman’s magazine involving topics on sex, relationships, beauty, fashion and health. The variation of Cosmopolitan (Cosmo) we have in today’s society is rather sexually explicit in many of its articles and covers. This was not always the case. Cosmopolitan was founded by Schlicht & Field in 1886. The magazine was originally created to be a “family magazine” . Cosmopolitan introduced articles on family and home life. In 1888, Cosmo gained a new editor in E. D. Walker. He would add new elements to the magazine. These included serial fiction, book reviews and color illustrations.

“Never Just Pictures” by Susan Bordo, is about how today’s society is influenced by the mass medias unrealistic ideas of how they are supposed to look. In this essay, the author breaks down the images being showcased by today’s culture concerning the aesthetics of the female body. Bordo also talks about how what was considered ‘beautiful’ or ‘perfect’ before has changed. Lately, the world has been on a craze to look like the air brushed model in the picture. Bordo explains how a lot of people are becoming more obsessed with their physique, and depending on looking thin to make them happy, instead of focusing on being happy and healthy.

In today`s population gender, roles play part in our daily life. Gender roles are created by the society that each person lives in. It can be broken down into feminine roles, strength masculine, and many others. In American culture, it shows their gender roles by appealing to the environment and changing the way society thinks. After watching The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women video, it is important to look at the gender roles in contemporary U.S. society. I picked up four different magazines to collect my samples for this assignment. I collected four magazines at Barnes and Nobles on November 9, 2016. The first magazine that I chose was the Men`s Health magazine; which talked about how its best to fit and real guys who love to work out have insane results. The second magazine I collected was the Tatler magazine. The third magazine is Vanity Fair, and the fourth one is the rolling stone magazine. All of the magazines that I sampled from are all different because they all have different pictures that show why gender role can be different in culture. I will discuss how gender is portrayed in the sample ads, how the gender roles are reinforced in the situation that I observed, and I will apply the theory to the observations. Gender roles are very important to American Culture.

Magazines have implicitly and explicitly been influencing humans for decades. They are continually more involved in the media, however the market is highly competitive. It is extremely important for magazines to maintain the readers’ interest and loyalty therefore they must excel in its appearance and content. Helen Brown created the Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965. It holds a spot as one of the most successful women’s magazines of all time, and proceeds to be the number one selling monthly magazine. (Ouellette, 360, 2005).

In this magazine, a model is standing tall and confident with her beauty she holds. We also see a quote, beside the model, by Julie Henderson, the quote indicates that “every women is beautiful.” Their magazine focuses on the real beauty of each ethnicity and culture. The magazine shows a model that is not “typical skinny and blond” girl; instead she is “black.” The significance of this model, standing tall and confident, represents that all women and everyone are beautiful.

The beauty standards in the fashion industry are purely Eurocentric, shown primarily by the white majority of models as well as the prominence of hair relaxers in the African American community. Out of the 4,637 spring/summer runway shows during New York Fashion Week, a shocking eighty percent of models were white, the second highest race being Asians at a scanty 8.1% (Wilson “Black…” 1). This complete lack of diversity shows not only the close-mindedness of today’s designers, but also the racism—however inadvertent it may be. By using a majority of white models,

Images used of women in the media usually present women as sex objects to be viewed by males. The media representation of women suggests women should have the appearance of mannequins, tall and thin, with very long beautiful flowing hair to compliment their glowing blemish free skin, with long perfect legs. It can be argued that the media encourage women to view their bodies as an ongoing project that is in constant need of improving. The content of magazines aimed at women mainly contains information and images based on beauty and fashion, with

In terms of conventional western femininity, the model has been groomed and presented to us as the epitome of expected femininity, a standard that women should aspire to become and a guideline for what a man should look for in a woman. Altogether, her appearance has time and thought out into it, which is often a pushed rule onto women in that their appearance becomes their most important aspect. Also, the lack of space the model takes is indicative of the dainty stereotype that women are small and unable to complete most tasks without help, this also presents a toxic guideline for men; that they are expected to take care of a woman and that she is helpless instead of equal division between tasks, careers and daily functioning. The strength of the image and its portrayal of femininity is backed up by the near complete lack of masculine traits being

Attention Getter: “In a world where a constant flow of media images far exceeds the number of women we could never see face to face, this abnormally thin and digitally enhanced feminine ideal has become the norm in our minds. A counterfeit, dangerous, unattainable norm” (Kite).

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).