Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 29

Writing Women’s Magazines

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contributing original material, responding to the experiences of others, taking part
in focus groups or making suggestions for the magazine, then we would regard
that as participating in the content and development of the magazine. Women’s
weeklies devote somewhere between one quarter and one half of their total content
to material from readers (Oates 1997), and therefore the potential to participate in
the magazines is high. Even if readers do not contribute themselves, they appreciate
that the stories and other content come from women like themselves, and this
makes the magazine much more meaningful to their own lives. One reader relates
her family’s interaction with a woman’s weekly:
A relation of mine had trouble with her daughter and she wrote
to Take a B reak and all the names were altered. She was
desperate, she wanted a reply and I read it in the magazine and
I picked it out straightaway. And reading Take a Break, there’s
been people in the same circumstances as I have and when my
son and daughter-in-law had my first grandchild, we had a fall
out and I never saw him for eleven months and there was a
letter in Take a Break from a grandma and it lifted me and I
actually wrote to Take a Break (Magazine reader, interviewed
February 1995).
This reader’s involvement with Take a Break which extends to her use of
magazines as gifts (Oates in press) illustrates the input into the magazine and also
what readers take from the magazine. It is used as a resource both to air one’s
views and to take on board the experiences of others. Readers recognise this
interactive function of the magazine and use it in a practical way, particularly the
health information, as the reader below explains:
They gave you the name of a book in one of the magazines to
get and I did actually get it and it helped to get me off some
tablets. And then my hormones were all dodgy and I read about
these tablets so I asked my doctor for them and within a week
I was different altogether. They are good, these [magazines]
because they’re all true stories, people’s own experiences, aren’t
they, with different things, they have been tried (Magazine
reader, interviewed September 1994).
By responding to articles, letters or true life stories from others, readers continue
the input from other women by adding their own experiences which in turn generates
further responses, sometimes to the extent that the magazines may start a campaign