Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 33

Writing Women’s Magazines

29

and it looked boring and I know they were slavishly following
their focus groups (Editor, interviewed May 1997).
This statement indicates the tensions that reader input produces. Should the
magazine follow it or not? Do readers really know what they want and do all
readers want the same thing? Readers’ desires, dislikes, true life stories, letters and
so on have to be assessed for suitability and whether they fit the magazine’s ‘house
style’. As each magazine has tried to create its own identity in a crowded market,
the danger of following readers too closely is that the identity may be lost. Weeklies
have a wide readership range, which the deputy features editor suggested was
almost like having two separate audiences - younger women and those aged mid
thirties and above. The magazine differentiates its audience by age, yet all women
are seen as sharing factors which can override this division and other divisions (for
example class, ethnicity, race, sexuality) and which enables them to read and enjoy
the same weekly magazine (although readers would not necessarily see all aspects
of the content as appropriate to themselves, for example make-up tips demonstrated
on white models were seen as irrelevant by black readers; fashion for thin women
was regarded as unsuitable by average or larger sized readers).
To relate this point back to the earlier discussion about the notion of ‘woman’
in women’s magazines, appealing to a mass market audience encourages the
magazine to propose interests that are im plied and endorsed by the editor and
Journalists as constant in every woman’s life - her appearance, home, and family.
By using these themes, the magazine hopes to reach all women, regardless of age,
class, sexuality or race and therefore this is how the magazine constructs femininity
in its pages. Challenges to this femininity or to the unique selling point of the
magazine are rejected by the editor. For example, the advertising manager of the
magazine wanted to take an advertisement by Ann Summers, the lingerie and sex
aids company. The editor was unhappy about this because the kind of femininity
the magazine offers to its readers is not sexy - it is home and family oriented.
Despite evidence that the most popular magazine among women who held Ann
Summers parties was this particular weekly, the editor felt that readers would be
offended by such an advertisement and it was in fact rejected. In turn, the advertisers
can be offended by what they see as inappropriate headlines:
Sometimes advertisers ask us why we don’t have all practical
headlines and the advantage of the headline is to catch
someone’s eye and quite honestly it’s not a Which? guide to
anything, it’s for entertainment as well as thought provoking
as well as practical as well as information giving. So
occasionally they’ll question a headline but it does catch the