What Is A Good Womens Magazine?

What Is A Good Womens Magazine?

By Shefalee Vasudev

Are women¿s magazines fulfilling mentors that enable us to become more capable women or do they make well-packaged "tokens" out of us?

On a recent train journey back from Mumbai, I couldn¿t help noticing the undivided attention that the lady sitting next to me was giving to the magazine in her hands. After quite a few hours when she was able to look away from it, I asked her what made her bond so much with that magazine. "Think for a minute," she said, "As a woman who wants to keep up with the trendiest and the best in life, I need an affordable guide to shopping, relationships, sex, exercise, fashion, makeup and mothering. What better than a good woman¿s magazine?"

A good woman¿s magazine! This lady had mentioned many things a woman needs to "belong" to the trendy set. And women¿s organisations, the sexual revolution, feminist ideology, reproductive freedom, individualism in coupledom, women¿s rights, etc did not show up in her needs as a woman reader.

Having worked with a woman¿s magazine for more than a couple of years, and having freelanced for many, I must confess I am not particularly fond of them. So much so, that I don¿t want to be caught engrossed in one. But the idea of looking at (and reading) women¿s magazines to be able to write about them, came as a super opportunity to drop my personal bias. In an enthusiastic bid, I picked up the festival and wedding special issues of all of them from the stands. Femina, Savvy, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Woman¿s Era and New Woman.

What women¿s magazines do on their covers is make wonderfully exciting promises. They promise, more fun, fulfillment and thrill than any man, child or job can promise a woman. Dazzling diamond offers, instant how-tos for everything from sexual nirvana to classy cuisine. Where to buy what, what to say to whom, how to do what you never you thought you could, so on and so forth. Some are out to tamper with any self-assuredness that you may have gathered over the years. Others make life seem so easy!

Let¿s be more specific. The editorials of Savvy, Elle and New Woman felt they had to make that obligatory mention of September 11 and the violence and divisive opinion the world oscillates in these days. Presuming that the readers of women¿s magazines, also read newspapers and watch news on the television, none of these editorials say anything new or provocative that would leave any woman sparked with an intelligent worldview. Nevertheless, the editorial of Savvy¿s November issue was written from a maternity home and that surely is a manifestation of womanpower. Certainly, Femina¿s last page which is its editor¿s Me To You column is food for thought. But Woman¿s Era¿s Diwali editorial is like an outdated school essay which we should encourage our children not to write.

For a moment let¿s go back to the cover blurbs. Out of the usual, glamorous, hey-look-at-me-I-am-a-woman-with-beauty-and-guts covers, two stand out. Cosmopolitan because of its unabashed come-hither looks and the sequined bikini bottom and unbuttoned top that cover girl Halle Barry sports, andWoman¿s Era because it has one spelling error and one grammatical error on its cover!