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!