Whether you should judge a woman by the cover of her magazine or not, you can not say that there is no link between who we are and what we read. For example you would assume that someone who reads ‘Rugby World’ likes rugby! I am sure that not all of the women that read these magazines fit into my stereotypes and preconceptions, but some of them must.
When I asked the question ‘Should we judge a woman by the cover of her magazine?’ to different people – old, young, male and female, they all had different views. As you can imagine, most of the men and old people agreed with me. That these women are self-conscious and wanting to be someone else, nosey and vein. However, lots of women said that there is a certain ‘chill-out factor’ involved and that “It’s great to read your copy of Marie Claire with a glass of wine, sitting in front of the fire on a Saturday night.” These magazines are easy to read and although they may be calming and relaxing, whilst reading them you are constantly picking out your own problems and enlarging them. That is because of the celebrities in the magazines picking out their tiny problems and ‘falseness’ of the magazine content. These magazines cleverly combine persuasive advertising with the inner insecurities of women, and most of the women who read them don’t actually realise what is happening to them.
Magazines such as Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan are full of stories, tips and fashion. Whilst looking at the front cover of New Woman, I noticed a headline that I found both hilarious and shocking. ‘The Worlds best sex tips.’ Personally I don’t believe that by reading that article someone’s sex life will dramatically improve, but some women must and so they buy magazines like these and once again – We judge them. Other problems that happen because of magazines like these are things such as anorexia and bulimia. Because teenagers and young women read these magazines, they see the stick thin models and celebrities as being perfect and they see themselves as fat and ugly. Does this mean that these people wouldn’t like to have skinny and pretty models on the front of their magazine? I don’t think it does because personally I do not believe that people would buy magazines if they had ‘fat people’ on the front.
I have talked about all of the bad reasons and why we should judge a woman by the cover of her magazine, but there are good reasons about these magazines. For the women that buy these magazines, the magazine is simply just something to chill out with on a ‘quite night in’ – nothing more. This is because lots of women don’t look deeply into the magazine; they simply want an easy read with bright colours and nice clothes. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that. The stories are interesting, whether they are disturbing or not, and the gossip is always a laugh. These are most of the reasons why women buy these types of magazines; it isn’t because they are vein and self-conscious,
S you can see, there are many different views to the question ‘Should we judge a women by the cover of her magazine?’ and to be honest I think that despite my view being slightly towards the view ‘Yes you should judge a woman.’ There is no specific answer and it purely depends on what the woman wants the magazine for. Only she can decide how she wants to be perceived.