Magazine covers are an easily unnoticed part of our everyday popular world. They’re placed strategically to catch our eyes near every convenience and department store checkout counter. They’ve become prevalent to such an extent that we as a society have begun to allow them to act upon us. Research has been done on the methods this industry uses to reach out to and connect with its audience. We understand the “synthetic personalization” of creating a single target reader and then assuming commonalities between this singular reader and the author behind the magazine. We even to a certain extent understand the consumer culture surrounding the purchase and use of these tabloids, that as a commodity themselves they obviously would intend to sell us other commodities. But one thing we as a public haven’t considered is that these lines of type are not simply reinforcing our popular gender stereotypes, but almost participating actively in their shaping. Because of their proliferation we accept their set of societal constraints as normative, as a general rule against which we should strive to live our lives. This is especially relevant in a society that works towards gender equality. Identifying and attempting to change the methods and sites that gender roles are defined is paramount to achieving any great social reconstruction. Without first examining how and why we consider our sexes unequal we can never hope to achieve a cultural climate that poses us as equals.

In Thompson, Jr. & Pleck’s study The Structure of Male Role Norms college age men were surveyed about their opinions regarding men’s roles in society. They grouped questions into three categories: Status (men’s need to achieve status and others’ respect), Toughness (the expectation that men should be mentally, emotionally and physically tough and self-reliant), and Antifemininity (the belief that men should avoid stereotypically feminine activities and occupations). Their results were non-conclusive but their categorization of male role stereotypes derived from a collection of research on men’s roles can be taken as a generalized standard of what can be accepted as popular male culture.

Mary Talbot’s examination of a two-page magazine spread from the British young women’s publication Jackie analyzes the active role women play in participating in concepts of femininity characterized by consumption. This participation is driven by the concept that female’s bodies require fixing, “because without [beauty] work they cannot approximate the kinds of appearance offered by images in the mass media”. She states that this female identity is defined through patriarchy; that as it is a man posed as the all-knowing authority on femininity that it is defined in its relationship to men. Her history of the magazine and mass media industries outlines the concept of synthetic personalization and it’s prevalence in recent decades. She reveals the power the advertising industry holds not only over ad content, but editorial content as well.

Drawing from four popular men’s magazines and four popular women’s magazines I’ve compiled a list of headlines as well as conducted two interviews regarding these headlines. Selected at random I’ve grouped six headlines from each magazine into categories based on the research outlined above. The four women’s magazines selected cover a wide array of age groups, from the 13-18 aged audience of Seventeen magazine to the 30-40 aged audience of Redbook. The four men’s magazines selected cover a wide array of interest groups as their target age ranges are less specific than their female counterparts (when young men were asked “what is the target age range of Maxim magazine?” I received the response “16 to dead”). The categorizations of the headlines are not intended to shape the concept of each magazine in anyway, I have simply applied the framework outlined by Thompson, Jr. & Pleck and Mary Talbot above to more easily understand the headlines and their intentions to their  target audiences.

Men’s and women’s magazines approach their target audience from completely different standpoints. Women are constantly categorized based solely on their age and this shows in the division of their magazine readerships. Men’s magazines assume general readerships of almost all ages; their target market is narrowed by interest choice (i.e. fashion, health, women). This starts off the gender imbalance with a bang. Men’s magazines are then just a playful informative option, adding helpful tid-bits to men’s already successful lives. Men are encouraged to read based on what they could gain, headlines such as “Excel in everything! Double your money, drive like a pro, charm her pants off!” convey the message that men can do it all. These headlines start off from the standpoint that the men they’re appealing to already have total confidence in themselves, and market their articles as a method for self-improvement and voluntary self-help, as opposed to women’s magazines that use almost scare tactics to convince women they need to purchase and read.

Women, categorized principally by age range (almost surely because women are more susceptible to age-shaming), are approached from the standpoint that they need the advice: that as women they have an incomplete understanding of popular culture and require some assistance as to how to assimilate properly. Headlines such as “25 things you do that we secretly love” and “look great! Your total guide to body confidence” approach their audience from the standpoint that these women need reassuring. These magazines work to allay their fears and insecurities, that ‘no he really does love you’ and ‘you can be a more confident you if all you do is purchase’. These headlines even at first glance express to women that they’re an incomplete object, that without work they cannot fulfill the gender role of female that our society has come to expect of them.

This role that has been constructed for women is only based on its relationship to men. Each of the magazine covers selected gave advice as to how women should approach and deal with the men in their lives, from young girls getting “guy advice” to married women learning about the “new infidelity”. A main goal of all of these magazine headlines is to teach women how to attract and keep men, that the bottom line behind beauty work is that these women want to look sexy for men. Strangely, men’s magazines are almost completely directed in the same way. Men are encouraged to look successful in comparison to other men. Headlines such as “our guide to kicking ass at work” and “Everything else a man needs these days including weed women & whiskey” place men in society in relation to the other men in their lives. While impressing women cannot be taken as a non-issue (many of the magazines still sported headlines regarding the seduction of women) it takes a back-seat to the idea that these men should be concerned in paramount with the impression of themselves that they present to other men.

These standpoints that characterize popular magazine headlines are the perpetrators of actual gender work in our society almost more so than the words themselves. A blatant opinion or statement such as these headlines is easy for an audience or readership to either agree or disagree with on first glance. A woman can read a headline such as “Amazing hair the 1-2-3 plan every woman should know” and decide that she already knows how to have amazing hair. Her ability to refute the general idea of a phrase is not in question. But many men and women these days are unable to see that while they may not agree with the statement they’re still allowing the perspective behind it to be taken as a standard of our cultural framework. Men see women’s headlines repeatedly and constantly allaying their insecurities and they begin to assume that the general population of women is neurotic and insecure. Women see men’s magazines catering explicitly to gratuitous flattery and self-improvement and begin to assume that the general population of men is self-absorbed and cocky. The general population, a dangerous concept on it’s own, is being codified daily by the perspectives and viewpoints of these magazines and men and women have stopped noticing.

Because of these magazines’ prevalence we as a culture falsely attribute them a kind of authority over us. We expect that they understand popular culture better than we do and once we allow their headlines and policies to alienate us we have given them greater control over our society that we have given ourselves. We allow them to dictate to us how we should perform the role of man or woman as opposed to defining it ourselves in relation to the environment that we occupy. We’ve taken our agency over our culture and given it over to a patriarchal capitalist system whose motives are increasingly subversive.

The motives behind these perspectives are of course consumerism. The capitalist policies of most popular magazines of today allow the advertising industry to maintain a stronger than ever grip on content of these publications. Market research must have shown that women are more likely to purchase something if they feel they’ll miss out on important advice if they don’t. It should have shown that men are more likely to purchase if their ego is patted. In spite of all the gender differences between these magazines one thing can be held constant, that they are 100% geared towards a consumer purchase. There is no headline on a magazine cover intended to do anything but sell, sell products that pay the magazine for advertising or titillating general advice intended to encourage the purchase of the magazine in general. And it’s precisely this commercial culture that has not just presented and reinforced but actively created the extremes of gender stereotypes found on magazines covers today.

The bleak perspective of capitalist culture does not inspire confidence that we’ll be able to restructure our gender system any time in the near future. Because these commonsense standpoints are so enmeshed in our concept of what we consider our culture to be, changing our perspective seems an insurmountable task. With the weight of the advertising industry against us opening the eyes of the public is nothing short of miracle work. But through further research and through public exposition projects such as my own photographic work perhaps a modicum of consciousness can be inspired. And through this consciousness we can regain our agency and our willpower over our own circumstances, and truly achieve the gender equality we so strongly fight for.