The document summarizes research analyzing content and advertisements in women's magazines. It finds that advertisements outweigh content in most magazines. Advertisements primarily promote cosmetics and fashion. This suggests magazines promote the idea that women need these products to be beautiful. The research also found magazine content focuses heavily on beauty, fashion, and celebrities. This may reinforce feelings of inadequacy in women by implying they must conform to presented standards.

1. WOMEN’S MAGAZINES
Advertisement and content Analysis
By: Adam Guiou

2. Is there any content?
 My idea with this content analysis of women’s magazines was to prove that
A, the amount of adds that are in common women magazines outweighs the
amount of actual content, B, that the Advertisements are almost all cosmetic
and fashion related, and C, that since all of the content and advertisements
are about fashion and cosmetics that this gives females the impression that
they have to use these cosmetics and fashion tools to look beautiful and
obtain a mate. How this relates to media and communication is through
advertizing itself, I am really hoping to show that the amount of advertising
in these magazine is ridiculous compared to the amount of content. Without
advertising of course there would be no media, because what would
support the field of media, in essence advertising is a necessary evil to help
fund both good and bad media. I see these feminine magazines as bad
media because there content is less than the advertisements, and the content
paints the female gender as a bunch of people that only care about
beauty products and fashion tips, which is certainly not true

3. Content Vs. Advertisements
 What I did first was to determine the number of
pages that were actual content and the number of
pages that were advertisements. I ran into an issues
though, because in women’s magazine there is lots
of content that is an advertisement as well, so I have
listed those pages as combinations, as they are
advertisements masked as content. The magazines
are used were Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women’s
Fitness, and People.

4. Vogue
Number of Pages
Combination
24%
Advertisements
Advertisements
Content
51%
Combination
Content
25%

5. Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan
Combination
15%
Advertisements
49%
Advertisements
Content Content
36%
Combination

6. Vogue
Glamour
Combination
13%
Advertisments
Content 52% Advertisments
35% Content
Combination

7. People
People
Combination
5%
Advertisements
45%
Advertisements
Content
50% Content
Combination

8. Women’s Fitness
Women's Fitness
Combination
11%
Advertisments
48%
Advertisments
Conent Conent
41%
Combination

9. So Many Ads
 As you can all see from the charts that other than
People all of the others magazines contents are
greatly outweighed by the amount of
advertisements, which leads me to believe that
these magazines are not really focused at all on
their content or their readers but the agenda of
those who have ads in their magazine. It seems that
these advertisers would like women to believe that
they need there products to be perceived as
beautiful

10. Content
 Next I went through each magazine and created
categories that analyzed the actual content that
was in the magazine. I would like to help a bit with
letting you know about my category titled
“Cosmetics.” This is a bunch of stuff lumped
together, basically all beauty products, lip balms,
eye lash curlers, etc.

11. Vogue
Vogue Content
70 61
60
50 47
40
30
20 14
10 3 4 3 2 5
1 Vogue Content
0

12. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
5
Weight Loss Tips
9
About Men
Sex
13
5
Editorials
About Cosmetics
Women's Issues 14
Celebrities
Cosmopolitan
How To 5 5 4
Fashion
31
Self help tips
19
Pics of Hunks
6 7
Personal Stories
Letters from
10
Readers
Cosmopolitan Content
Cosmopolitan Content

13. Glamour Content
Glamour Content
45
40
35
30
25 43
20
15 23 27
10 12
5 3 3 2 3
0 Glamour Content

14. 60
40
20
0
Letters From
1
Readers
Celebrity
43
People
Tv/Movies
17
3
Music
Books
Beauty 4 14
1
Charity
1
Games
Articles and Stories
10
2
Food/Health
People Content
People Content
People Content

15. Women’s Fitness Content
Women's Fitness Content
25
25
19
20 16
15 11
10
10
4 5
5 2 Women's Fitness Content
0

16. Content Analysis
 As you can see from the categories I have created
almost every Women’s magazine’s chart shows that the
magazines main focuses are beauty and fashion. Also
there is an emphasis on featuring certain products and
or techniques to make a women more fashionable or
beautiful, and or to help with weight loss. I don’t
understand why the magazines get to determine how a
women is supposed to look to be beautiful, but this
seems to be what the magazines claim. In many of the
magazines as well there is a lot of content about
celebrities which tells me that the media likes to keep
women obsessing about celebrities and their life style.

17. Advertisement Analysis
 Next I went through each magazine and
categorized and coded the advertisements in the
magazines. I then tallied up the number of pages
for each category and will put them in charts to
show that most of them have some common themes
in their advertising.

18. Vogue Advertisements
Vogue Advertisements
79
44
25
7 1 1 1 4
Vogue Advertisements

19. Cosmopolitan Advertisements
Cosmopolitan Advertisements
100
50 98
26
0 10
18
9
Cosmopolitan
Advertisements

20. Glamour Advertisements
Glamour Advertisements
150
100
50 105
0 20 10 7 1 1 3
Glamour Advertisements

21. 40
30
20
0
TV Shows/Movies
Bank/Credit Cards
10 14 11
Cosmetics
37
Clothes/Shoes
Food/Drink
Weight Loss 4 15 1
Products 1
Store Ad
1
Jewelry/Accessories
4
Household Items
2
Automobile
1
Charity
People Advertisements
People Advertisements
5
Medicine
People Advertisements

22. Women’s Fitness Advertisements
Women's Fitness Advertisements
30
20
29
10 12
3 25
0 2 2 4 4 14
3 1 Women's Fitness
Advertisements

23. Advertisement Analysis
What is really concerning to me about the advertisement data
I collected about these women’s magazines is the emphasis
all of the ads have on cosmetic products, mainly beauty
products. In all of the magazines the number of cosmetic ads
were the highest, above all of the other categories. In most
of the magazines the second highest category was fashion
related, mainly clothes and shoe ads. This begs a question, is
all women are interested in is clothes, shoes, and beauty
products? Perhaps instead their interest is created by the
magazines that they read, that tell them through
advertisements and articles that they must used these
products to be beautiful and then if women are beautiful
they can then be happy.

24. To show how many ads there are…

25. The Bin Full of Ads

26. Other Research
 When looking for other research about women’s
magazines I found that the women’s movement had a lot
to do with the amount of beauty products and cosmetics
that have made their way into these magazines. In the
1970 women started to become more liberated from
their normal domestic role in western society. The big
thing that they started to use was their sexuality, which
had been hindered by their domestic role so far in
western society. So to express themselves sexually they
started to use different products and techniques to
enhance their beauty, thus a whole new industry in
cosmetics and fashion was born (Cuadernos & Filogia
pg. 27-39).

27. More Research
 The issue with the content in women’s magazines is
that they are based around women feeling
inadequate. Though the magazine were supposedly
founded on the idea of female self improvement
they actually reinforce the feeling in women of
being insufficient, by basically telling them to wear
this to be beautiful, put this on the be beautiful, or
lose this much weight to help you find a mate
(Cuadernos & Filogia pg. 27-39).

28. Weakness in Research
 The issues with my research and other research
surrounding the topic of women’s magazine’s. is
there is really know real way to prove that women
have this feeling of inadequacy. I would like to
point out that I believe the feeling of being
insufficient that women have is not in my mind
natural, but instead has been created by society
and then reinforced by these magazines

29. Summary
 What I believe I have found out is that women’s
need to buy beauty products and clothes that they
believe will make them feel more attractive to
whomever they are trying to attract has either been
created by women’s magazines, and other media in
society or is at least reinforcing this feeling of
inadequacy that women feel about themselves and
how they look.

30. Conclusion
 I think I have found evidence that women’s magazines
are really only exist to continue to make women feel
inadequate and they use this feeling to then sell women
stuff that they probably don’t need. The things the
magazine sell are supposed to make the women more
attractive, but at the same time perpetuate the notion
that a women cannot feel good about themselves in less
they are in fashionable clothes and wearing the right
make up. I think it is wrong for the magazines to be
doing this, and it is most certainly wrong of them to fill
their magazines with more advertisements than content.

31. References
 White, Kate. Cosmopolitan. may 2012: 1-255. Print.
 Wintour, Anna. Vogue. May 2012: 1-312. Print.
 Leive, Cynthia. Glamour. n.d. 1-300. Print.
 Hackett, Larry. People. May 2012: 27-39. Print.
 Wong, Betty. Women's Fitness. n.d. 1-183. Print.
 Reventos, Dolores. "Decoding Cosmetics and Fashion
Advertisements in Contemporary Women." (1988):
27-39. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.doxtop.com/
browse/f35e6fe3/fashion-advertisements-in-womens-
magazines.asp&xgt;.