1) Magazines rely on stereotypes of their target audiences in their content and imagery. 2) They determine content based on assumptions about audiences' interests, which effectively stereotypes those groups. 3) While female lifestyle magazines may make less overt use of stereotypes than male magazines, they still present stereotypical ideals of beauty for readers to aspire to and provide advice on achieving that look.

1. Representation: Women
Read the following extract about women’s
gender and magazines, bullet point the main
arguments made:
All magazines rely on stereotypes of sorts,
some in their imagery or representa4on of
people within the ar4cles, but all with their
basic assump4ons about their target
audience.
They determine their content based on
assump4ons regarding an audience’s
interests, and thus effec4vely they are
stereotyping that group.
These assump4ons about interests and
lifestyles are a subtle way of categorising the
audience and blatant use of stereotypes can
be seen in most magazines.

2. Representation: Women
Female lifestyle magazines may make less liberal
use of stereotypes than their male counterparts.
A recent ar4cle in Glamour magazine presented
the sex lives of a porn star, a plas4c surgeon and a
gynaecologist. It first summed up the stereotypical
assump4ons about such professions from the point
of view of the interviewees, and then gave the
male and female interviewees a chance to present
their side.
The ar4cle offered a posi4ve construc4on of the
male porn star, who might have otherwise been
portrayed stereotypically as a chauvinist or
womanizer or even a sex object himself.
This ar4cle deliberately challenged stereotypes; yet
the magazine s4ll makes many assump4ons about
its audience. It presents stereotypical ideals of
female beauty for the readers to aspire to, and
provides many pages of advice on how to recreate
such looks, thus presen4ng its template of beauty
posi4vely to its audience.

3. Representation: Women
Even contents pages in female lifestyle magazines
serve to reinforce gendered stereotypes.
The colour schemes and fonts are stereotypically
associated with femininity, being predominantly
reds, pinks and yellows with curvy and
unthreatening fonts.
The contents page sec4ons are also frequently
broken up by adver4sements. The ar4cles provoke
the anxiety about achieving the stereotypically
accepted norms of femininity, which the adver4sed
products then (coincidentally) claim to have the
solu4on to.
In the par4cular issue of Glamour that I studied the
fashion and beauty sec4on is even highlighted
from the other content body by a change in colour,
it being a lighter pink than the rest, making it seem
like the most important sec4on.