Why are women´s magazines so bad?

[Pippa P]

They are mostly adverts, sexy women and pictures of shoes and really expensive clothes which take up the whole page. Very little reading material. Anyone else really disappointed with the quality and the fact that they are a con ?

[ms bell]

Too many anorexic women featured inside on the covers and too many articles about sex. Many of these magazines try and make you feel inadequate about yourself. I don't read any of them. I think they're full of crap.

[New World Man]

These magazines (CosmoGirl, 17, Young Ms. etc) are all a sham. They're designed and produced and marketed by the industrial machine that produces fashion and cosmetics. If you can hook them young, you'll have them for life. That's the motto of these industries.

So, young girls are taught to value their sexual appeal over their intellectual ability and integrity. They are taught that a simple 8 question quiz will give them the answers to their questions, causing a marked lack of intellectual curiosity among young women, and thereby promote a societal attitude towards females as being useful only if they are beautiful.

Beauty connotes sexual privilege in these magazines, so those who do not fit the mold of beauty that the magazines display end up feeling sexually worthless, and in many cases go to extreme ends to prove otherwise (promiscuity and other self-hating behaviors). Some take to self-mutilation (anorexia, bulimia, cutting) because they believe wholeheartedly that they are not worthy of anyone's attention.

When these magazines tell the truth (that all girls/young women are valuable as they are) the fashion and cosmetics industries will lose money. So expect the magazines to continue lying. Money talks. Sex sells. And young women continue to suffer as a result.

[Muschi]

I agree! Especially those expensive mags (Vogue, Cosmo etc) where you have to turn 40 pages of advertising before you get to a subject. If they make so much money from advertisers why does the mag cost $4+?
I don't buy them anymore I just go on line.