A Critical Study of the Contradictory Role of Women’s Magazines

Xiaowei HUANG

Abstract


The role of women’s magazines is contradictory. The term contradictory refers to the way in which magazines provide a range of information about how to be a perfect woman, for women of all ages. However, no matter the role of women as portrayed by the magazines, or women’s duties for the family, society, or the understanding of the world, are contradictory in the text.
This paper aims at analyzing the role of contemporary women’s magazines. It focuses on the group of young female magazine readers and emphasises question relating to physical appearance in the magazines. The motivation of this paper is to investigate how women’s magazines affect women’s attention in terms of their body image.
Today, a slender and thinner body has been set as the standard of an ideal body. This achievement seems to be established as a goal for women not only in the West, but also in the East. It is not merely a beauty matter. What is the correlation between a notion of beauty and the global market?


Keywords


Ideology; Femininity; The Notion of Beauty; Consumption

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/j.css.1923669720130904.2589

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