The media is full of written and spoken messages about what a women needs to do in order to be successful. “There are also rules so clear they needn’t be written down: For instance, an overall ‘look’ compatible with beauty and fashion ads. Even ‘real’ non-model women photographed for a women’s magazine are usually made up, dressed in credited clothes, and retouched out of all reality…The point is to be ‘upbeat’” (Steinem “Sex, Lies, and Advertising”). Cosmo especially, has been notorious for promoting this unrealistic image of how women should look. In addition to a modified version of a celebrity plastered across the cover, the reader is bombarded with an array of headlines that encourage us to be proactive about our body image and our actions. As Douglas states, “Cosmo isn’t for passive girls waiting for the right guy to find them; it’s the magazine for the ‘Fun, Fearless Female’ who is also proud to be, as one cover put it, a ‘Sex Genius’” (Douglas 4). However, it is important to also recognize that the “Fun, Fearless Female” that Douglas is referring to is mostly “white, young, heterosexual, slim busty, beautiful, and middle-or upper-middle-class” (Douglas 157), the group that Cosmo primarily targets. These are the types of women that have the resources and the desire to embrace Cosmo’s advice on how to gain power. The August edition of Cosmo, featuring Britney Spears, supports the skewed image of what means are available to women living in the twenty first century in order for them to gain power and respect, specifically their body image and their willingness to please men.
Girls raised during this generation have been taught that their body image is their greatest means for obtaining power. Therefore they have experienced an overwhelming amount of pressure to fit into what is considered an ideal mold of the female figure. It is no surprise then that bolded on the Cosmo cover is a headline that reads, “Inhaled the Whole Pizza? How Not to Gain Pounds After a Pig-Out.” This headline grabs the attention of the reader, who themselves, is lusting for that ideal body type. Society has engrained the belief that “real power [comes] form having a slim, young, hot body” (Douglas 215) into us; that dieting to obtain this ideal body shape, has almost become second nature. As Sittenfeld points out “you and your friends go on a thousand diets, and you don’t say anything else as often as you that you’re fat” (Sittenfeld 5). Achieving a thin body will in turn prove that a woman is powerful, and not susceptible to the cravings that normal women experience, such as the need to pig-out during stressful times. Douglas takes that belief one step further by noting how it is not that women are not expected to eat. It is actually the opposite. We are expected to eat away our emotions; because of course women are victims to their emotions, and then to be a real women with power, take the initiative to make sure we don’t gain a single pound from that binge. And as Cosmo reminds us, having a slip up every once in a while is acceptable because Cosmo has a cure for covering up your vulnerability. This sort of power that women desire to achieve from dieting “has to do with getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you” (Douglas 10).
Although society would like to believe that it is only older teens and women who are exposed to the messages that Cosmo is conveying, that is simply not the case. The cover of a magazine is exposed to anyone who walks by and once girls are old enough to understand the meaning, they too will internalize these societal beliefs. Valdes notes the statistic that “In [a] study fifty percent of nine-year-olds, and nearly eighty percent of the ten- and eleven-year-olds, had ‘put themselves on a diet because they thought they were too fat’” (Valdes 26). Additionally with the overwhelming number of eating disorders plaguing girls today, one would expect that the media would have started to drift away from its obsession with women being thin. However, as Douglas notes, one Magazine editor defended their decision to feature extremely thin models by claiming, “to be slim and fit is healthier than to be seriously overweight and ‘out of shape’” (Douglas 221).
The image of Britney Spears that Cosmo chose to feature on the cover of the August edition makes it clear that women’s magazines have no intention of altering their perception of how women should appear. Spears is dressed in such a way that accentuates her feminine figure, but conceals just enough so that the cover cannot be deemed inappropriate for display. By leaving a gap between her top and jeans sends the message to the reader that if they follow the advice given in the “How Not to Gain Pounds After a Pig-Out” article’s advice, we too could have a body like Britney’s. Cosmo’s editors have mastered the talent of making the celebrities on their covers appear to have “conform[ed] to the Barbie aesthetic of femininity and [walk] the razor-thin line between sexy and slutty” (Douglas 146). In addition to Spears computer enhanced body, the placement of her hands seductively on her pants transmits the message to the reader that she is a women who has embraced her sexuality, is not afraid to be know as a “sexpert.” However, it is important for Cosmo readers to remember that when they are viewing this picture of Spears that “if the media are mirrors, they are fun house mirrors” (Douglas 18). All of the celebrities featured on the cover of Cosmo have been enhanced and altered to give off the perception that “the perfect” body is actually achievable.
Not only is Spears the focus of the cover, editors have strategically placed the largest headline which reads “Feel Sexier Instantly 50 Quick Tricks” right in the center of the page and allowed it to cover the picture of Spears. All of the other headlines are placed to the sides, and are slightly set behind her, but the overall message that Cosmo is conveying in this edition is placed front and center, so there is no way that a reader can misinterpret what Cosmo plans to do for them. This huge message across the front also serves as a way for Cosmo to pull the reader in. We have been taught that sexiness equals power; who wouldn’t want to find out more about how to get quick results which in our minds would mean it would ultimately lead to respect?
As well as promising the reader a way for them to obtain their desired body image, Cosmo also promotes the belief that females can be sexperts. Douglas defines the sexpert as “[a women] whose main capital in the marketplace of relationships is her shapely, well made up, and femininely dressed body, her sexual knowledge, and her sexual skills. She must juggle all this, however, with not being remotely threatening to men” (Douglas 162-163). The headline “The Sex Angle That Intensifies Female Pleasure” reminds its readers that women can enjoy sex too. This supports Douglas’ statement that “Cosmo has been the pioneer in addressing young women as confident and obliging sexperts” (Douglas 161). Cosmo is able to draw readers in by giving them a false sense of security and confidence by encouraging them that they now have this new freedom to enjoy and embrace their sexualities. The reason that the image of the sexpert that Cosmo is promoting is unrealistic comes from the double standard that is still present for women today. Therefore the key to a women being “powerful” is that she still needs to appear submissive to males.
Cosmo endorses the belief that although they are encouraging women to be sexually liberated, they need to ensure that they are not crossing any boundaries that men would not be pleased about. Therefore it comes as no surprise that directly across from the headline that is promoting the image of the sexpert are two headlines that have to do with pleasing your man: “It’s official: We Got 2,000 Men to Reveal, ‘Do this, Not That’ in Bed” and “Together Forever? How to Still Flirt with Him?” Women are presented with conflicting messages about what the appropriate way to look and act is. However, I think that most of us know which messages are the dominant ones, the ones about respecting male power. Women are permitted certain freedoms as long as they don’t allow those same women to become more powerful. As Douglas points out, this conflicting advice pieces that are scattered throughout women’s magazines are “suggesting a lethal correlation between female achievement and lasting love” (Douglas 139). Just by the two headlines on this cover, we are being told that if we can please our men in bed, we can keep our man, and just inches down the cover, it is further emphasized that if we can also act in a way that pleases him, he will stay with us “forever.” This idea of having a man forever and being able to obtain the perfect body is what is supposed to make us “happy.” Which ultimately leads to the thought that if women are happy with their place in society, then the patriarchal system we have in place will remain unopposed.
The August edition of Cosmo featuring Britney Spears has a number of implications about what women’s role in society should be. The most prominent is the ideal body form, but additionally that their role in society should still remain subordinate to men’s needs and positions in that same society. What Cosmo and so many other women’s magazines have encouraged is a view of feminism that can be referenced as enlightened sexism. Society is under the impressions that since women have been given the rights that they requested such as voting and access to educational institutions, that it is acceptable to exploit their body images to convey an overwhelming message of what the appropriate position of women in society is. As long as women remain less powerful than men, then the traditional societal order is maintained. As Douglas notes, “the moral from the media…was that it was now accepted that some women could have power…as long as they did not threaten existing regimes about the marking and performance of femininity” (Douglas 75). By featuring an idealized image of a celebrity on the Cosmo’s cover and surrounding her with headlines that convey conflicting messages, women will remain focused on complying with men’s wishes on what the “perfect” woman is.
Work Cited
Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism. New York: Times Books, 2010. Print.
Sittenfeld, Curtis. "Your Life as a Girl." Listen Up. Ed. Barbara Findlen. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2001. 3-10. Print
Steinem. “Sex, Lies, and Adverstising.”
Valdes, Alisa. "Ruminations of a Feminist Fitness Instructor." Listen Up. Ed. Barbara Findlen. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2001. 25-32. Print
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