Women’s magazines are a prominent presence in society. Walk into a Target and it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to walk through the check-out without catching a glance of Marie Claire, Glamour, or Cosmopolitan if not all three. Magazines such as these are written with the intention of appealing to women in today’s society. They offer articles on everything from sex to style, boyfriends to business; it’s a plethora of information projected to target “the modern woman.” From culture to culture, there is a variant on this particular magazine. For the African-American community some may see it as Ebony or Essence, in the Hispanic culture, Latina.

In my final essay, I would like to compare the rhetoric of three different women’s magazines, which target three different groups of women—Cosmopolitan, Latina, and Ebony. How do these different magazines target various ethnicities? How do they contribute to the social construct of women? How do they depict women of this ethnicity? What cultural values do they imply? How does the rhetoric differ between the magazines? What are the rhetorical commonalities? I’m also curious about how they imply the values of United States culture in general. For example, when I go through a check-out, it’s unlikely I see a copy of Ebony or Latina magazine as my groceries are scanned. What does this suggest?

With magazines such as these representing various women from diverse cultures, I believe it’s important to be aware of the message they send to society. They are one of the many media reflections of women, and also of culture. I plan to focus on the cover of these magazines as this is the first thing a person sees when picking it up. I also believe that this would be manageable for the paper; I don’t think I would be able to do a thorough rhetorical analysis/comparison of the entire magazine in 15 pages. Some things I plan to consider include, who is on the cover? How is that person depicted—clothing, facial expression, hair, body position, etc.? What articles are highlighted? What is the font color and style being used? What is the wording of these highlights? In this sense, the comparison will not only consider written rhetoric, but visual as well.

In addition to the magazines, I plan to use Understanding Women’s Magazines: Publishing, Markets and Readerships by Anna Gough-Yates, “The Construction of Readership in Ebony, Essence and O, The Oprah Magazine” from a redOrbit Media Report to Women, “The Cosmopolitan Ideology and the Management of Desire” by Kathryn McMahon, and “A Changing View: Representation and Effects of the Portrayel of Women and Color in Mainstream Women’s Magazines” by Juania Covert and Travis Dixon. These are just a few of the sources I have discovered so far and will add additional ones as I begin to write the paper.