ABSTRACT

Understanding Women's Magazines investigates the changing landscape of women's magazines. Anna Gough-Yates focuses on the successes, failures and shifting fortunes of a number of magazines including Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Frank, New Woman and Red and considers the dramatic developments that have taken place in women's magazine publishing in the last two decades.
Understanding Women's Magazines examines the transformation in the production, advertising and marketing practices of women's magazines. Arguing that these changes were driven by political and economic shifts, commercial cultures and the need to get closer to the reader, the book shows how this has led to an increased focus on consumer lifestyles and attempts by publishers to identify and target a 'new woman'.

chapter |5 pages

INTRODUCTION

chapter 1|20 pages

UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S MAGAZINES

chapter 3|17 pages

THE EMPIRES STRIKE BACK

From Fordism to post-Fordism in the British magazine industry

chapter 4|23 pages

WHO’S THAT GIRL?

Advertising, market research and the female consumer in the 1980s

chapter 5|16 pages

SERIOUSLY GLAMOROUS OR GLAMOROUSLY SERIOUS?

Working out the ‘working woman’

chapter 6|23 pages

‘WHAT WOMEN WANT UNDER THE COVERS’

New markets and the ‘new woman’ in the 1980s

chapter 7|14 pages

‘MARIE CLAIRE – C’EST MOI!’

Magazine editors, cultural intermediaries and the ‘new middle class’

chapter 8|21 pages

DESPERATELY TWEAKING SUSAN

The business of women’s magazines in the 1990s

chapter 6|6 pages

CONCLUSIONS