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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'.
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UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S MAGAZINES 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’. Anna Gough-Yates is Lecturer in the Sociology of Culture and Communication at Brunel University. She is co-editor with Bill Osgerby of Action TV: Tough Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks, published by Routledge in 2001. UNDERSTANDING WOMEN’S MAGAZINES Publishing, markets and readerships Anna Gough-Yates First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. “Disclaimer: For copyright reasons, some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.” © 2003 Anna Gough-Yates All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gough-Yates, Anna, 1968– Understanding women’s magazines : publishing, markets and readerships / Anna Gough-Yates. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women’s periodicals, English–Great Britain–History–20th century. I. Title. PN5124.W6 G68 2003 051⬘.082⬘09410904–dc 21 ISBN 0-203-12238-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-16341-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-21638-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-21639-7 (pbk) 2002028356 FOR MY GRANDMA, TEHIAY, WITH LOVE CONTENTS List of figures Acknowledgements ix xi Introduction 1 1 Understanding women’s magazines 6 2 Post-Fordism, post-feminism and the ‘new woman’ in late twentieth-century Britain 26 The empires strike back: from Fordism to post-Fordism in the British magazine industry 39 Who’s that girl?: advertising, market research and the female consumer in the 1980s 56