In Spite of Women

The world of magazines is vast. There are magazines for women, for men, for children, for teenagers, for the elderly, for dogs, for gardeners, for hikers, etc. It seems to be clear who the magazines are intended for, their purpose and what will fill the pages. In this chapter, Kenon Breazeale talks about the fact that men's magazines tend to be a "magazine about women". He explores the magazine Esquire, primarily. When the magazine was created, its founder stated its target audience and cause saying "It is our belief, in offering Esquire to the American male, that we are only getting around at last to a job that should have been done a long time again--that of giving the masculine reader a break. The general magazines, in the mad scramble to increase the woman readership that seems to be so highly prized by national advertisers, have bent over backwards in catering to the special interests and tastes of the feminine audience. This has reached the point where the male reader is made to feel like an intruder on gynaecic mysteries" (Esquire, 1933, 4). Breazale calls this magazine "one of our era's most aggressively one-dimensonal representations of women have resulted from attempts to court men as consumers" (231). He discusses the impact this magazine and magazines like it have had on attitudes towards women. Most of these portray women as mere sex objects, making them less than valued. This impacts the male readers, causing them to see and treat the women in their lives as simply that.

I googled Esquire Magazine and was taken to its website. It has many tabs for fiction, style, video, best bars in America, a changing headline reel, and finally a tab entitled "women". After clicking on it, I found a bulleted list of various famous females, sex advice, etc. There are also article excerpts on the page, inviting to be clicked on. I was just disgusted by the base page for women without even clicking on any of the links. Just from the quick view I got, it clearly shows women as nothing more than sex objects. Its all about the beauty and the sex appeal. Even this month's issue has Angelina Jolie on the cover. This is a magazine for men and a scantily clad women is on the cover. Hm. They certainly know their audience.