Women's Magazines: A Relaxing Escape

Alcohol is expensive, Sex is dangerous. Drugs are illegal.

But women's magazines are simple escapism, for only $2.50 a pop. And Harvard students are buying them.

"Cosmo is very popular," says Charles J. Noe, a supervisor at Out-of-Town News and Tickets. "As a matter of fact, we keep bundles on hand, as opposed to other magazines, where we just keep whatever's on the rack."

Most students say they read the magazines for entertainment. "They're fun, amusing things," says Jessica S. Semerjian '95. "It's a way to let your brain relax."

Cosmopolitan, which professes to offer lifestyle advice for the modern woman, is popular precisely because it is frivolous, Semerjian says. "Isn't it one of those that has the really silly articles on how to get a man?" she asks.

The more fashion-oriented magazines, including Glamour and Vogue, are more popular among students who prefer looking at photographs to reading stories.

Connie Y. Baik '96 says the copy in Vogue is "really fluffy," but she enjoys looking through it anyway. "It's kind of like a grown-up's picture book," Baik says,

The racks of women's magazines may all look the same, but they have very specific audiences. The women who seek diet tips in Self generally aren't the ones scanning the horoscopes in Cosmopolitan.

But Jennifer R. Dean '96 says that last year she and her roommates would sometimes buy a whole batch of different magazines and read them together. "This year we haven't," Dean says. "We're older this year."

Although most of the students buying women's magazines are female, some men admit to perusing the ones they come across.

Matthew L. Bruce '96 says he reads these magazines at the barber shop while he's waiting to get his hair cut. "If I've already seen the Sports Illustrated, sometimes I'll look at Seventeen," he says.

"I always expect there is going to be there privileged information that's going to help me understand the opposite sex," Bruce says. "And it's not that way at all."

Most student readers say they don't rely on the magazines for advice, really. Articles are often populated by sources whose "names have been changed" and people identified as personal friends of the writers.

"All the articles where there are those incidents--I think they're just making them up," says Suzanne Goh '97.

But many Harvard women who read the magazines revel in the inconsistency of the ravenously consuming glossy packages of popular culture which they don't respect.

Nicole Rekant '97 says she and her friends like to "make fun of the women" featured in the magazines.

As long as the magazines are read with cynicism, some students say, then the gender politics disappear.

"I don't think they're offensive or degrading or anything, as long as you're not taking them as gospel," says Corinne E. Funk '97, who subscribes to Cosmopolitan and Glamour.

"You just take them with a grain of salt," adds Funk, who is a Crimson editor and a member of the editorial board of Lighthouse, an undergraduate publication which deals with women's issues.

After all, students say, the reason they read these magazines is often to get away from academic texts fraught with meaning.

Asked why she reads these publications, Naomi L.Reid '97 says: "It's a nice break from Kant."