We are not a 'target market'
Oh goody, just what we need — another "women's interest" magazine. The New Weekly, launched on October 14, is the latest offering from the man who brings us Woman's Day, Women's Weekly, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Dolly and Elle: Kerry Packer. Evidently market analysts at Packer's Australian Consolidated Press have concluded that we, the "market", can bear yet another advertising vehicle for overpackaged, overpriced, vacuous and highly toxic "lifestyles" for women.
Packer's weekly, Women's Day, and its Murdoch equivalent, New Idea, are already selling over a million copies each every week. Even taking into account that there are many people who buy both, by the time you add in the family members who read mum's copy, and the people in dentists' waiting rooms who read them months out of date and in bulk, few Australian women escape being "delivered" to advertisers by these trawling nets for the fashion, cosmetics, "feminine hygiene" and diet industries.
Those who escape the weeklies are scooped up by the monthlies — New Woman (circulation 135,000) for the career woman, Family Circle (350,000) for the home-maker, Dolly (184,000) for the young, Ita (150,000) for the "more mature", even Elle (64,000) and Vogue (80,000) for the filthy rich and proud of it.
What do these magazines promise that induces us to shell out hard-earned cash for the privilege of being stung, badly, by rip-off merchants? Answer: escapism, pure and simple. Even though we know that the glamorous "star" photos are staged, the "beautiful" women are half starved and the horoscopes and problem pages were dashed off by office messengers after a liquid lunch, still we buy.
Key to the success of any single edition of a mass circulation magazine is the front cover. Sales of both Woman's Day and New Idea fluctuate by up to 200,000 according to the cover. But just what makes a cover "successful" has changed in recent years.
Not so long ago, a picture of Diana Spencer in a diamond tiara provided sufficient suggestion of a fairytale escape to induce millions of women to part with $2.50. These days the royal fairytale has been tarnished somewhat, with revelations of adultery, divorce, emotional trauma and even eating disorders at the palace. Today, says Woman's Day editor Nene King, there has to be [gulp] a story to go with the picture — unless the picture is the story, such as in the Sarah Ferguson toe-sucking scandal, a winning combination of sex and royalty which gave the Day its best sales in years.
If the royals haven't been having sex in public recently, a picture of a lesser celebrity, say Kylie Minogue or Michael Jackson, in a compromising situation, in the nude, or both, will suffice. In the absence of celebrities a straight titillation piece is usually the go; something about penises or orgasms is usually best.
Having served up an overdose of royalty, the mass circulation women's mags are now set to render sex boring too. The distinction between newsagents' "women's interest" and "soft porn" categories has become as blurred as the celebrity penis shots in this month's Cleo.
No doubt the inappropriately named New Weekly will serve up more of the same winning formula: one part titillation, three parts anaesthesia and 96 parts commercial propaganda. It remains the duty of feminists who read them, as well as feminists who don't, to engage with them, to critique them and, ultimately, to provide alternatives to them.
By Karen Fredericks