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'.
Preface. 1. 'Marie Claire - C'est Moi?' Gender, Identity and Women's Magazines 2. 'The Empire Strike Backs?': Magazine Publishing and Markets in the Late Twentieth Century 3. Who's That Girl?: Advertising Research and the Female Consumer 4. Seriously Glamorous or Glamorously Serious?: Working Out the 'Working Woman' 5. 'Magazines Sans Frontières?': Women's Magazines and the 'European Invasion' 6. 'A New Breed of Read': Glossy Women's Magazines in the late 1980s 7. Desperately Tweaking Susan: The Business of Women's Magazines in the 1990. Conclusions. Footnotes. Bibliography
