In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.
—Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister
Despite the shortcomings of women’s magazines—from their airbrushed ideals and youth-obsessed focus to their lack of transparency and plethora of fluff, you may be surprised to know that women’s magazines consistently, with a few caveats, value women politically. In fact, a host of issues important to women—from domestic abuse to pay equality and reproductive rights—continue to get the attention they deserve, politically and socially, thanks to women’s magazines.
Month in and month out, glossies as different as Ladies’ Home Journal and Vogue also give voice to real women, regularly featuring intimate stories of everyday women standing up for themselves or others. Whether the pieces are about launching grassroots campaigns, providing resources to underserved women, or exposing systemic abuses against women here and abroad, such issue-oriented stories galvanize and inspire readers, particularly when the articles and profiles focus on issues that readers find important. However, some critics argue that the editorial content and perspectives of these magazines are skewed to the interests of a selective audience, a liberal one, giving short-shrift to the perspectives and ideals of more conservative readers, particularly when it comes to reporting on conservative female politicians. And therein lies the rub, because haven’t we been aiming to get a woman into the White House for decades? Talk about a cover story. Tea Party, Green Party, Democrat, or Republican, a woman in the Oval Office is a win-win for women overall—or so we assume. So how do women’s magazines—which are part of our liberal media—herald the achievements of these conservative women (like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann), who are against many issues championed by these same magazines? And are women’s glossies also guilty of marginalizing women politicians across the board, focusing on hearth-and-home issues instead of broader politics, like foreign affairs and the economy? Many would argue that yes, they are. Let’s take a look.
One perceived problem with the political coverage in the glossies is that the very stories meant to inform and educate us on the issues or introduce us to the movers and shakers of the game are merely dumbed-down fluff masquerading as women’s political agenda. A 2010 Purdue University paper titled “Media Coverage of Women in Politics: The Curious Case of Sarah Palin” found that discussions of political women tend to focus on rather trivial subjects such as their physical appearance, lifestyle, and family rather than their positions on prominent campaign issues.1
For instance, during the 2008 election cycle we watched as cable news legal-eagle Greta Van Susteren asked Sarah Palin if she had breast implants on live TV. Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking female politician in American history, shared that upon entering into politics she was frequently asked who was watching her children—as if a male politician would ever be asked who’s at home with the kids. Let’s not forget Hillary Clinton and the ugly pantsuit debacle that was the talk of her 2008 campaign. At one Clinton event, people in the crowd heckled her with “Iron my shirt, Iron my shirt!” a blatantly sexist dig insinuating that Hilary should leave the politics to men and get her trouser-clad-ass back to the kitchen where she belonged. Of course, Hillary was further out of the kitchen than most female politicians we know, having had her own law career, eight years as America’s First Lady, and a stint as a U.S. senator. And that was before she was appointed secretary of state in 2008. Worse, pundits said she had a shrill or castrating voice, implying she was a nagging woman that men couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tolerate listening to for four years if she were elected president.
Going back even further, Elizabeth Dole was criticized for her schoolmarm appearance, while the first female vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, was once introduced as “Geraldine Ferraro, size 6”! Can you imagine introducing Dick Cheney as “Dick Cheney, size 44-inch waist”?
Yet sadly, in an October 2012 Vogue profile of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the writer goes right for the weight-loss jugular, asking, “How much did you lose?” And here’s how the exchange goes down:2
“Should I tell you? Really?” Gillibrand asks.
“I really want to know,” pushes the interviewer.
“Can I tell you off the record?”
“The readers of Vogue will want to know this.” (Now he’s relentless.)
GLOSSY FACT
An April 2007 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that the average woman lags behind the average man by as much as 12 percent in correctly answering a news quiz covering recent headlines, including political questions.3
“Oh, all right,” she says. “I will tell you. I lost over forty pounds.”
Wow.
With Sarah Palin, the media employed a different tactic. If they couldn’t accuse her of being shrill, unstylish, or lacking maternal instinct, they had to find some other way to devalue her. So they attacked not just her inexperience and ignorance—which were valid areas of scrutiny—but worse, they also suggested that her femininity and attractiveness undermined her credibility as a vice-presidential candidate. Comedian Tracey Morgan called her “good masturbation material,” and Palin was “pornified,” a term first bantered around after a 2011 study that appeared in the journal Sexuality and Culture. The study analyzed one thousand Rolling Stone images over forty-three years and found among those images that were sexualized, 2 percent of men and 61 percent of women were hypersexualized, meaning intensely sexualized or “pornified.”4 The media also “ditzafied” Palin every time she made an error or public gaffe as a way to devalue an attractive political woman by referring to her as a ditz.
According to the Purdue study, women’s magazines weren’t necessarily exempt from these sexist traps either. During the 2008 election cycle, for example, while some glossies did cover Palin, others embraced a different sort of political snobbery. Rosemary Ellis, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, was quoted as saying, “We have no plans to speak with Governor Palin before the election, but when it’s all over, maybe we’ll invite her to tour the legendary Good Housekeeping Research Institute, where she can test out the zero-degree temperatures of our climatology room. It might be a welcome change after such a heated race.”5
Talk about an Alaskan deep freeze!
And yet to the extent that women’s magazines did cover Palin’s political positions, they mostly concentrated on topics traditionally thought to be women’s issues, such as reproductive rights, childcare, the environment, and education.
While these topics are important and relevant to us as women, we also have an interest and stake in matters like national security, the economy, and military affairs, which have long been considered the province of men. By not covering these topics to the same degree they do “women’s issues,” the glossy slicks perpetuate this sexist marginalization. And when the media focuses so fiercely on the appearance of women in politics, it not only trivializes them, but also, by association, every other woman in America. The 2011 documentary Miss Representation, depicting how the media’s misrepresentation of women leads to the underrepresentation of women in power, pointed out that this robs women of their sense of political efficacy, the feeling that their vote matters, their voice counts, and their choice can make a difference.6
The sexism of the 2008 campaign still resonates, but kudos to women’s magazines, like MORE, for focusing a more thoughtful—if not somewhat politically biased—lens on the topic. In their December 2011/January 2012 issue, they ran a feature titled “Running (for President) in Heels,” which looked at sexism among women candidates. The article rehashes how Hillary played down her sexuality in manly pantsuits of subdued colors, never mentioning her femininity, motherhood, or even that she would be the first female president if she won. Whereas Palin, by comparison, was said to have leveraged her femininity and motherhood and played up her sexuality. With her rimless spectacles, red lipstick, and skirts that accentuated her curves and shapely legs, she was the hot-teacher fantasy to countless male supporters, who dubbed her a MILF (Mother I’d Like to Fuck). While this certainly speaks to the weakness of men, not women, her attractiveness and sex appeal, the article asserts, were considered an inherent fault of hers. Consider the flip side: had President Obama’s sophisticated good looks and trim physique been admired in equal measure during the election, they’d likely be considered strengths rather than weaknesses. It’s the classic double standard of sexism.
When the MORE piece finally turns to Bachmann, we learn she was of a different ilk than either of her predecessors, not hiding nor flaunting her sex appeal. Rather than Hillary never mentioning motherhood and Palin parading her children around like bait at feeding time, Bachmann takes a middle ground, mentioning motherhood as just one positive thing she’s accomplished. (She puts Angelina Jolie’s mommy skills to shame, having raised five children—three daughters and two sons—and twenty-three foster children, all girls.)
Yet for all the comparisons the piece makes, and all the legitimate questions it raises about the degree to which we portray our women candidates in a sexualized light, the reporter’s liberal bias comes through when she informs readers that she was hoping to get a comment about Bachmann from various prominent political women, but none would talk to her. Palin is unreachable, Elizabeth Dole takes a pass, Condoleezza Rice politely declines, and Liz Cheney is too busy. The piece wraps up asking why not one single woman could offer up a comment on Bachmann. Not even her Republican brethren could be bothered. The implication is that something must be fundamentally wrong with this woman. After all, she is an extreme social conservative, the story reminds us.
While it smacks of bias on the surface, there is the real fact that Bachmann takes a hard line against many of the issues important to MORE’s readers, issues that represent rights, freedoms, and gender equity. Thus, the publication has some responsibility in alerting readers to this fact. In light of that, MORE’s gentle treatment of Bachmann could be considered more balanced than on first blush.
GLOSSY FACT
In the U.S. House of Representatives, there are currently 362 men and 76 women. In the Senate, there are 17 women and 83 men.7
In fact, MORE consistently attempted a mature and balanced view of conservative women, despite their left-leaning political affiliation. In an earlier May 2011 issue, the magazine ran a feature titled, “It Doesn’t Matter What Sarah Palin Does or Even Whether Michele Bachmann Runs. What Matters Is That Thousands of Conservative Women Are Connecting with Their Female Candidates—and Each Other—with Unexpected Passion.” The article examined the movement of conservative women, dubbed “Mommy Patriots,” who followed Palin, Bachmann, and frankly any conservative women in politics. The reporter follows a contingent of conservative moms who are headed to Washington, D.C., for a rally to protest the healthcare bill. We meet several women along the way and hear of their conservative roots or the fact that they were galvanized into political activism after becoming critical of Obama. The article shares these women’s viewpoints, and while more liberal readers may not agree with them, the story nonetheless provides an intimate look at the power of women coming together politically.
Still, the slight liberal bias can’t be mistaken. The reporter mentions that they pass out “Impeach Obama stickers” and debate the government’s ownership of newborn bloodspots and baby DNA warehousing, a program started in the 1960s for screening genetic birth defects and diseases, which prompts the women to worry about “government cloning.” It’s implied that these conservative women, and by default their Tea Party candidates, sound a little off-kilter.
However, MORE tries to set the bar higher by avoiding the sexist traps of the 2008 election cycle.
In the February 2012 issue, for example, First Lady Michelle Obama graces the cover in her heart-friendly red dress, in a story titled “Michelle Obama Gets Personal.” The seven-page article avoids falling into trite questions about what goes on in the White House kitchen or how she chooses her weekly wardrobe. Absent, too, is any partisan messaging. Instead, we read about a mentoring program for high school girls that any woman along the political spectrum can get behind. Much like the nationwide Big Brother/Big Sister program for underserved youth, the First Lady’s program taps female White House staffers interested in mentoring and matches them with local high school girls—the ones that fall in the middle of the spectrum and often get overlooked because they’re either not high-risk enough or not high-achieving enough. The focus is on providing role models, and teaching these young women-to-be how to network. Girls can chat up Supreme Court justices or head over to the Department of Labor to learn about landing a job in a tough market.
While the story naturally veers slightly into Mrs. Obama’s upbringing and her experiences at Princeton, the article truly sticks to its core: the mentorship program and how senior women of the White House, like senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and former Social Secretary Desirée Rogers, can make a difference in the lives of young women. Free of policy issues and partisan rhetoric, the article instead captures the essence of the program, one that’s inspiring to readers of any political ilk. Refreshingly, MORE is not the only glossy girl-mag that’s begun shifting to a more balanced approach, free of sexist pitfalls, when profiling female politicians.
The February 2012 issue of Marie Claire, for example, featured an unbiased profile of Nikki Haley, the Republican governor of South Carolina. The two-page spread was more than flattering to the South Carolina governor, who at age forty is the youngest-serving U.S. governor and South Carolina’s first female chief executive. Born to Punjabi immigrants, and only the second governor of Indian descent in the United States, the piece chronicles Haley’s discrimination from childhood and what’s helped her get ahead, and avoids any talk of where the governor stands politically on policy-related issues.
Absent also is any reference to what the governor wears, looks like, or whether she hides or flaunts her sexuality; nor does it utter a word about her marital status or her thoughts on motherhood. Red-listed as a possible presidential contender in 2016, Haley is lauded for getting to the top of her game. What’s more, the article continues, she inspired women everywhere by crushing her ubersexist male opponent during the election when she discovered a published quote from him so chauvinistic and backward, it could have been a script line from Mad Men: “Women are best suited for secretarial work, decorating cakes, and counter sales, like selling lingerie.” Her campaign dropped that beauty in a flyer and mailed it out across the state. Women in South Carolina were furious, and Haley got herself elected.
Liberal or conservative, what woman among us wouldn’t high-five Haley for such a bold, prowoman act? The article serves to unify, not polarize, women. Kudos to Marie Claire for that.
Historically, women’s magazines have gradually increased their coverage of political issues, particularly those with social significance as they relate to women. Today, political pieces in our glossies include not only social issues of our time but also profiles of candidates and their political platforms, and deeper investigation of topics of debate between candidates from different sides of the political spectrum.
A paper published in The Journal of Psychology, titled “The Representation of Women’s Roles in Women’s Magazines over the Past 30 Years,” bears this out. It found that political and social awareness topics in Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping increased approximately 3 percent from 1954 to 1962, 10 percent between 1964 and 1972, and 18 percent between 1974 and 1982.8 The research also shows that political and social awareness topics generally increased after political events. For instance, a 1969 piece titled “Trespass” in Ladies’ Home Journal about a confrontation between rich whites and revolutionary blacks ran a year after the race riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, and an article “The Day J.F.K. Died” appeared in LHJ in 1968 on the five-year anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination.9
Yet besides the fact that these traditional women’s magazines increased their political coverage threefold from the 1950s, their focus no doubt remains on traditional women’s topics such as homemaking, beauty, health, and sometimes parenting. To look through today’s magazines, the range of products being advertised hasn’t changed all that much, only the ad campaigns have been updated and new brands have cropped up. It’s no wonder, then, that a little political coverage goes a long way when it comes to the traditions of the women’s magazines. Editors still mustn’t antagonize their advertising revenue stream with articles that stray too far from women’s assigned gender roles.
Readers Respond
“Wait, what? Women’s magazines cover political issues?”
—Sandra, writer and editor
In fact, Canadian journalist Jenn Goddu studied newspaper and magazine coverage of three women’s lobby groups from 1980 to 1995 and revealed that journalists focused on the homes and families of the candidate’s life (such as “details about the high heels stashed in her bag, her napping habit, and her lack of concern about whether or not she is considered ladylike”), rather than her position on the issues.10
Of course when it comes to politics, the real groundbreaker in the circle of women’s magazines was Ms., which was thought to be both wildly radical and boldly brazen in its political coverage. From the first issue with “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue” (Spring 1972) to “Women Voters Can’t Be Trusted” (July 1972), “Why Women Voted for Richard Nixon” (March 1973), “The Ferraro Factor: What Difference Can One Woman Make?” (October 1984) to “Hillary in the Crossfire” (July 2000), Ms. never backed off their political coverage. And Ms. did something else nervy: it put real political women on its cover. Their cover girls were sought out for being women who’ve made a difference, not simply for being beautiful. Cover girls included Helen Gahagan Douglas (congresswoman, 1945–51), Shirley Chisholm (first black woman in Congress), and Bella Abzug (congresswoman, 1971–77).
In fact, Ms. magazine’s leap into the political arena galvanized other women’s magazines to up their political ante in one fashion or another. Doors opened, boundaries were pushed, and women became more educated and active in social, political, and foreign affairs. Women’s magazines took note and today many try to include harder-hitting political stories amid all the fluffy content and airbrushed pages.
Insider Input
Details Editor-in-Chief Dan Peres, upon being asked which women’s magazine he’d edit, said: “I’m kind of waiting for Cindi [Leive] to fuck it all up at Glamour—she’s just an inch away. I like reading women’s magazines more than I like reading men’s.”11
GLOSSY FACT
“When I first organized a symposium at Yale . . . in 1982, everyone marveled that such a brazenly feminist magazine had managed to last ten years. It not only survived thirty more years, but it thrived. . . . Feminism has profoundly reshaped the social, political, and cultural landscape over the last four decades.”12
—Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University professor speaking at the fortieth anniversary celebration of Ms. magazine at Stanford University
O, The Oprah Magazine has featured lengthy, informative interviews with former South African president Nelson Mandela and holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel. Stories on sex trafficking (Glamour); conflicts in Sierra Leone, South Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland, among others (Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, and Glamour); global healthcare issues like addiction to the antidepressant Paxil (Glamour), stem-cell research (Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Vanity Fair); and stories about women (moms) abusing alcohol and prescription drugs (Self, O, Glamour and others) showcase that women’s magazines are becoming increasingly adept at covering issues of importance to women worldwide.
In a 2008 Huffington Post article titled “Time to Have a Little Talk about Those Women’s Magazines,” chick slicks are lauded for the coverage of important issues they have brought forward.13 The writer remembers a Glamour story in which women killed across the country by their intimate partners garnered a multipart article complete with pages of mugshots of the convicted murderers, highlighting deathly domestic abuse like never before. The HuffPo story tells us Essence had their own photographer follow Obama on the campaign trail, capturing its own unique images. Good Houskeeping did a powerful piece, “You Can’t Live Here Unless You’re White,” on illegal housing discrimination still taking place in 2007. And women’s magazines ran numerous “justice journalism” stories including deaths due to the nursing shortage, military women at higher risk of death from the anthrax vaccine, and George W. Bush admitting he didn’t know who the Taliban were are all mentioned as leading women’s magazine stories on important political issues.
And globally, in a search of ten years worth of the U.K. edition of Marie Claire, one researcher found that Muslim women were covered in a whopping 44 percent of the magazines.14 The author, Arwa Aburawa, found that exactly half the articles portrayed Muslim women as victims, while the other half showed them as independent, empowered women. “In fact, most of the articles followed the typical ‘Triumph over Tragedy’ trajectory popular in women’s magazines, which go into painful detail about how women are oppressed and then conclude that, by some miracle, a woman has stepped up to challenge this oppression and will emerge triumphant,” said Aburawa.15
Readers Respond
“Sometimes, I come across a story in these magazines that makes me want to say, ‘Right on, ladies!’ Jumping out of all the bullshit beauty and diet tips is a real story about real issues.”
—Michelle, communications consultant
But no matter what political issues the glossies have focused on, there’s no question the depth and breadth of them has continued to evolve. As you saw in the last section, women’s mags took their political coverage up a notch during the 2008 election cycle and became even more responsive to the political culture of American women. Vogue and Glamour’s politics were particularly comprehensive, along with several other magazines, including Working Woman and Working Mother. An August 2011 issue of Vogue, for instance, covered Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman in an unbiased look at his life, his politics, his family, and his religion and found heady comparisons between Huntsman and Obama (their age, their athletic build, and their wholly unflappable natures) and stark differences between Huntsman and Romney (mainly that Huntsman considers himself a “Jack Mormon,” which is a brand of the religion that may not necessarily follow all its strictures). The piece manages to stick to the facts without getting bogged down in any of the rhetoric. Likewise, magazines like Working Mother regularly cover top political moms in Washington, D.C.; paid family-leave issues; the state of maternity leave; and profiles of every power-playing woman in politics, regardless of their parties.
Additionally, while women’s magazines may not consider themselves “advocacy” publications, per se, they do their part to keep important issues at the forefront, particularly those that are critical to women, like reproductive freedom. Articles on the topic are mainstays in mags like Glamour and Marie Claire, and not just pieces on abortion but also emergency contraception, birth control, health insurance, and everything related to women’s reproductive health. A May 2006 Glamour story, “The New Lies about Women’s Health,” took a comprehensive look at how local, state, and federal policies (including those of the Bush administration) affected women’s healthcare. Glamour’s coverage was lauded for increasing public awareness of the issue.
GLOSSY FACT
A 2000 survey conducted by Oxygen Media and the Markle Foundation on women’s political engagement found that American women’s political behavior and attitudes are deeply influenced by their mother’s activities and behavior. While the majority of women surveyed saw their moms voting, few had mothers who showed a strong interest in politics and many still believed politics a taboo topic only to be discussed behind closed doors.16
Then in 2009, writer Liz Welch won a Maggie (Planned Parenthood award recognizing excellence in media, arts, and entertainment for enhancing the public’s understanding of reproductive rights and healthcare) for her article in Glamour, “Abortion, the Serious Health Decision Women Aren’t Talking about until Now.” While the coverage skewed remarkably honest and included women’s personal stories of their abortion experiences, the prochoice coverage touted abortion as just another health decision without considering the moral, ethical, or spiritual struggles women might experience in having an abortion. The underlying implication was that every woman—from a nineteen-year-old college student to a forty-five-year-old hockey mom—may one day be faced with what amounted to a simple health choice, like getting a flu shot. While informative and timely, the article nonetheless approached the issue from a very limited and biased perspective.
The nature of reproductive choice has always been a sticky wicket, but the underlying problem, of course, is that a woman’s body is the center of politics in the first place. Since magazines are first and foremost about what women want—or what editors believe women want—and are also largely liberal, as are most of the editors, it’s a no-brainer that reproductive health would be addressed in a more political way. A February 2012 article in Glamour, for example, includes an essay from Oscar-nominated actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, titled, “We Have to Fight for What We Believe In.” In it, the actress says an attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on women’s health. Gyllenhaal tells us that over eighty abortion restrictions were enacted in 2011 (wow, talk about overlegislating)—more than double the previous record in 2005, and she reminds us that not only abortion rights, but also funding that provides important screenings for cervical cancer and STDs, preventive care, health exams, and treatments are being slashed in numerous states under the guise of shutting down one resource: Planned Parenthood, the critical provider of healthcare for underserved women, for which 90 percent of services go toward preventive care and 3 percent to abortion care. Gyllenhaal is an effective and engaging spokeswoman for the issue, given not only her name recognition as an actress but also her own story about attending her first Planned Parenthood rally in the sixth-grade with her mother. When magazines feel it’s necessary to play their advocacy card, they do it in full force, which makes them political by nature—and naturally biased toward certain outcomes. Of course, what woman’s going to argue with the logic of championing such a vital institution as Planned Parenthood? Oh, yeah. Conservative female politicians—and their constituents. Thus, it’s easy to see the sticky place magazines may find themselves when trying to be fair and balanced in their political coverage.
GLOSSY FACT
A Redbook survey conducted by EDK Associates of New York found that 41 percent of women say that feminism echoes their concerns, 94 percent say that violence against women is a major issue, nearly 70 percent say it’s at least somewhat important to keep abortion legal, and almost all advocate equal pay for equal work.17
It’s no wonder, then, that these types of pieces were the political pulp of the past few years, especially since 2011–2012 saw the House of Representative’s unprecedented assault on women’s reproductive rights. Whether they were trying to pass a bill to defund Planned Parenthood or proposing legislation that would allow hospitals who receive federal funds to refuse reproductive care to women even if their life was at stake, over and over conservative legislation was introduced that appeared antagonistic toward women’s rights, and pieces like this serve to remind women what it is we’re fighting for, and why. And more, the women’s magazines are one of the few bastions of prowomen ideals, presenting stories month after month that resonate in important ways with most women, giving us a place to unify under common political sensibilities, if not at the expense of others (like beauty ideals).
“I have yet to see a magazine without a political agenda on some level.”
—Andy, sales executive
The degree to which government is involved in our lives—from regulating business and remediating toxic waste to providing social services and enforcing laws—is truly the core difference between liberal and conservative viewpoints. Women’s magazines, liberal by nature because they cater to an audience whose rights have traditionally been sidelined—if not blatantly undermined—by the conservative elect, do try to incorporate balance in their pages, but they’re not always successful.
For example, the Consumer Alert / Media Research Center (a conservative watchdog group) analyzed the political policy-oriented coverage that appeared in thirteen women’s and family magazines between the months of October 1995 and September 1996. Of the thirteen magazines studied, there were 115 positive portrayals of government activism and/or calls for more government intervention, while there were only eighteen negative portrayals and/or calls for less action.18
The study found that Working Woman and Glamour were the most biased in favor of expanding government, while Good Housekeeping was next. Ladies’ Home Journal was the most politically balanced magazine in the study. During the year studied, the monthly ran ten stories promoting bigger government, it also ran six supporting limited government, and four balanced articles covering both sides of the issues. Interesting here, too, that eight years after this study, Myrna Blyth, longtime former editor-in-chief of LHJ, came out with her book Spin Sisters, in which she accused the media of its liberal bent and declared that she was a card-carrying right-winger who was uncomfortable with all the “left-leaning” women in her media circles as well as the liberal bent in the glossies and the morning shows.
The issue, according to the Consumer Alert study, was that women’s magazines either misled their readers or didn’t provide the whole story about the overall impact that “big government” policies or actions have on women and families. For example, articles on contaminated drinking water that were examined in 1995—Good Housekeeping (November), Parents (March), and Mademoiselle (September)—were found to inflate the risks and omit a balanced view. With titles like “Troubled Waters” and “What’s in Your Water,” they reported an alarmist study about agricultural pesticide runoff contaminating water supplies across the country.
The study also showed that while conservative and/or Republican women were occasionally profiled by the chick slicks, their political views were often challenged instead of celebrated. New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman was profiled for the November 1995 issue of Working Woman. While the story was mostly positive, the writer took a potshot at Whitman’s tax-cutting policies: “In order to cut income taxes by 30 percent, she has increased long-term borrowing, reduced payments to public pension funds, and cut state aid to local governments. The ripple effect of those steps is yet to be fully realized.”20
The study also found that Republican women were praised only when working to expand the role of government. Republican senator Nancy Kassebaum, for example, was chosen as one of Glamour’s Women of the Year in 1996 for working to ban assault weapons, for expanding regulation of healthcare, and for, not being “extreme.” Of the more balanced pieces, according to the analysis, Good Housekeeping devoted the back page of each issue to an essay by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan. Though Noonan rarely mentioned public policy issues in her essays, this was more of a backhanded nod to balance.
Insider Input
“Funny, isn’t it, that women’s magazines like Marie Claire, Glamour and Redbook and so many others give you lots of opinions when it comes to prices and styles in their fashion features. . . . But whether in their editorials or between the lines of their feature stories, they offer you only one opinion, about any and all social or political issues.”19
—Myrna Blyth, former magazine editor and author, Spin Sisters
Not much has changed since that study. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey of 1,000 adults reported that 67 percent of Americans see “a great deal” or “fair amount” of political bias in the news media. Too bad, since 68 percent said they prefer to get their political news from sources “that have no particular political point of view.”21
When Glamour names its annual Women of the Year Awards, most of the honorees are liberals in good standing, with a record of lengthy liberal causes under their belts. Winners in 2012 included Withelma Ortiz-Macey (known as “T,” former sex trafficking victim now advocating against sex trafficking in this country), Ariana Huffington, Gabrielle Giffords, Esraa Abdel Fattah (also known as the Facebook Girl who live-updated on Facebook from Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding freedom), as well as a host of celebrities, actresses, comedians, and designers: Jennifer Lopez, Tory Burch, Chelsea Handler, Lea Michele, and Cindy Sherman, with a lifetime achievement award going to Gloria Steinem. The only known conservatives in the bunch: Laura Bush and her daughters, Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush, were honored for their global work advocating for women.
But here again lies the rub: despite their fluff and undermining messaging, women’s magazines are still one of the few outlets that are fiercely dedicated to women’s issues, which by and large fall far afield of conservative ideals. Thus, it’s no wonder magazines like Glamour laud the good works of nonconservative women over Tea Party favorites and hard-line Republican ladies. Our lefty lassies are tirelessly pinch-hitting for our rights.
How does all this play out with the readers? Well, how women are influenced and involved politically has been tied to the information they read in the glossies. According to research, women with a sense of autonomy that stems from secure relationships and connections to other women who model what they’d like to become have a greater political understanding. It seems reading about the issues, and especially female politicians, provides us with a yardstick from which to measure ourselves.
Researchers at the University of Toronto and McGill University examined how women acquired political information and how it impacted their voting patterns during the 2000 Canadian election cycle. Interestingly, friendship with other women and their social connections seems to play a role in how women vote. Women with a wide and diverse social network (think loads of personal acquaintances and a significant following on Facebook) tend to vote more liberally. Researchers speculate that the wider the range of women you know and interact with, the more likely you are to vote progressively.22 The research is important since it implies that reading about political women and their issues in the glossies not only offers us valued information but also a sisterhood community that actually stands in as our social circle. After all, women’s magazine's tone and style are that of chatting with a close friend. In this instance, our close friend is often liberal.
But no matter where on the political spectrum you fall, supporting magazines whose political coverage champions women and women’s rights, while removing the sexist undertones from women candidates, will continue to promote positive political coverage for women, no matter if that coverage appears liberal, conservative, unbiased, or fluffy. As with all editorial content in women’s magazines, it’s up to us, the readers, to use a discerning eye when evaluating political coverage and to insist that our favorite glossies present well-rounded political coverage.