WHAT COULD WOMEN’S MAGAZINES be like if they were as editorially free as good books? as realistic as the best newspaper articles? as creative as poetry and films? as diverse as women’s lives? What if we as women—who are psychic immigrants in a public world rarely constructed by or for us—had the same kind of watchful, smart, supportive publications on our side that other immigrant groups have often had?

We’ll find out only if we take the media directed at us seriously. If readers were to act in concert in large numbers for a few years to change the traditional practices of all women’s magazines and the marketing of all women’s products, we could do it. After all, they depend on our consumer dollars—money we now are more likely to control. If we include all the shopping we do for families and spouses, women make 85 percent of purchases at point of sale. You and I could:

• refuse to buy products whose ads have clearly dictated their surroundings, and write to tell the manufacturers why;

• write to editors and publishers (with copies to advertisers) to tell them that we’re willing to pay more for magazines with editorial independence, but will not continue to pay for those that are editorial extensions of ads;

• write to advertisers (with copies to editors and publishers) to tell them that we want fiction, political reporting, consumer reporting, strong opinion, humor, and health coverage that doesn’t pull punches, praising them when their ads support this, and criticizing them when they don’t;

• put as much energy and protest into breaking advertising’s control over what’s around it as we put into changing the images within it or protesting harmful products like cigarettes;

• support only those women’s magazines and products that take us seriously as readers and consumers;

• investigate new laws and regulations to support freedom from advertising influence. The Center for the Study of Commercialism, a group founded in 1990 to educate and advocate against “ubiquitous product marketing,” recommends whistle-blower laws that protect any members of the media who disclose advertiser and other commercial conflicts of interest, laws that require advertiser influence to be disclosed, Federal Trade Commission involvement, and denial of income tax exemptions for advertising that isn’t clearly identified—as well as conferences, citizen watchdog groups, and a national clearinghouse where examples of private censorship can be reported.14

Those of us in the magazine world can also use this carrot-and-stick technique. The stick: If magazines were a regulated medium like television, the editorial quid pro quo demanded by advertising would be against the rules of the FCC, and payola and extortion would be penalized. As it is, there are potential illegalities to pursue. For example: A magazine’s postal rates are determined by the ratio of ad pages to editorial pages, with the ads being charged at a higher rate than the editorial. Counting up all the pages that are really ads could make an interesting legal action. There could be consumer fraud cases lurking in subscriptions that are solicited for a magazine but deliver a catalog.

The carrot is just as important. In twenty years, for instance, I’ve found no independent, nonproprietary research showing that an ad for, say, fragrance is any more effective placed next to an article about fragrance than it would be when placed next to a good piece of fiction or reporting. As we’ve seen, there are studies showing that the greatest factor in determining an ad’s effectiveness is the credibility and independence of its surroundings. An airtight wall between ads and edit would also shield corporations and agencies from pressures from both ends of the political spectrum and from dozens of pressure groups. Editors would be the only ones responsible for editorial content—which is exactly as it should be.

Unfortunately, few agencies or clients hear such arguments. Editors often maintain the artificial purity of refusing to talk to the people who actually control their lives. Instead, advertisers see salespeople who know little about editorial, are trained in business as usual, and are usually paid on commission. To take on special controversy editors might also band together. That happened once when all the major women’s magazines did articles in the same month on the Equal Rights Amendment. It could happen again—and regularly.

Meanwhile, we seem to have a system in which everybody is losing. The reader loses diversity, strong opinion, honest information, access to the arts, and much more. The editor loses pride of work, independence, and freedom from worry about what brand names or other critical words some sincere freelancer is going to come up with. The advertiser loses credibility right along with the ad’s surroundings, and gets more and more lost in a sea of similar ads and interchangeable media.

But that’s also the good news. Because where there is mutual interest, there is the beginning of change.

If you need one more motive for making it, consider the impact of U.S. media on the rest of the world. The ad policies we tolerate here are invading the lives of women in other cultures—through both the content of U.S. media and the ad practices of multinational corporations imposed on other countries. Look at our women’s magazines. Is this what we want to export?

After sixteen years between the grindstones of advertising pressures and readers’ needs, it took me a while to realize that a few edges got smoothed down, in spite of all our resistance.

I remember feeling put-upon when I changed “Porsche” to “car” in a piece about Nazi imagery in German pornography by Andrea Dworkin, feeling sure she would understand that Volkswagen—the distributor of Porsche and one of our few supportive advertisers—was asking only to be far away from Nazi subjects. It’s taken me all this time to realize that Andrea was the one with a right to feel put-upon.

I remember the craziness of publishing a pioneering package on women’s health and then describing it on the cover as “The Beauty of Health,” hoping that our readers would see the “health” and the advertisers would see the “beauty.” I don’t have to tell you that we got few ads for moisturizers and shampoos, but a lot of smart letters from readers.

I remember varied responses to hundreds of full-dress presentations to advertisers and agencies: an agency head going out on a limb to recommend us to clients; young women trying to convince their superiors that some women, like some men, were worth a higher page rate in a serious magazine; an executive who actually spat on an issue when a Ms. saleswoman put it on his desk; another who finished an expensive dinner we could ill afford, and then announced to the restaurant at large that he wouldn’t advertise in Ms. if it were the last magazine on earth.

I also realize that for a long time, women’s collective edges have been worn down by blaming each other—whether as readers or editors—for wanting what was in women’s magazines. In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, based partly on a twenty-year study of McCall’s and other mass-circulation women’s magazines, saved women’s sanity by exposing the narrowing of editorial content to “feminine” images, but the word “advertising” didn’t appear in its index. Women were being assigned the role of full-time, stay-at-home consumers to replace the economic engine of the war, and magazines addressed to us were the recruiting stations for that suburban economic army. Yet we rarely looked behind the “feminine” curtain to see the economic Wizard of Oz.

Now we’re blaming one another and even feminism for the cruel Superwoman hoax, though it came from adding work-oriented articles to an ad-oriented beauty/fashion mix—and even that much newness is economically risky. Savvy has bitten the dust, as has everything from New Dawn to New York Woman. Lear’s started out bravely as a magazine for older women, but advertising pressures have made sure those older women look very young and glamorous. Mirabella does its best to provide good articles under the slickness, but like Lear’s, it has needed deep pockets to stay alive. Working Woman and Working Mother—titles derived from advertising categories that at first spawned protest buttons like “Every woman is a working woman,” and “Every mother is a working mother”—are having to scrap for ads to support articles on how to earn money, not just how to spend it. I notice that Working Woman, a business magazine, has trouble being regarded as one in an advertising world where only men mean business.

Should Ms. have started out with no advertising in the first place? The odd thing is that, in retrospect, I think the struggle was worth it. For all those years, dozens of feminist organizers disguised as Ms. ad saleswomen took their courage, research, slide shows, humor, ingenuity, and fresh point of view into every advertising agency, client office, and lion’s den in cities where advertising is sold. Not only were sixteen years of Ms. sustained in this way, with all the changeful words on those thousands of pages, but some of the advertising industry was affected in its imagery, its practices, and its understanding of the female half of the country. Those dozens of women themselves were affected, for they learned the art of changing a structure from both within and without, and are now rising in crucial publishing positions where women have never been. Ms. also helped to open nontraditional categories of ads for women’s magazines, thus giving them a little more freedom—not to mention making their changes look reasonable by comparison.

But the world of advertising has a way of reminding us how far there is to go.

Three years ago, as I was finishing this exposé in its first version, I got a call from a writer for Elle. She was doing an article on where women parted their hair: Why, she wanted to know, did I part mine in the middle?

It was all so familiar. I could imagine this writer trying to make something out of a nothing assignment. A long-suffering editor laboring to think of new ways to attract ads for shampoo, conditioner, hairdryers, and the like. Readers assuming that other women must want this stuff.

As I was working on this version, I got a letter from Revlon of the sort we disregarded when we took ads. Now, I could appreciate it as a reminder of how much we had to disregard:

We are delighted to confirm that Lauren Hutton is now under contract to Revlon.

We are very much in favor of her appearing in as much editorial as possible, but it’s important that your publication avoid any mention of competitive color cosmetics, beauty treatment, hair care or sun care products in editorial or editorial credits in which she appears.

We would be very appreciative if all concerned are made aware of this.

I could imagine the whole chain of women—Lauren Hutton, preferring to be in the Africa that is her passion; the ad executive who signed the letter, only doing her job; the millions of women readers who would see the resulting artificial images; all of us missing sources of information, insight, creativity, humor, anger, investigation, poetry, confession, outrage, learning, and perhaps most important, a sense of connection to each other; and a gloriously diverse world being flattened by a velvet steamroller.

I ask you: Can’t we do better than this?