Textual Analysis Of Cosmopolitan Magazine

For this assignment, I started with a two Cosmopolitan magazine and started flipping through the pages of them. At first, it seemed impossible to find an ad that objectified women in order to sell a product, that is until I hit the latest fashion trends pages. It was there that I was reminded how these images were similar to what I once wanted to emulate when I was older. In fact, due to mass media, I wanted to be the tall, big chested, leggy blonde with a great body. Oddly enough I got some of the things I wished for such as being the big chested blonde girl, which now I loath, due to the fact that men objectify me and my body due to the expectations media have constructed over the years. So with that said, I am going to expose the Cosmopolitan …show more content…
This magazine had approximately six pages with men without their shirt and most were either advertisement or an article about sex and relationship advice for women. All of the ads and articles in the first Cosmo magazine where all supportive of men without their shirts. One article was even called, “Hot Guy + Cute Dog”, which included seven pictures of men all but one had no shirts on. However, on a page early on in the magazine there is an article called, “Fierce vs. Fail” and it showed two images where two women’s gluteus maximums's were shown in the picture, one of the captions was “Holy Hell”. This shows that in Cosmo men can show their bodies and be called “hot” whereas if a woman has a wardrobe malfunction they are judged in a negative way. This edition of Cosmo showed how truly different men and women are objectified in the …show more content…
Women are expected to show a certain amount of skin in the American society in order to be considered as a sexy or hot female, yet at the same time when wardrobe malfunction happen due to the skimpy clothing society forced them to war they are harassed by society about how their bodies look and how they are “sluts”. The question becomes how much skin is too much, and why is it this only applies to women. Not only is there is a double standard for women, but the worst part is the images of these women in the magazines are not one bit real. These are magazines that young girls and adolescent females look to for advice they feel to ask adults and this is what they see, women being objectified and are only considered beautiful when they are scantily clothes and skinny. Though when he look at men in these magazines they are more realistic than they women in them, not only that but men are rarely harassed about their bodies and are given roles associated with power and control because that is what the American society associated with power and control. It’s hard to take a woman showing off who breast seriously compared to a man fully dressed in a suit. Culture defines a part of who you are, and in a culture where women are objects and in a “Man’s World” we look towards media outlet to help change this dynamic for future generations, instead of creating body issues and gended