Devant Magazine

For my final project I created a women's magazine (although I think some men wouldn't mind picking it up). It is primarily an entertainment magazine with trivia, celebrity news, poems, stories, current events, and the like, all revolving around topics like gender issues, racism, and ethnicity. In the beginning my intention was to make the magazine a very general one for all types of feminist women, but then as the magazine started coming together I noticed that many of the features were about women of color in particular. This is not to say that white women cannot read it, enjoy it, or understand it, but I believe that it is more relatable to women of color.

I decided to make a magazine because it is a pervasive medium as the top 25 magazines in the U.S. reach far more adult and teen aged people than primetime TV shows. Magazine readers are fairly young, as 96% of adults under 25 read print and digital magazines. My magazine is primarily online because I felt it would be an easier distribution, and I think it would reach a lot more people than it otherwise would have, had I passed it around myself. Moreover, the digital magazine readership is going up as more magazines begin to implement it. The Association of Magazine Media (AMA) found that 25% of people report increased magazine reading time since starting to use its online platform.

17 year old Dakota Fanning on the cover of
Cosmopolitan surrounded by captions
with things like "His best sex ever."

Women’s top magazines, determined by single copy purchase, are all entertainment magazines with no real substance. They focus on diet tips, celebrity news, and make-up tutorials. We all know these magazines, and wouldn’t be surprised to hear the top 5 since 2014: Woman’s World, First For Women, Cosmopolitan, People, and US Weekly. I feel like many of those magazines are not geared at all towards women of color, even though their readership is high. The AMA found that Hispanic-American adults read an average of 10.2 magazine issues per month, which is slightly higher than the nation’s 10 issue average. African Americans highly surpass both those numbers, reading an average of 14. 6 issues a month. Asian Americans read slightly less than the nation’s average at 9.5 issues per month.

Some magazines are taking the initiative to target Hispanic-American women. I would applaud them, but the reason why is not so great. Magazines see that the Hispanic-American population is a big consumer market, and they want to create ads for them, and make sure they see it. Just a few pages of Hispanic targeted ads in a magazine primarily for white women is not enough, they need their own magazine; the Latina version.

Gonzalo del Fa, president of GroupM Multicultural, said large publishers are targeting Latinas with publications written in English but with a Hispanic flavor. "The reality is that more and more Hispanic consumers are becoming bilingual," said Mr. del Fa. According to a 2012 Pew Center poll, nearly one-third of Hispanics speak and read English "very well" or "pretty well." Among third-generation Hispanics, the number climbs to 96%."Publishing companies realized they had to do a specific product for these consumers," he said. "It was not just about adding a couple of pages in their main book to reach these consumers." To that end, Hearst and Conde Nast have introduced English-language siblings to Cosmopolitan and Glamour, respectively.

These are the same trivial magazines that companies want to distribute to more women. I don’t have any ads in my magazine because I did not create it for readers to purchase things, but so that they can focus on the content. I featured books and celebrities but it all focused on feminism; feminist books and celebrities that support women and feminism. I want readers to identify with more than the beauty myth.

Now that I’m done with that, click the link below, sit back, and enjoy!

http://issuu.com/devant_mag/docs/finalmag.devant_f985c4479479b8

Bibliography
 Berlatsky, Noah. "Women's Magazines Objectify Women Just as Much as Men's Magazines Do." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 24 Mar. 2013. Web.

 Kite, Lexie. "Cosmo Magazine: The Best-Seller That Sells Women Short." Beauty Redefined. Beauty Redefined, 4 Jan. 2012. Web.

Lulokfs, Neal. "Top 25 U.S. Consumer Magazines for June 2014." Alliance For Audited Media. Alliance for Audited Media, 7 Aug. 2014. Web.

"Magazine Media Factbook." Magazine.org. Brown Printing Company, 2014. Web.

 Mary, McNamara. "ABC's 'black-ish' Gamely Takes on Racial Identity." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 24 Sept. 2014. Web.

 Michael, Sebastian. "Magazines' Next Big Goal: Reaching Latinas In English." Advertising Age. Crain Communications, 8 Nov. 2013. Web.

 "The Status of Women in the U. S. Media 2014." Women's Media Center. Women's Media Center, 2014. Web. .