Decoding Women's Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms. - Hardcover

McCracken, Ellen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312079729 ISBN 13: 9780312079727

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992

Synopsis

Comprising the largest of magazine categories in the United States, nearly fifty glossy publications addressed to women appear monthly on news-stands. They are a multi-million-dollar business and essential to the marketing of commodities in the consumer society. At the same time, they present to readers a master narrative about the world, an ostensibly women-centred account of reality that links the utopian to the everyday. The multiple mini-narratives that begin on the front covers and extend to the ads and features inside combine to offer a highly pleasurable, appealing consensus about the feminine.
Decoding Women's Magazines studies the contradictory semiotic structures at work within and between purchased ads, covert ads, and editorial features in such genres as the beauty and fashion magazines, the service and home titles, those aimed at minority audiences, new female workers, and women with special interests and spending power. Whether addressing readers as Mademoiselle or Ms., contemporary women's magazines employ similar textual strategies to conflate commodities and desire, and thereby attain immense circulations and profits.

About this title

About the Author:

Ellen McCracken is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Program in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0312079729
• ISBN 13: 9780312079727
• Binding: Hardcover