Eating Disorders - Women's Magazines and Cinderella

Women's Magazines and Cinderella

In the world today much of the literature aimed at the feminine audience keeps us trapped in the role of "Cinderella." We think of ourselves as the poor, helpless, and uncared for woman who needs to be saved. The covers, the advertisements, and most articles in women's magazines reinforce what it means to be an ideal woman in today's society.

Pick up most any feminine magazine in your grocery store today, and it will define for you what it to be feminine in the year 2000. It defines most women as being slim happy wives, with great careers and wonderful children. One example of this journalistic nonsense is the magazine Redbook. The covers read like a map to any woman's (or man's) fairytale life. Headlines like "Burn Fat Faster at 25, 35, 45" (169) and "Perfect Skin: 77 quick tricks"(cover November) encourage us to be the best we can be in his eyes. Another headline tells us why it Rosie O'Donnell may never be slim (cover November). Why should she be? She's perfect, but n...

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...f Leslie Jane Seymour, publishers Hearst Communications, Inc..

Redbook advertisement by Virginia Slim volume #192 November 1999,

Pg. 12 Virginia Slims advertisement, Editor-in-Chief Leslie Jane Seymour, publishers Hearst Communications, Inc.

Sommers, Jeff and Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia, From Community to College, Reading and Writing Across Diverse Contexts, authors and published by St. Martin's Press 1996, quote found on pg. 114 in "Listening" an essay by Sey Chassler, published in 1984 in MS. Magazine