Time: Sat Sep 20 19:23:25 1997
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Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 16:32:30 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.970920162209.4797A-100000@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: CONCHR Womens' Magazines' Agenda
From: WFB <ralexand@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us>
To: conchr-l@xc.org
This is absolutely correct. I never read those trashy fashion/sex
magazines, because they are too superficial (I prefer National Review and
the like), but the other day I was in a waiting room for hours and all
they had was women's fashion magazines. I was amazed at how many of them
carried interviews/specials about Hillary Clinton (anyone remember them
covering Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush this much? No, when I was a high
schooler and actually read this type of trash I never saw them featured
this much). And then the feature articles/columns were equally as left as
this article describes. I'm so sick of hearing about "women's issues."
As we all know, there are over 1 million members of Concerned Women for
America, as to 300,000 and declining for N.O.W., so the phrase "women's
issues" is actually referring to a minority of women. Anyways, the
garbage discussed in those magazines was so offensive anyways, that how
could any decent conservative woman want to read it anyways? I consider
myself a fairly wild young conservative woman, nothing like my old stodgy
parents, yet the stuff they discuss in these magazines is
disgusting--orgasms, sex, venereal diseases. And they discuss like
everyone is having pre-marital sex constantly. Disgusting. Doesn't
anyone "fashionable" have morals anymore? You'd think they'd be
embarrassed to have their name associated with such stuff.
I write a column now for our university paper, the University of Arizona
Daily Wildcat. This sounds like a good column. Especially compared to
the crud the other columnists write about--"hating Jesus freaks,"
"premature ejaculation," and "female genital mutilation."
I sat by the guy who wrote against "Jesus freaks," and as nice as I am, I
could not bring myself to say hi or anything. I guess I'd be nice if
spoken to, but I wasn't going to go out of my way.
Anyways, I will continue to ignore Women's Magazines. There's nothing
intellectual in them anyways, so why bother?? Now if they had a
conservative intellectual women's magazine, I'd bother :-)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WFB Alexander
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are
willing to work and give to those who would not.
http://www.eskimo.com/~wfb -Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, Steven Ertelt wrote:
> Uncovering the Politics of Women's Magazines
> ----
> By Evan Gahr
>
> Pick up a recent issue of Glamour magazine and you'll see stories
> headlined "Will You Want Him Forever?" and "Stress and Your Weight." But
> you'll also find another message -- one that's distinctly political: "It
> takes a full-time working woman more than 15 months to make what a man
> makes in 12," explains an unsigned editorial. "That's because for each
> dollar he earns, we're logging just 71 cents." In order to help narrow the
> "pay gap," Glamour's readers (circulation: two million) are told to urge
> their senators and representatives to support Sen. Tom Daschle's "Paycheck
> Fairness Act, which would put more muscle into enforcing existing
> equal-pay laws."
>
> Sticklers for detail will note, however, that this legislation would
> solve a problem that doesn't exist. Contrary to Glamour's claim of pay
> inequity -- as well as similar claims in the August issues of Mademoiselle
> and Self magazines -- studies have repeatedly demonstrated that U.S. men's
> and women's pay are virtually identical when all relevant factors, such as
> education and experience, are equal.
>
> Such unabashed enthusiasm for government activism these days is mostly
> relegated to such marginal publications as The Nation. But women's
> magazines, with their millions of readers, may very well function as
> liberalism's most prominent mainstream supporters. In a study of the
> content of 13 women's magazines during the year before the 1996 election,
> the Media Research Center and Consumer Alert found that they almost always
> depicted government programs favorably and often urged readers to lobby
> for their expansion. The publications, including Family Circle, Glamour,
> Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Mademoiselle, Woman's Day and
> Working Woman, boast a combined circulation of more than 37 million; the
> study found that they push everything from government-funded universal
> health care coverage to increased budgets for obesity research.
>
> The magazines' news pages also carry frequent paeans to liberal
> activists. In the months before the Children's Defense Fund's 1996 Stand
> for Children rally -- aimed at expanding government spending programs that
> benefit bureaucrats and activists at least as much as they do children --
> women's magazines were filled with pieces that depicted CDF head Marian
> Wright Edelman as a children's ally only slightly less magnanimous than
> Santa Claus. The June 1996 issue of Good Housekeeping, for example, asked
> "What can you do now to make sure all children grow up happy and healthy?"
> Answer: Attend the Stand for Children rally, "a way for individuals to put
> pressure on government, businesses, and cultural leaders to put their
> money where their mouths are, to make family and children's issues a
> national priority." Good Housekeeping (circulation: five million) also
> provided a phone number for readers seeking more information on the rally.
>
> Women who don't share the liberal agenda, meanwhile, are either ignored
> or their conservatism downplayed in women's magazines. When the editors of
> Glamour named former Rep. Susan Molinari (R., N.Y.) one of the magazine's
> 1996 women of the year, they lauded her for being "pro-choice, pro-gun
> control [and] pro-family leave" but forgot that she also supported the
> Contract With America.
>
> That spin continues in the August edition of Glamour. Free-lancer Juliet
> Eilperin and New Republic Senior Editor Hanna Rosin analyze Ms.
> Molinari's voting record without any references to her support for GOP
> economic policies. Instead, Ms. Molinari is lauded for working quietly to
> "counter the party's more conservative wing." That's perhaps true on
> social issues. But Glamour readers get no hint that Ms. Molinari supported
> cutting taxes and reducing government spending.
>
> Glamour's makeover of Ms. Molinari is nothing compared with how the
> magazines play Hillary Rodham Clinton. Interested in the first lady's role
> in Whitewater and the many other White House scandals? Then you must be a
> sexist. In the July 1996 issue of Mademoiselle (circulation: 1.2
> million), Ellen Neuborne wrote that she didn't know "what, if anything,
> the First Lady had to do with Whitewater or the travel-office firings . .
> . but there would be a lot less interest in digging up dirt on Hillary
> Clinton if she weren't already a powerful woman -- that, in her critics'
> eyes, is her real crime." This will come as news to Independent Counsel
> Kenneth Starr.
>
> Needless to say, women's magazines also unabashedly support abortion
> rights -- even to the point of not reporting news that may upset
> supporters of abortion rights. In October 1996 researchers published a
> study in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health which suggested
> a link between abortion and breast cancer. The study received prominent
> play in leading newspapers. But Cosmopolitan (circulation: 2.3 million),
> which regularly fills its pages with the latest information on breast
> cancer research, ignored the study altogether, according to a Dow Jones
> News/Retrieval search.
>
> Even when faced with evidence of their spin, top women's magazine
> editors adamantly deny any bias. Is the Lifetime Achievement Award that
> Family Circle (circulation: five million) bestowed upon Ms. Edelman in May
> 1996 an endorsement of her liberal activism? Not according to its editor,
> Susan Ungaro. Upbraiding conservative critics for deeming the award
> ideological, Ms. Ungaro told Insight magazine that "a lot of what Marian
> Wright Edelman is doing has no politics."
>
> Glamour Editor Ruth Whitney similarly dismisses criticism that her
> magazine is political. "Our only bias is being pro-woman," she told me. "I
> wouldn't say [our stories] are pro-government. They are pro-woman."
> Defined how? "What we think is good for women." And there you have it: In
> the liberal lexicon only conservatives are ideological. Everybody else is
> working for the greater good -- protecting women and children from
> right-wing meanies.
>
> Women's magazines are certainly entitled to beat the drum for
> 1970s-style feminism. But let the reader beware: When the subject is
> politics, a "womyn" lurks behind every story written by a Cosmo girl.
>
>
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