Domesticity And Desire In The Women's Magazines - Research Paper Example

Keynote (2005) reports an increase in book readership of 17 percent and a rise in magazine readership of 6.1 percent from 2004-2005 in the UK. It is forecasted that this magazine readership will continue to grow despite its competition from newspapers, television or the internet (Stevens, Maclaran & Catteral, 2007).Magazines, for example, still provide enjoyment to readers, especially women. They relish reading magazines during their leisure time while imbibing the information it offers. There is something relaxing in the traditional experience of handling a magazine, turning its glossy pages to the sound of crisp paper and feasting one’s eyes on the cornucopia of color and words in the text and graphics layout.

Magazine-reading may be considered a worthy activity to do during one’s “downtime” or rest time. Subscribers usually look forward to their regular copies and catch up on the latest fashion, recipes, news, research findings, gossip and literally what is going on in the “real world” as documented in printed text and graphics. Women, in particular, find reading magazines pleasurable and enable them to enter a ‘shared imaginary’ (Finnegan, 1997) community of other women readers sharing similar experiences and interests.

Winship (1987) describes such a community as a “dream world” of mutual desired and shared concerns.Women have so many concerns considering they play multiple roles in society. Magazines offer various advice on such concerns culled from research or taken from experts from different fields. Stevens, Maclaran & Catrall (2007) compare different kinds of women’s magazines and find that in general, there are magazines that primarily offer fashion and fitness advice.