Magazine Advertisements!!!

Hello again!!!! ADVERTISING is the topic of choice today!!!! This is going to be my second little project…my first being the google searches…and it should be really fun and interesting. What I am going to do is go to the grocery store and buy two magazines. I think I will buy Cosmopolitan and Tiger Beat. Why did I choose these two?

Cosmopolitan: 

the typical woman magazine. It talks about all sorts of women issues and it is one magazine I used to buy religiously!

Tiger Beat: 

the ultimate teen magazine. IT is a magazine I read when I was a young teenager and it is still popular today!

So, I literally just went to Publix and bought these two magazines. I got an adult and a teen magazine. I got these two because I want to see what kinds of ads each of them have and how they differ or how they are similar with each other. I have not looked in either of these magazines and I look forward to seeing how their ads portray women. So let’s begin!!!

Cosmopolitan

Front Cover: 

Actress Julia Stiles in a black leather dress. The dress is kind of low cut, but not too revealing.

First Page: 

Dolce & Gabana perfume ad. Double page. A man and woman are on a boat and the guy has his hands around the woman in a little white bikini. (What a great start!)

More Ads.

1. Lancome perfume ad. One women in a tank top. Very sleek and mature.

2. Michael Kors “Very Hollywood” perfume ad. Man and women in a limo. The

 woman is gorgeous and has huge diamonds on her ears and hand.

 3. Bebe clothes ad. The women is very skinny, dark makeup, and is 

wearing a very revealing leotard and fur coat. Very dramatic.

4. Bulova watch ad. A ballerina in a nice costume is dancing in the back 

ground. It gives the ad a sense of elegance and grace.

5. Juicy fragrance ad. A woman in mature Juicy clothes has her face up 

against the bottle. It is different and fun.

6. Skyy vodka ad. It’s a bottle with a womans hand around the handle. The background

 is a mans chest and his legs. The mans body is very oily. Very suggestive!

7.  Dior and Estee Lauder fragrance ads. They both have a very sexy, 

suggestive woman in the ad by themselves.

8. Radiance by Britney Spears perfume ad. It is very nice. It shows 

Britney in an elegant gown and it does suggest “radiance.”

9.  Mark makeup ad. This shows actress Ashley Greene’s face. It is very clean and very natural.

10. Birth control ad. It shows a lady fully dressed lying on a bed. She seems 

very confident and secure.

WOWSERS! So just about all the ads in this magazine had sexual innuendos. What surprised me the most was the fragrance advertisements. One, I never realized how many fragrance ads were in Cosmo. And second, I never realized how sexual the fragrance ads were. I am really astonished by this. Cosmo has always been a magazine I have loved to read, but all the sexual meanings behind everything were too much. Every woman in the magazine was the typical skinny, gorgeous lady that had it all. I want to read a magazine that doesn’t show women as sexual beings on every page. Is that so hard to ask? The advertisements in Cosmopolitan really portrayed women negatively and I hate that because there are always really good “true” stories in the magazine that help women in different subject matters. Maybe Cosmopolitan will get better at this, but I guess for the meaning “sex sells” is extremely accurate for this magazine.

Tiger Beat

Front Cover: 14 Stars align the cover with normal clothes.

First Page: Justin Beiber everywhere!

I went through this magazine and realized that there were NO ADS in it!!!!! Well there was one Wii ad, and an ad for the Disney movie Tangled. I am amazed!!!! How in the world does this magazine not have any ads in it?

However, this magazine is sending a different message I think. Every single page in this magazine had a Hollywood star in it. Every SINGLE page. What this magazine is showing young teenagers is the world of stars….they do not live normal lives, so this magazine is very misleading. The celebrities have nice clothes and nice cars, and we don’t need to tell/ show teenagers that having materialistic things will make them a better person or even famous. Also, this magazine is all about who is dating who in the Hollywood scene. If I was a parent, I would not my kids looking at a magazine that has pictures of Miley Cyrus making out with her boyfriend. Many kids (me included when I was younger) are so easily persuaded. When I was 13, I saw a picture of celebrities kissing, and I wanted to kiss a boy too. What message is this magazine sending to teenagers that are having raging hormones? I must say that most of this magazine is harmless, but I think Tiger Beat should lay back a little on putting pictures of celebrities getting physical with one another. One thing I loved about this magazine is that it showed a lot of the younger celebrities with their parents. That is awesome. That is what teenagers need to see! I’m so glad that this teenage magazine did not have ads portraying women in a negative light. Many young ladies have a negative self/ body image, and if Tiger beat had ads portraying women in the negative light, then young girls may get worse than they already are when it comes to having a negative self image.

Well I hope y'all learned something about advertising! Advertising is a super cool industry and it is awesome to see and realize how much advertising impacts our every day lives!!!

Next post: Commercials :)