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Are Women’s Magazines Just ‘Liberal Cheerleaders’?

Are Women’s Magazines Just ‘Liberal Cheerleaders’?

Are women’s magazines “liberal cheerleaders” rooting for Hillary Clinton?

That’s the basis of a Politicoarticle by Hadas Gold that suggests readers of women’s magazines “will be getting a heavy dose of liberal cheerleading this season along with their skincare, makeup and fashion tips.”

It’s a mistake to think that young women don’t care about these issues, Joanna Coles, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan,told Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday:

We have many millions of millennial readers, and they’re interested in how they [will] pay off their student debts, they’re interested [in], are they going to get a job in this difficult economy? They’re also interested in, are they going to get great healthcare and do they have access to contraception and God forbid, should they need it, can they have access to an abortion. So I think they are watching candidates that reflect their interests.

Cosmopolitanbegan endorsing candidates last year, a controversial move partly because they explicitly endorse candidates that are pro-choice, support equal pay and birth control coverage, and oppose restrictive voter-ID laws. Abortion is actually a deal breaker, explainsCosmopolitan.com editor-in-chief Amy Odell: “[I]n our minds it’s not about liberal or conservative, it’s about women having rights, and particularly with health care because that is so important. All young women deserve affordable easy access to health care, and that might include terminating a pregnancy, and that’s OK.”

So while certainly liberal, the publication is not in the tank for Hillary — at least not yet. Although Clinton has long been pro-choice and has advocated for women’s rights throughout her career, her stances are not necessarily in strict adherence to Cosmopolitan’s guidelines.

As Kat Stoeffel at The Cutpoints out, women’s magazines focus so much on reproductive rights because it’s a “gateway issue to political consciousness.” Coles tells Stelter, in the end, they just want women to vote: “We have a rooted interest in them being part of the political process.”

“Both parties should be courting them rather assiduously,” said Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive when she spoke to Mika Brzezinski Monday.

Although according to the Pew Research Center, women have been skewing Democratic since 1990, with 52 percent to 36 percent in 2014. For millennials, it’s nearly the same — 51 percent to 35 percent. Half describe themselves as independents, but they’ve voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, both times by big margins as compared to previous youth votes in modern elections.

Politico citesCosmopolitan’s reach (an audience measure combining print and digital readers) to be 53 million, Glamour’s about 28 million, Vogue’s at 28 million, and Elle at 21 million.

It’s worth noting that Politico only concentrates on a handful of general-interest magazines, ones that are targeted to — and mostly read by — young women. The article ignores publications that have a specifically feminist bent (Bust, Bitch), or focus on fashion (W, InStyle), health (Self, Shape), mothers (Working Mother, Parents), or middle-aged and older women (Redbook, More).

Since Coles took over the magazine in 2012, the publication — which only became affiliated with its young, primarily single-women focus in the 1960s when Helen Gurley Brown took over its editorship — has a new focus on serious topics, winning its first American Society of Magazine Editors award for a spread on contraception, but it’s not the only one. Elle has a politics section. Glamour — through its “inspired” section — often focuses on women’s careers, policy, and national news.

Women’s magazines have often published serious stories; they just don’t get the recognition (or the respect) that similar magazines targeted to men do.

Are women’s magazines pro-Hillary Clinton?

Certainly, Hillary — and Chelsea — have gotten plenty of coverage from women’s magazines. But this is less about these publications shilling for Hillary than it is about the dearth of other women at her level to cover.

As Glamour‘s Leive told Brzezinski (whom Leive interviewed for her monthly column on career strategies in the current issue), when choosing women to report on, the numbers just work against Republicans. Out of 108 women in Congress, there are only 30 Republicans. (Heck, Glamour even posted a story on this.)

“Listen, if Republicans are concerned that women’s magazines are in the tank for Hillary and they want to come into our pages to tell their stories to our millions and millions of readers, then that’s fantastic… that’s exactly what they should be doing,” she said. So while Democrats like Clinton and Michelle Obama get a lot of coverage, Republican presidential contender Carly Fiorina has received some press, too.

Of Cosmopolitan’s perceived shift, Coles said, “People keep saying, ‘Oh, you’ve made the magazine much more political,’ but I feel that these are about lifestyle issues for women… That to me is why I am doing this.”

Photo: Does this scream liberal bias? Via Cosmopolitan.com

There’s Something About Paper

There’s Something About Paper

Interesting that the tech website CNET has started publishing an old-fashioned magazine — you know, on paper, like Time and Life. To complete the retro circle, CNET’s periodical is carrying print ads for Ford, Gillette and other brands already at home in the Mad Men era.

But wasn’t the digital technology that CNET touts supposed to do away with paper? Parent company CBS Interactive explains the seeming contradiction: The magazine simply gives people yet another way to get at CNET’s wares.

Seems there’s still something special about paper. After all, Wired magazine, aimed at the techno-literate, has always put out a paper edition — and a handsome one at that.

The Web is just electrical signals in the air. Paper is real estate. A paper magazine is an object that won’t vanish with a keyboard click or if the battery dies. At the airport newsstand, it announces its existence to all who pass by.

As a platform, paper is “portable, accessible and affordable,” a story about CNET’s magazine cutely notes.

Studies suggest that paper is better than a screen for reading comprehension and retaining information. We also read faster on paper.

Why? Our brains regard text as a “tangible part of the physical world,” Ferris Jabr writes in Scientific American. Books have a topography that screens don’t.

“Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on the trail — there’s a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled,” according to Jabr.

And he quotes Anne Mangen, a researcher at the University of Stavanger in Norway, as follows: “The ease with which you can find out the beginning, end and everything inbetween and the constant connection to your path … might be some way of making it less taxing cognitively, so you have more free capacity for comprehension.”

An article in The New York Times focuses on the debate over reading stories to children off a tablet screen versus out of a paper book. Don’t screens offer a superior experience? After all, Elmo and Grover talk and jump around on screens. They stay put on paper.

The conclusion among child development experts is that paper is better. A study at Temple University finds that young children comprehend more than when read to from a screen. It may have something to do with the gadget’s getting more of the attention than the literature.

And forget about putting the kid in charge of the iPad. The back-and-forth conversation with the elders is what helps children develop, experts say.

Another concern is that children’s e-books may come embedded with games and other distractions — just like adult e-books.

On the subject of paper’s special powers, there’s a wildly popular show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — of paper cutouts no more complicated, technically, than paper dolls. It helps, of course, that the guy with the scissors is an artistic genius named Henri Matisse.

Matisse cut simple shapes of swimming women, dolphins, sea plants and other forms from pieces of paper painted in bright solid colors. He then pinned or pasted them onto paper or a canvas in arrangements neither you nor I would ever have thought of. (You can see the pinholes and places where the paper tore.)

The exhibition includes this looping movie of old Matisse in his studio wielding a big pair of scissors and showing his svelte female assistants — oddly, in evening dresses and high heels — where to place them.

Most famous for his oil paintings, Matisse spent his last years cutting paper shapes. There’s something special about paper.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: shutterhacks via Flickr