Black And White: A Discourse Analysis Of Essence And Cosmo

Reviere & Byerly- Sexual messages in Black and White: A discourse analysis of Essence and Cosmo

• Reviere and Byerly compared two magazines, Cosmopolitan and Essence. The analysis of this comparison was based on their representation of white and black women on their sexual freedom and how the sex columns are presented in these magazines over a course of three years.

• “The way that women think about and talk about sex in public spaces today have been shaped over the last four decades through what has been deemed “second-wave feminism.” (Reviere 677) “Second-wave feminism”, which as the name states is the second phase of feminism and it started in the 1960’s. This has changed the ways in which women publicly speak about their sex lives, more

women are starting to feel comfortable with expressing their views on sex.
• “Feminist researchers and theorists continue to examine the media for cultural interpretations of women’s roles and statuses due to the recognition of the powerful influence that media possess as agents of socialization and ideological influence.” (Reviere 679) The media plays a big part in the representation of women’s roles in society and feminist researches are trying to study why the media plays such a large influence on women.
• “This finding suggested that men’s voices have grown louder on the matters of women’s sexuality in the years since Matsau’s research was conducted—i.e., men’s voices increased from 14 percent to 26.5 percent in Cosmo and from 14 percent to 41.9 percent in Essence columns on women’s sexuality.” (Reviere 683) This research suggests that women have increasing been more interested in reading a male’s perspective rather than a woman’s perspective.

This implies that women want to hear from a man’s point of view because they want to know what they can improve on, rather than reading what women have to say because they are only guessing what men

want.
• “Essence was also more definitive regarding fidelity in a man- leaves him! Cosmo columns were more ambivalent, some advocating giving him another chance.” (Reviere 687) Since these magazines targeted different audience, it was interesting to see that the advice given was the complete opposite. In Essence, where the targeted audience was black women, the advice did not tolerate infidelity. Meanwhile, Cosmo, targeted to white women, suggested to be lenient and forgive your partner who did wrong. Implying that people make mistakes and they should be given second chance.

“We observed at the outset that the female, educated middle-class, heterosexual readership of Essence and Cosmo differed primarily in their income levels (Essence readers making more than twice that of Cosmo readers) and race (Essence targeting a Black audience, Cosmo a White audience.) Discerning the sexual discourse from the findings must necessarily take into account social class and race.” (See Table 6) (Reviere 686)

In the article, Reviere noted that women in Essence were portrayed as being independent compared to women in Cosmo.

As shown in the table, the income levels of women in Essence are double the amount of those in Cosmo, which means that the targeted audience is a big age difference. In table 6, it can be seen that the sexuality of women is different in both magazines. Essence conveys an approach that is more of a feminist saying that women can be independent and they don’t need to have a man. It also advises women to not stay in a relationship where their partner is unfaithful. Meanwhile, in Cosmo women are advised to be the complete opposite. Essence does not accept infidelities and Cosmo advices women to weigh out their options and possibly give their partner a second

chance.
My question for these magazines would be, more specifically, for Cosmo, why are they not in support of independent women and why do they somewhat accepts infidelities? If Cosmo were targeting an older audience, would their approach be more similar to the model of Essence? Cosmo doesn’t advise women to be independent and they don’t tell their readers that it is ok to be single, will the magazine ever decide to change their approach this way. Even though Cosmo has a young audience, they should try to advise younger women to be independent and know when to say no. It is better to start educating women from a young age, in order for them to understand that it is not ok for their partners to be unfaithful to them.
The strengths of this new approach would be that, Cosmo, might get a larger audience and it would allow women of all ages to change their mindset and to think better. While, it can be a seen as a weak approach because some readers might disagree and become upset because they love Cosmo for what it is and they wouldn’t not want anything to be changed.