Cosmopolitan and the Archetype of the “Fun, Fearless Female”

1958 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Cultural expectations

Women will do just about anything to feel good about themselves. Everything from painstakingly fixing their hair, makeup, and outfits daily, to dieting and exercising constantly, to paying exorbitant prices for psychological counseling, luxurious vacations, or plastic surgery treatments; they do just to try to make peace with themselves, to get a little closer to that rare feeling of happiness. Compared to these outlandish options, buying a $4.00 magazine seems like a great fix for a day when you’re down. Young adult and adult women (ages 18-39, roughly) today face a struggle that did not exist for previous generations. In their article explaining this phenomenon, Kathleen Hart and Maureen Kenny claim that “changed cultural norms simultaneously emphasize traditional feminine gender-role characteristics such as being beautiful and being a good mother, and traditional masculine gender-role characteristics such as achievement in the workplace, self-reliance and separation from parents” and that as a result, “girls may also be experiencing conflict regarding cultural expectations for success in multiple, and sometimes contradictory, roles” (Hart and Kenny web). The manufacturers of Cosmopolitan magazine create an image of a modern day “Superwoman” who excels in all of these roles—the manifestation of Cosmo‘s slogan, “fun, fearless, female”. They prey on the common insecurities, fears, hopes, desires, and dreams that women have by promising to pick up the slack where women fall short with tips, info, and advice. Success stories of “ordinary” women who have reconciled the discrepancies of their femininity to find not only professional but also domestic fulfillment also convince women that with the magazine’s help, they can accomplish th...

... middle of paper ...

...man Ideal and Other Risk Factors for Eating Disturbances in Adolescent Girls." ERIC – World’s Largest Digital Library of Education Literature. Apr. 1997. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. .

Hinshaw, Stephen P., and Rachel Kranz. The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures and Conflicting Expectations. New York: Ballantine Trade Paperbacks, 2009. Print.

Knoll, Jessica. "Why Men in Love Are Dragging Their Feet." Cosmopolitan Mar. 2011: 112-15. Print.

Knoll, Jessica. "Why Men in Love Are Dragging Their Feet." Cosmopolitan Mar. 2011: 112-15. Print.

Lee, Annabelle. "“Salary Wars”." Cosmopolitan Oct. 2010: 264-66. Print.

Miller, Korin. "“The One Time to Always Tell Him ‘I Love You’." Cosmopolitan Nov. 2010: 110-13. Print.

Prato, Alison. ""Katy Perry"" Cosmopolitan Nov. 2010: 35-38. Print.

Show More
Related

  • After Making Love We Hear Footsteps Analysis

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    YourTango. “50 Famous Quotes About Love From Authors, Artists, Movies & More.” Your Tango Your Best Love Life. Your Tango. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Jack Solomon's Masters Of Desire: The Culture Of American Advertising

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    This phenomenon suggests that all women are required to remain loyal wives and stay at home mothers who aspire to achieve perfection. In “Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation and Identity in Advertising Images,” Jonathon E. Schroeder and Detlev Zwick claim that “highly abstract connections are made between the models, a lifestyle, and the brand” resulting in a need to associate these products with a specific way of living (25). Instead of simply displaying these luxurious bracelets and handbags, the ad creates an elegant environment through the incorporation of sophisticated items. The women are dressed elegantly in dresses and blouses, adding a conservative element to the ad. The ad presents a rather stereotypical image of the very successful heads-of-household type mothers who have brunch with other elite women in an exclusive circle. Everything from the merchandise they sport to the champagne glasses down to the neatly manicured fingernails provides insight into the class of women presented in this ad. The body language of the women strips the image of the reality element and instead appears to be staged or frozen in time. This directly contributes to the concept of the gendered American dream that urges women to put up a picture-perfect image for the world to see. Instead of embracing individual struggle and realities, the American dream encourages women to live out a fabricated

    Read More

  • The Influence of Masculine Gender Roles in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

    1685 Words  | 4 Pages

    Law, B.Murray. "Do 'super masculine' husbands make for unhappy wives?." 9 Oct. 2004. American Psychological Association Online. APA Monitor on Psychology. Online. http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/husbands.html. (16 Nov. 2005)

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Kate Bolick's Article 'All The Single Ladies'

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Kate Bolick’s article “All the Single Ladies” she writes about how women are beginning to climb higher as the men are falling behind. Also, how that when women are at a good point in their lives and are ready to find a man they are left with nothing, that most of them men are already taken and on with their lives; Or that the ones that are left are always the ones that they don’t end up wanting.

    Read More

  • Superficial Love and Realistic Love in The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

    2092 Words  | 5 Pages

    Every 13 seconds, couples in America get divorced (Palacios). What is pushing these couples to get married if half of the marriages fail anyway? Leading into the 21st century, people decide to choose the single life over the married life, and use their energy and time towards rebounding, money, material love, power, freedom, pride, and their career. Superficial love often conquers idealistic love in today’s society due to one’s self-interest persuading them away from love.

    Read More

  • Edna’s Suicide in The Awakening

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pollard, Percival. "The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman." Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994. 179-181.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Cheating In The Great Gatsby

    374 Words  | 1 Pages

    reasons people were quick to rush into marriage. Cheating is a common recurrence in this book,

    Read More

  • Essay on Narrator and Point of View in Yellow Wallpaper and Story of an Hour

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    "Why are Women Leaving Marriage in Droves?" Marriage. Copyright: 1998. Cyberwoman (30 Jan 1999) http://www.cyberparent.com/women/marriage1.htm

    Read More

  • Women's Misleading Magazines

    1606 Words  | 4 Pages

    I was flipping through some channels on the television set one day and came across a woman's talk show, "The View." It caught my attention when one of the hostesses asked the audience of mostly women to raise their hand if they thought they were truly beautiful. Much to my surprise the audience did not respond with very many show of hands. The hostess then introduced a study done by Dove, the makers of the body soap. Dove polled over 6,000 women from all over the country and only two percent of the women polled said they feel beautiful. Women are surrounded by images screaming physical beauty is more important than their talents and accomplishments. Women are deriving their self worth from an ideal of how they think they should look and how they think everyone else wants them to look instead of focusing on their sense of who they are, what they know, and where they are going in life. In "Help or Hindrance?: Women's Magazines Offer Readers Little But Fear, Failure," Mary Kay Blakely states, "Instead of encouraging women to grow beyond childish myths and adapt to the changes of life, women's magazines have readers running in place, exhausted." She goes on to say, "This is a world we have 'made up' for women, and it is a perilous place to exist." One of the biggest culprits feeding women's insecurities are the popular women's magazine that line the book shelves of grocery stores, gas stations, and waiting rooms. They supply readers and the occasional innocent passerby with unrealistic images of what women should be instead of showing diverse age groups and women with natural beauty. Reading through a couple of magazines, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Shape, I found nothing but hidden agendas and...

    Read More

  • Domestic Violence in Lesbian Relationships

    4764 Words  | 10 Pages

    Swept Away: why women fear their own sexuality, Carol Cassell, PhD., Simon and Schuster 1984, pg 26

    Read More

  • Love, Death, and Divorce

    1574 Words  | 4 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau famously said that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” When we compare and contrast these two stories, “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree’s Baby,” by Kate Chapin, we learn that this sentiment may be especially true for women. Kate Chapin uses “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree’s Baby” to bravely explore the social inequalities of women in terms of marriage and divorce. The combination of these two stories point out that despite the presence of love, not all marriages are happy and not all divorces are sad. In “Desiree’s Baby,” Desiree has married for love and wishes to stay married and through no fault of her own, she is forced to divorce. In contrast “The Story of an Hour” is about Louise, who has married out of social obligation and wishes to divorce, but is forced to stay married. Both women are forced to follow paths not of their own choosing and submit to the rules set down by a male dominated society. In spite of society’s tendency to romanticize marriage, many women find marriage to be a limiting burden; for others, marriage may be the only chance at life.

    Read More

  • Traditional Wives verses Stay at Home Wives

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Like most wives of our generation, we’d contemplated eventual widowhood but never thought we’d end up divorced” (Hekker 278). Traditional wives married for love and to follow th...

    Read More

  • Absurd Expectations

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since most men have mothers to cater to their every need up until the time they move out, they have outrageous expectations of how a wife should act and what duties she should perform. Judy Brady, who is a wife and mother, wrote the essay "I Want a Wife" to explain what men want in a wife. She discusses the different skills a wife needs to possess for a man to consider her a good wife. Brady’s use of repetition, constant sarcasm, and defensive word choice throughout her essay makes it successful by relating to women’s frustrations of being a wife.

    Read More

  • The Appeal Of The Androgynous Man

    434 Words  | 1 Pages

    anyone stuck with this type of man. The choice of what type of man a woman chooses to

    Read More

  • Pygmalion Discussion Paper

    475 Words  | 1 Pages

    The traits men want in our women can never and will never be attainable by any person, no matter who they are. For many years, love has been kind of a lost cause. Men might look for a woman that could satisfy their needs in the present, but they had no thought of what she might be like in the future. Male and female relationships in the myth Pygmalion, the book Pygmalion, and in “real” life have many similarities. All the men look for the most desirable traits in women, and sometimes we don’t always get what we want. But with those similarities, comes a few differences.

    Read More

More about Cosmopolitan and the Archetype of the “Fun, Fearless Female”

Open Document