Woman Magazine Analysis

This issue comes from August 24th 1964

'Woman's Greatest' - Aspirational,  demographic of middle class woman 25-50s presenting itself on being able to show these women how they can improve their lives in a variety of ways.

The lexus is that of glamour and importance, 'Greatest', 'Special', 'Lively', 'Improvements' and 'A-level' all give blatant implications of such, with each of these words make an appearance in every body of text upon display. 'special magic' acts as an enigma code to make the viewer intent on finding out what that supposed magic is. the text that also uses a direct mode of address in it's usage of 'ARE YOU AN A-LEVEL BEAUTY?' which acts as another enigma code to support the viewer to read on in the magazine and think about the enquiry that has been made to them, it also creates a feeling of inclusivity between the magazine and the reader to some extent.

The image of the model coincides with the text, as it has the same direct address, with 'women' representing itself with this face in particular as the ideal woman, it shows that they favour that to be a woman you need to take care of yourself and dress-up nicely, while donning a smile and some makeup to go with it. It attempts to imply that women who do all of the above are the types who read their magazine and perhaps you'll become that way too if you indulge in buying a copy for yourself. - This is all representative as to the patriarchal ideology and cultural hegemony that still exists today as is the status quo, even more so at the time of 1964.

The inter-textual reference to the famous film director Alfred Hitchcock is significant as to his consistency of helping female actors within their careers by placing them within his movies, thus why the magazine uses his namesake in a positive light.

This cover comes from the 20th of May 2019

In juxtaposition to it's predecessor, this cover of Woman magazine from last year doesnt make for the use of direct address within the text itself, and rather than a lexus of improvement for the viewer aside from '50 easy was to cut 100 calories' it is devoid of such, a higher focus simply upon gossip of celebrities. 

The cover though incorporating the concept of a patriarchal society though it's main headline of 'The truth about me & Kevin' and the pull quote of 'I wanted him from the start' giving implications that women still do need men and should be idealising being there for them, we see confliction on these ideals with the article titled 'Why I've Stopped sleeping with my husband' seemingly attempting to represent the magazine as being supportive of more so feminist agendas and female empowerment.

Notably the logo of the magazine has been shifted to a larger bold sans-serif font in a bright pink with white outlines, losing the more so personal feel to the almost hand-drawn cursive logo of the original magazine, degrading the overall importance of the brand 'Woman' itself in favour of pulling the magazine sales via a far greater focus upon high contrast images, with their title even being covered and concealed by other information and articles.