OK! magazine.

i find the whole thing astounding. yet on the other hand am completely not surprised. this week's ok! mag has Mark on it 'dealing' with evil Lauren having aborted his baby. Women continue to be vilified for abortions, men continue to gain the upper hand. Things just never change. what is even worse is that my dd's friend (year 6) has peers who watch this shit on tv and discuss it. so sad that it the shallow, superficiality and misogynistic representations are just as bad as 30 years ago. what hope for our daughters? i live in the essex area and am dumbstruck by the whole effect it is having on daily life.....

Carenotasaint, Red and Psychologies are still pretty bad. Similar messages to other mags, same advertising, v few stories other than stereotypical stuff.

jordan,lauren et al would sell their soul to get a airbrushed extended story. they are vapid,shallow and attention seeking. and as parents we are more than capable of explaining actually they are not a role model,its not something to be emulated.at all

really what is it they do?

i dont think its an achievement to sell titbits of your chaotic permatanned life for cash

My question would be why do these women think that this is the score and they have to be airbrushed and glossed to get ahead?

It all comes down to women are sex objects and shouldn't worry their pretty heads with real issues so they must look pretty, glam themselves up and spread their legs lives for everyone else to see.

This woman might not have been coerced into selling all the gory details, but her and the Jordans of the world are judged by how pretty they are, how available they are and the rest of the world are told that this is who we're are supposed to look up to and emulate. It's a bit of a bug of mine since these mags are more dangerous to young girls than lads mags as far as I'mm concerned, they pretend to be 'on their side' whilst telling them what to wear, look like, act like, think, etc.

spare me the socialsciencetastic lecture on media studies.and no dont predictably fill the blanks in

mags like ok are filled with schlock.it sells.fact

the transaction has been

1. lauren sells a tawdry story with bit of sex,disappointment,gossip
2. to an audience who want to read it and will pay to do so

i have limited sympathy for whether or not she may have been misrepresented. and she needs to take personal responsibility for how she has presented her story. this abdication of personal responsibility as in the magazine needs to take responsibility is tosh. she is adult woman,selling private facts and events for profit

lauren is jointly responsible for the story,she needs to take ownership.
do you think when she was sitting in make up and hair for 2hr+, when she saw her airbrushed self photos, when she discreetly dabbed her eyes so her mascara wouldnt run that she didnt know what was going on?

she knows the score and for what ever reason she has chosen to be in ok,airbrushed and glossed.no one coerced her

a deeper question is why would an adult chose that lifestyle on telly,in mags
what is she seeking?does her affirmation come externally from others,is she looking for ahhh and sympathy poor lauren-stylie

How about the possibility that she wanted women to know it's ok to have abortions, it doesn't make you a bad person?

SM, what do you mean you don't buy into the men in suits, etc.

OK, for these shows to exist, the media companies, which are headed predominantly by (1) need to head hunt "characters" for each show. The target audience for these shows is predominantly (2). The audience is projected a media circus representation of the individuals involved, removing the individualism of the models/actors, whatever you want to call them. The image projected is of "drippy but beautiful" WAG types, perpetuating harmful stereotypes of each gender. Each actor/model/whatever is given publicity agent, who is usually a (3) in a (4) , who will gain the majority of these actor/model/whatever's (5)_ (or in some cases their soul). They dictate to the a/m/ws what they can tell other forms of media, and who they can (6) _ what stories to, and for what (7)_ .

In interviews, the a/m/ws will often be fed a series of questions which have been somewhat (8) by the journalist. The replies to these form the interview. However, the journalist and magazine has an (9) of the "sleb" to sell, so any deviations from this image are (10) , in order to perpetuate the (11)_ of the "sleb" that the magazine is trying to sell. (12)_ are the most likely to be exploited and edited in this manner, or through other means such as photoshopping images

Fill in the blanks, and I'll give you all the answeers in the morning.

I am from Essex and cant fuckin stand TOWIE. Hate Made in Chelsea too.

lauren et al.all the perma-tanned self publicists are ghastly and no i dont subscribe to the men/publicists in suits manipulate them. these women sell and brand themselves to highest purchaser

I read it. Don't know who she is but seems she has split up with someone and the mag asked if she was ever worried she might be pregnant. She said yes she had worried about it and that she had once been pregnant with his baby but chose to have an abortion. She says up to now it's something only her family and he knew about.

who knows why she told them after keeping it fairly secret up til then. Perhaps she was scared he would tell first?

Incidentally I bought the mag because I couldn't believe Chantelle Houghton really is having ivf. Turns out, from what she says she can't possibly be as she clearly has no clue what IVF is. I find that much more offensive than someone having an abortion and talking about it in the press.

wholly agree scottish mummy

not so sure of argument lauren towie are misrepresented,therefore its less her fault

hmmm

she has sold herself,her looks her relationship and dragged her detritus about.she has to take individual responsibility for her actions and pr. havent read article but saw cover in supermarket.presumably she will be photographed in some glossy lipgloss, radiant foundation and nice hair

well you sell yourself and hoik your sad arse around like a commodity,expect to be branded,commodified and sold as a tawdry story. i have extremely limited sympathy for her. its symptomatic of how a minority of women seek to self publicise selves. they and a society that values and sells gossipy frothy shit are to blame

the point is she will have known how its presented shes never out of the mags she cant be that stupid.

I never, ever thought I'd say this, but...

SM's right...

people love that salacious gossip.if press is in gutter its partially because of people insatiable gluttony for lewd libidinous nasty gossip. it sells people create a demand that they meet

magazines print copy that sells
worthy tame copy about stable lives doesnt fly off shelves

both the media and purchasers of these mags drive the demand

I absolutely HATE these celebrity weeklies and never buy them. I read Red and Psychologies.
There was a magazine called Scarlet which was discontinued last year.It was a raunchy mag that had a naughty short stories section in the middle called Cliterature. It had plenty of articles on feminism including how you can choose to be a SAHM and still be a feminist. Scarlet was a monthly too.
Its original editor Sarah Hedley also launched a campaign against fattism in the media after Heat magazine gave away free stickers,one of which was a sticker of Katie Prices son Harvey having a dig at his weight by insinuating that hes greedy. i cant remember the actual phrase used on the sticker but it was distasteful disgusting and sick.
Says a lot about our society though that Scarlet was cancelled because it wasnt selling enough copies and yet these awful celeb mags are still going strong.

Company occassionally has an article which makes me think "Thank FUCK, someone gets it". But at other times, they miss the mark completely. And the rest of the mag undoes all the hardwork that goes into the occassional article they do get right. That's the only mag I can think of which has any brand of feminism, ever.

Can't find it and my head is hurting after googling "Daily Mail" mothers. Such venom in all the stories....

I can't think of a mainstream magazine which you could view as being positive from a feminist angle.

It breaks my heart - Cosmopolitan in the early 90s (when Marcelle d'Argy Smith edited it) was a triumph, I was 13 when I started buying it, it had excellent articles which encouraged girls to aspire. Now cosmo is just the same fashion/sleb/make up/sex SHITE.

Women's Journal was also good, for a different age group though.

Now, they are all the same. Especially the lowest common denominator shit, OK, Hello, Closer, Now. All obsessed with how thin you are and how good you look.

My daughter gets very, very bored of my ranting about this subject.

There was a great piece on twitter the other day about a journalist who tried to write a story for the Daily Mail: her piece was edited and edited into a story about how evil women were to leave their children and go and do war-reproting (or something). She resisted the editing until the Mail dropped the piece (and hence she wrote a blog post about it; I suppose she had to get some mileage out of the time she had put into the article. I shall have a google and see if I can find it.

All of which leads to assume that the "story angle" will come direct from the editors and not from the interviewee. If anything is clear from reading the blog post I mention is that when newspapers/magazines have adopted a line (misogyny in the DM for example) they will edit any story to fit.

I did deliberate over picking up an issue today, in Morrisons... Couldn't justify even looking at it, even if it was for feminist analysis. But Prolesworth has nailed it.

Prolesworth, you are always so clever, I agree with what you have said.

God knows what Lauren wanted to say, it could well be that the abortion was 'teased' out of her. In any case I don't think the woman should be judged on what an OK headline says about her, those magazines manipulate both their customers and interviewees imo, and the headlines are notoriously misleading.

Whatever happens, I don't think a woman should be judged for having an abortion and feeling not at all guilty about it, however I have flogged this particular horse on MN before so shan't labour the point.

From a feminist perspective you would object to OK magazine (and their ilk) full stop.

I think Prolesworth has nailed it.