Thinking women's magazines have had their day

[EduardoBarcelona]

I was given a copy of Marie Claire. I just read it. Why? Adverts. Adverts. Hard adverts hard to bend. Samples.

Shit trite editorial and letters "I read the article on North Korea im so pleased to live in Europe". Yup thanks for that.
Articles on what it's like in the hamptons. A big on dodgy abortion providers. Pages on a woman in the desert with skeletal legs. See pic.

Then the most hilarious "get the look for less" see pics.

I also think it's very sad that kids no longer read proper comics and they've all died a death except the Beano. I used to rush up to the shops to get the new Bunty as soon as I got my pocket money.

The baby ones are the worst.

Green parent is probably the best,i subscribe to the mother magazine as well but thats in the other direction,too extreme.I dont want to breatfeed my kids till they are 7 and be a raw vegan....but i also dont want to do controlled crying and use jars of baby food either.

I used to love Cosmo back in the Marcelle d'Argy Smith days (80s and early 90s) when you actually did get articles on emotional and feminist issues with a reasonable amount of depth to them. When they shifted towards 'real sex confessions' and got totally obsessed with 100 different sexual positions/ways to have an orgasm with your ankles clasped behind your head/what 'men' (immature 20-year-old boys more like) really think of your performance in bed I got disgusted and ditched the subscription.

I get my mum's Good Housekeeping now. Best of a bad job, but I wouldn't pay the money for it these days. I think the interweb has hollowed out the market for magazines in a big way.

Take A Break and other crap mags are actually much more enjoyable IMO. A few recipes, a bit of sleb twaddle, a couple of beauty pages, and then just real life stories with no airbrushing and actual real women!

Had a Vogue subscription for years but gave it up when the subscription price topped £50. I am a Grazia reader these days, read it on the train and enjoy it shrugs

I agree. Years ago Marie Claire had some decent editorial in it but these days it is just as shite as the rest of them.

The only magazine I buy semi-regularly now is The Lady.

Go on - laugh! But it does often have interesting articles in there; it is definitely not obsessed with looks and you really don't have to be 90 to read it. Also the Situations Vacant can be quite amusing - there really are still people who hire butlers and companions.

Oh and the Ladygram ( a sort of crossword) is quite good fun

Womens mags are dire these days. I always used to have a subscription to one but for the last couple of years I have subscribed to Rugby World instead. Much more interesting and lots of eye candy!

SetPhasers me too! It was one of my ambitions as a teen to have a story published in "The Friend" and I achieved it two years ago. I'm still enormously proud of the fact.

I feel like I outgrew them a long time ago.
Mumsnet is so much better for a tea break read.

They are useless a lot of them.

I used to quite like and read Essentials but rarely buy it now. Red I've always seen as catering to a specific target market and with samey articles. Was at hairdressers Sunday read this April's and May's Red whilst there and honestly apart from a few articles they're the same magazine!

I do miss the more ethical and educational articles that used to be in Marie Claire though, years ago this was.

5foot5 I enjoy The Lady! It does have some interesting articles. I like that it's aimed at women who are too busy to worry about what other people think but just get on with it. FWIW I am a 20something working-class Marxist-feminist from the industrial West Midlands, not exactly their target market

I haven't brought "womens mags" for years and years now. I would think that they are just as stupid/vacuous as they always have been though?

I do occasionally buy Vanity Fair - and I do enjoy the ridiculous adverts in there.

I used to read Cosmo back in the 1980s, it was much better then. The last women's magazine I read was Eve; it was a shame when they stopped publishing it.

Margins on all consumer mags have been pushed right down, so ads are sold for less money so more have to be sold to balance the same number of editorial pages, and editorial budgets have been annihilated over the past 5-10 years so more stuff is done by in-house staffers on a short timescale. The days of really good Marie-Claire investigative features seem long gone, sadly.
There is some good stuff hidden in them, but it's shrouded in fluff, sadly.

And they are dying, sadly for those of us who used to like them and work in publishing. Easy Living and More! folded last year, Zest earlier this year.

Although having said all that, Porter (high end fashion mag from the Net a Porter team) has just launched, which is brave, in the current climate.

You're buying the wrong magazine! Subscribe to reader's digest or stick to the magazines meant for oldies, e.g 'People' always have something interesting to read in them.

I think that not buying them, comes at a certain age.

kinsorange I am 25 and have never really got into women's magazines - they've been boring for a while. And I like fashion and beauty stuff, but I want content too. I got Glamour for £1 the other day for a train journey and it was so dull, and yes to whoever said they assume everyone works in an office! Nobody is a vet or nurse or teacher.

I've actually changed hairdressers because the selection of magazines in the old one was so dull! Nothing but Vogue, Elle, and similar heavy weight aspirational adverts with skinny models wearing jaw-droppingly expensive tiny bits of fabric and interviews with people who are apparently celebrities but who I do not recognise and have never heard of.

The new hairdresser charges about the same, but supplies a couple of daily newspapers and a couple of red-top women's magazines. If I do end up waiting longer than the newspaper lasted, at least the red tops tend to have a couple of recipes and a nice juicy Advice Column, where I sometimes think half the AIBU trolls get their ideas from