WHSmith

[pinkstinks]

Hi this is my first post in feminism, please be gentle!
I am doing my dissertation on women and tattoos, it is really interesting, the hand in is wednesday though! Anyway I digress...

I was looking for the publisher of Skin Deep Magazine, to cite it in my dissy, and I wound up on the WHSmith website, on the mag subscriptions page, and the only way you could get to Skin Deep, was through the 'mens lifestyle' option.

Now I have my own opinions of tattoo magazines in that they are not necessarily empowering and further fetishise women with tattoos, but there is nothing in the Skin Deep website to hint that it is intended for a male audience....so why does WHSmith think this is ok?

I have emailed them to complain about this, I realise that this is a niche subject however hopefully they will response with their reasoning!

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

To be honest, WH Smith don't have a great reputation round here, being the only newsagent on the high street to refuse to move lads mags (with sexually explicit pictures of women on the cover) up and out of children's eye line. I think there's something wrong with those in charge at WH Smith!

I remember seeing New Scientist in the Men's Interest section once .

"I remember seeing New Scientist in the Men's Interest section once ."

I used to work for WHS, way back when Magenta de Vine staged a campaign against top shelf mags- she marched in to our branch (Manchester Arndale) with her cameras and took them off the shelf. (IIRC- although this was 1988 so possibly my memory not what it was) there was an emergency staff meeting and we were told that as WHS are also hoooooooge distributors to other retail outlets, there was no way any mag was ever going to be removed. Much of WHS profits came (at the time) from its print media distribution sector.

I imagine, from the little I've read on the latest top-shelf campaign and WHS reaction, it's still the same today.

Hmm...I've never really thought about it before, but now you come to mention it, my previous magazine-buying habits tended to be music magazines and they were (and are) most definitely targeted at the male buyer. Not only in terms of where the retailers located them, but also the types of advertising they carry, the features they run etc. The writers tend to be male, too.

Music surely appeals to men and women in equal numbers, I would have thought? Is it just that more men are inclined to read about it, or do more men buy the magazines because they are being more heavily targeted by the producers and retailers?

Chicken and egg?

This pisses me right off. Obviously, it's because women are only interested in gossip and men, where as men are interested in everything else

I definitely agree that music magazines tend to be more like men's magazines in style - I do prefer things like New Scientist and The Week, which are pretty much gender-neutral in style terms. I'm always incensed by magazines like Stuff, which is about gadgets but always has a naked woman on the cover. Because of course, women aren't interested in electrical items. grr

whereas

I posted about this subject in the 'resisting femininity' thread a few days ago. It really annoys me too. It's as if, by putting a half naked woman on the front cover of a mag, they are deliberately trying to exclude 51% of their potential audience.

WHSmut are pretty bad in terms of their response to customer complaints about lads mags. I had a response from them today which was basically telling me they are going to do sod all about their lads mag displays.

And they have a 1.2m height minimum for their lads mags which is actually the height of an average 6-7 year old according to a recent Department of Health age/weight survey of children. WHSmut refuse to say where they get the 1.2m from or what they consider to be children. Clearly, once you're over the age of 6, it's ok to be exposed to degrading sexualised images of women.

I won't shop in there now. I only go in there to cover up the lads mags with Farmers Weekly.

I only go in there to cover up the lads mags with Farmers Weekly.

I like your style, Jess

That's how I feel about those covers too, Jess, it's like there's a big sign saying 'Women, This is Not For You!'. So I tend to think - well, fine, don't want my money, you don't get it. Really stupid of them IMO to put that on the covers of magazines about photography or technology, say, which I or lots of other women might be otherwise interested in buying. I think it's quite insulting to men as well to suggest that they'd buy something just because they slap a picture of a woman in bikini on the front - I know DP (male) is annoyed by this as well.

By the way, I don't mean to imply that no women are attracted to images of women like that, or that all men are (obviously not the case) - but in our culture those sorts of sexualised images are pretty well understood as markers for 'Men's Stuff' in much the way that making something pink indicates that it's for girls/women. Though more offensive using women's bodies in that way than using a colour!

Thanks Immaculada! I do vary it. I sometimes cover them up with 'Attitude' magazine or Men's Health to turn the tables. I covered some up in Tesco the other day with a farm machinery magazine (I had no idea there was such a thing!).

Epiny - it does really annoy me too that these magazine publishers feel the need to do this. It's insulting to men, I agree, and I think it shows that they are not confident in their product to be able to sell it without a photo of a half naked woman on the front.

It's odd that all women's magazines have an aspirational photo of a woman on the cover and many men's magazines do too. The only magazines which objectify men are aimed at gay men.

I found an interesting magazine called 'Wired' the other day. It seemed to be aimed at men (it was in the men's lifestyle section) but I thought it looked pretty interesting and there wasn't a pair of tits or a scantily clad bum in sight.

I think men should be insulted that magazine publishers think they are only interested in tits and football.