CosmoGIRL!, a teen spin-off of the successful women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, is published by the Hearst Corporation, one of the world’s largest magazine publishers, which also owns such well-known and diverse titles as Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, Town & Country, and O, The Oprah Magazine. The high-gloss monthly appears to be targeted at middleclass girls of all ethnicities in their early teens. This deduction is based on observations that: the merchandise advertised is mostly at department store prices; women of color are well represented and appear no more exoticized than others (see pp. 111, 114, 164-165, 172-173, 174-177); and the editorial is a "pajama party" mixture of pop star profiles, personality quizzes, and "sneak peeks" at college life and other people’s diaries.

My critique of CosmoGIRL! focuses on the kind of discourse it creates about what it means to be a girl, and why it might choose to be this particular type of role model. I look at the magazine’s juxtaposition of feminine and masculine, and how it uses stereotyping to both establish men as the "other" and propagate a culture of insecurity that serves to further the publisher’s financial goals. While there is clear evidence of parents also being constructed as "other" (pp. 164), this is a separate argument and, for brevity’s sake, I don’t go there.

CosmoGIRL! attempts to represent itself as something more than just another girls’ fashion magazine. By showcasing successful females (see "Project 2024," p. 106, and "Cosmo Girl of the Year Awards," pp. 124-137) and including self-help sections such as "Girl Talk" and "Life Coach," the magazine tries to center itself in a discourse that promotes female self-esteem, self-acceptance, and empowerment. In her editor’s letter (page 28), Rubenstein tells readers not to worry if they don’t fit the mold others create for them — to be their own person, "the girl you’ve always wanted to be." But then the magazine proceeds to tell readers that the girl they want to be is thin ("Fitness 101," pp 96-99), fashionably dressed and heavily made up, with chemically colored and styled hair. Unfortunately, the bulk of CosmoGIRL!’s editorial conspires with its abundant ads for sexy clothes, sexy fragrances, and sexy new shades of makeup, to create an inter-textual discourse that is anything but unique.

CosmoGIRL!, I found, is just another voice for the same tune sung by most women’s magazines — a discourse that establishes a female’s ultimate concern as that of making herself attractive to males. The magazine makes no mention of current news events. Indeed, it contains little editorial of substance. The majority of its content is structured around beauty, fashion, and dating tips and the merchandise to capitalize on these "important insights." The lead cover story of the issue I critiqued is "685 Ways to Be Totally Irresistible."

In CosmoGIRL!’s teen-female version of Jhally’s "Dreamworld," the hegemony of male/female binary opposition is reversed. Here, girls hold the powerful subject position of spectator and it is men who are the objectified "other," reduced to a handful of characteristics or mere body parts. On page 50, for example, is a "Boy-O-Meter" where readers are invited to evaluate the featured fellow, on a scale from "sizzle" to "fizzle," based solely on a photograph.

Men are stereotyped as either guileless and devoted prey waiting to be snared, or jerks and sexual predators. A good example of this binary form of representation is the "Date Your Crush" feature on page 139. The same boy who "means everything to you" becomes "your stanky crush" if he doesn’t return your affections. Worthwhile men, the magazine suggests, are more interested in a girl’s personality than her physical appearance and are willing to make a romantic commitment. Faithful 18-year-old Stephen (p. 58), for example, states in his travel diary that thinking of his girlfriend back home saved him from making "some stupid decisions" where other girls were concerned. And the magazine’s 27-year-old centerfold maintains that the first thing he notices about a girl is "the way she carries herself" (69). This hunk of pretty male flesh also confesses that one of his lifelong dreams is "to be a great father."

Even though the men objectified by CosmoGIRL! are typically older than its readers (i.e. forbidden and exciting "college guys"), within the magazine’s regime of representation they are vulnerable and, therefore, controllable. The Calvin Klein cologne ad on page 23 is a good example of this myth under construction. Denotatively, we have a photograph of a shirtless young man sitting on a sofa with his pants unzipped. But such signifiers as the model’s unzipped pants and slouching posture — emphasized by the low camera angle, which positions the reader below and between his legs — conveys the message that this person is surrendering himself to the viewer’s sexual exploitation. His half-closed eyes and his arms laid back behind his head imply total submissiveness.

Calvin Klein is counting on this culturally understood "sign" combining with a second set of signifieds — a romantic Western female ideology about the relationship of sex to romance — to produce a whole new meaning for their ad through what Barthes terms a "second level of signification" (Hall, 39). The play on words ("Get it on," in tiny subscript below the photo) has apparently been thrown in to assure that CosmoGIRL!’s young readers don’t miss the myth being marketed here — that you, too, can have sex and love if you buy this product.

Sex sells. And CosmoGIRL!, although meant for young girls, is subtly sexual. Most men featured in the magazine are either topless or have their shirt unbuttoned (see "Dear Almost Naked College Guy," p. 112; the centerfold model, pp. 64-69; and the article on p. 59), suggesting that teen girls have — or should have — a fetish for male chests. This amounts to little more than an "age appropriate" disavowal of an obsession with male genitalia, which allows young girls to indulge in sexual fantasy even while their gaze is displaced from the true object of fascination (Hall, 267). As unobserved onlookers, CosmoGIRL!’s readers are safe to exercise a voyeuristic power to reduce the male "other" to an erotic "thing" to be consumed.

What is interesting, considering that CosmoGIRL! purports to champion female individuality and empowerment, is that girls also fall victim to symbolic violence within its pages. All of the female images in the magazine are stereotypically thin, suggestively dressed, and heavily made up. Overall, the inter-textual meaning produced by CosmoGIRL! is that females are incomplete without a man in their life and, therefore, girls need to make whatever physical changes are necessary to lure and capture a boyfriend.

This discourse also implies that the only things men are interested in are a woman’s physical attributes, a statement in direct contrast to the "sensitive man" fantasy being promoted by the magazine on its surface. Both guys and girls have been naturalized to the state of animals in pursuit of a mate, attracted by scent and/or a show of finery. This discursive formation creates a deficit self-image that serves the publisher well. Commercial interests — and the magazines that are dependent upon their advertising income — are working hard to expand and reinforce a culture of insecurity that trusts in consumerism as therapy.

According to her profile on the corporation’s website, one of the main focuses of Hearst Magazine’s president, Cathleen Black, is the extension of the company’s titles into other commercial products. CosmoGIRL!, launched in late 1999 — just as the magazine industry was catching on to the long-term benefits of establishing name brand recognition in the teenaged consumer set - is one of these product extensions.

Through their diversified interests in magazines, television, radio, syndicated production, and cable stations and networks, media moguls like the Hearst Corporation have access to a powerful array of tools of enculturation. They pretty much control the way televised and print media represent the world. It is only through educating people to the manipulation of psyche taking place that there lies any hope of dismantling this reductionist system of representation that encourages mass psychosis in the interest of commercial gain.