"The 'deal' or 'implied' reader of most women's magazines is self-evidently middle class, white and heterosexual. This inclusivity of address effectively marginalises or makes deviant black, working-class or lesbian women."
"The construction of women as a homogeneous group, or even a group at all, is primarily achieved by the invocation of its supposedly 'natural' opposite - men."
"There is an evident tension between the need to confirm the centrality and desirability of men in all women's lives and the equally insistent recognition of men as a problem for and a threat to women."
pg 9
"The 'lifestyles' portrayed in different magazines are not. of course, coterminous with the actual lifestyle, or consumption habits, of the majority of readers of those magazines."
pg 11
"The expensive commodities displayed in the magazine may, then, not be appealing to aspiration at all, but rather to the realm of fantasy."
- can be linked to paris is burning - idolising white rich women in vogue magazine, inspiring their art forms
pg 12
"Magazines vary between those that encourage women to work the double shift... and those which encourage them to resist any pressure to leave the home."
pg 13
"Laws on women and taxation are evaluated in the same manner as the respective merits of different kinds of washing machine."
"At the heart of the women's magazine lies the paradox that 'natural' femininity can be achieved only through hard labour."
pg 14
Semiotics
"However, if reality is structured by language, and difference is central in fixing meaning, then gender difference takes on quite distinct appearance from the mere biological distinctions of sexual difference with which traditional social theory works."
"Semiotics has joined with psychoanalysis in some important contemporary theories of gender."
"that is, they understand 'language' as a deep psychic matter, rather than a social one."
pg 28
"Further, each magazine offers its readers a particular way of making sense of the world.
pg 29
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