Holy Cheez-Its!!
So I was randomly flipping through my suitemate's issue of Vogue when I noticed that I was actually looking at an abnormally continuous flow of advertisements. I had gone a good ways into the magazine before even reaching the table of contents on page 110 . Ya...that was a fifth of the magazine - there were 510 pages total!! This is probably not shocking to you guys, but for someone who made the conscious decision to stop reading fashion/beauty magazines at the age of thirteen, I couldn't believe my eyes. After that, I had to go through ten, fifteen pages of make-up and clothing advertisements before encountering a single page of text. They had crammed a few pages of article continuations at the back of the magazine, and that was about it.
It's crazy because I kind of feel like such an outdated person, being shocked at mainstream culture and whatnot. I mean, the evil of fashion magazines had always been like common knowledge for me, but I had nooo idea how exaggerated consumerism had become! I can't imagine what it's like for readers to open a magazine and have all these images of 'fashion' and 'beauty' shoved down their throats. What's worse was that these images really were the stereotypical airbrushed models we're always talking about. To tell you the truth, I didn't even look at most of the name brands, I just looked at the model and thought about how I wanted to be conventionally pretty just like her. What happened to magazines recognizing what 'real women' look like too??
Aah man, that was such a slap in the face about the real world...
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I don't "read" (ha, there are no articles) those magazines either, and had a similar reaction when leafing through my aunt's Vogue. Clearly it's not about appreciating fashion, it's about selling expensive things. Similarly, they're saying that beauty isn't about who you are, it's about what expensive shit you're willing to shill out several paychecks for.
You stole the words right from my fingers.
I agree with you about shaming women/impossible standards/general problems with the beauty industry but...
I don't read Vogue but it is an especially advertising heavy publication by reputation. I don't think they've ever pretended to be anything but.
A lot of people read Vogue for the adverts. That sounds silly but they look at the new clothes, make up, styles, designs and trends and shop from these pages. They don't want to read a puff story or an editor's take on an outfit, they just want to see the outfit in all it's glory. It's kind of like a shopping catalogue.
That's why Vogue has more ad pages than say, Cosmo, because it's what people who read Vogue want.