Mediating intimacy online: authenticity, magazines and chasing the clicks

* Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies, edited by Feona Attwood, Jamie Hakim, Alison Winch

Abstract

This paper offers a production-based study of online consumer magazines for – and largely by – millennial women, with a particular focus on sex and relationship content. Adopting a feminist discourse analytic approach and a solidary-critical position, I examine 62 interviews conducted with producers, mainly writers and editors, from 12 publications based in the UK and Spain. The analysis maps how notions of intimacy penetrate different dimensions of the magazine, along with networks of influence for the development of content about sex and relationships, marked by a perceived shift from ‘experts’ to ‘real life’. The ways in which producers describe the particularities of woman’s magazine online journalism and dis/articulate a range of critiques are also explored. The paper highlights the increasing importance of ideas about authenticity for these media, making connections to online cultures, a reinvigorated interest in feminism, and contemporary branding strategies. Ultimately, I argue that journalists at women’s magazines simultaneously (re)produce, suffer and contest sexist media, deserving further feminist scholarly attention, and our solidarity as well as critique.

Keywords:

• Mediated intimacy
• women’s magazines
• online journalism
• sex and relationship advice

Notes on contributor

Laura Favaro is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at City, University of London. She is interested in feminist, media and cultural studies, together with qualitative methods. Her work has appeared in journals and edited collections including Australian Feminist Studies, tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, Feminist Media Studies (with Rosalind Gill), and Collecting Qualitative Data: A Practical Guide to Textual, Media and Virtual Techniques (with Rosalind Gill and Laura Harvey).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Alison Winch and Rosalind Gill for their feedback on the manuscript.

Notes

* Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies, edited by Feona Attwood, Jamie Hakim, Alison Winch

1. Cosmopolitan 2016 Media pack. Hearst Magazines UK. From: http://hearstcouk.wp.cdnds.net/tmp/wpro1455721699558662/2016/02/15123209/CosmoMediaPack_2016.pdf (accessed 7 April 2016).

2. The first major British periodical addressed exclusively to women and claiming female authorship, The Ladies’ Mercury, dates back to 1693. It took the form of a reader’s problem page.

3. ‘Millennial’ is a term used to refer to people with birth dates ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

4. I am referring to the successful novels by E. L. James.

5. Interview extracts are accompanied by the personal information each research participant agreed to disclose. Translations from Spanish are mine.

6. Especially in Spain, participants also mentioned the ‘lack of opportunities’ in other large media sectors.

7. I am not advancing this as an audience study in any simple way. The emphasis is rather on how producers construct their readership experience. For an important study of women’s magazine reading, see Hermes (1995).

8. There is likely to be a degree of self-selection bias in my sample towards individuals with more critical views about women’s magazines (see Favaro, 2017c).

9. The present study corroborates previous research on work in the contemporary cultural and new media industries as characterized by long hours, modest earnings, insecurity and precariousness (e.g. Gill, 2010). My findings suggest that this situation is particularly pronounced concerning women’s magazines – and female professionals. First, there seem to be differences in salaries with respect to other similar sectors. According to a British features editor: ‘Compared to all other areas in the media, including men’s glossy magazines like GQ, the pay gap is extraordinary’. Second, many claimed that women’s magazines are ‘where the jobs are’ for female journalists. They furthermore asserted that ‘once you’re in the female magazine machine, it’s actually quite difficult to leave’ because other types of publications like newspapers do not regard them as ‘proper journalists’.

10. The link between the internet and femininity is a long-standing one, which is closely tied to commerce and audience commodification (see Consalvo, 2002).