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Magazine Review: Company July 2013

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I don’t pick up magazines very often, though I love finding a great one, and I think that it’s sad that their audience is in decline. The obvious reason for this is the rise of blogs and online magazines offering more specialised and free content, but I think that magazines still have a place in the world.

I was obsessed with magazines when I was a teenager – just read my love letter to J-17 on my book blog! I absolutely love the free magazines that we get at stations in London, ES and Stylist. I find the high prices of some magazines off-putting, for sure, I was tempted to buy July’s Vogue for the Helena Bonham Carter feature, but just couldn’t bring myself to hand over the £4.99.

But one thing that puts me off, even in the case of cheaper magazines, is not being able to browse before I buy.  Even when magazines have a very clear purpose and style, their content can vary so much from month to month, and with many UK magazines being bagged up with a gift so you can’t try before you buy, often I think I’ll save the few quid and stick to blogs. Often I find this so offputting that I don’t even bother looking at magazine stands.

When I read Amy of Stripy Tights and Dark Delights’ recommendation of Company Magazine’s October 2012 issue, I was intrigued, so I found it at my local station newsagent, had a flick through, and ended up buying it! I hadn’t bought Company in years, and I never would have had it not been for her magazine review post.

So I’ve decided to start doing mini magazine reviews, to help you decide whether to buy an issue or not and also in the hope that more people will share what they think of the magazines they read, and help me! First up is this July’s issue of Company.

The gift:

  • A cute little make-up bag available in three designs – green and yellow flowers, white with blue dots, and black and white stripes. It took several visits to different newsagents for me to find the black and white striped version. My current handbag make-up bag is falling apart and this one has two compartments, so thumbs up for the gift!
  • In some branches of WHSmith you can buy Company in a bundle with two other magazines and no gift. Either way, the magazine is bagged up so you can’t read anything before you buy.

 The good:

  • The column about stag/hen nights made me smile.
  • The piece about how retail businesses are adapting to the ‘unseasonal’ weather was really interesting.
  • The interview with Skins’ Kaya Scodelario, Lily Loveless and Hannah Murray is pretty short but funny.
  • The beauty shoot is all about bright colours, which I love.
  • I also thought that the sunscreen quiz is really useful as I need to go shopping for sun cream.
  • I liked the ‘Age Whatevs’ piece, in which a 16 year old and a 63 year old answer the same questions. It would be great if older people were featured more often. I think Company is aimed at women in their early to mid-twenties, and I’m 26 so probably on my way out of their target market, but I like the style and approach and can find it a bit alienating if a magazine doesn’t feature anyone for me to look up to.

The disappointing:

  • None of the fashion features really appealed to me, but then I’m not really a fan of any of the current trends, or typical Californian style, which is a major theme for this issue.

Overall, this month’s issue was a miss rather than a hit for me, but only because I have quite specific taste and the fashion features, which make up most of the magazine, weren’t my thing at all. If I could have flicked through it first, I wouldn’t have bought it. I will definitely lend it to my sister though as Californian style is much more her kind of thing! I much preferred May’s issue (which I have read several times), and the other two issues of Company that I’ve bought, October 2012 and December 2012. I especially loved the interior decoration feature in October 2012’s issue and am really disappointed that I haven’t seen anything similar in the other issues I’ve bought.

Have you read any great magazines lately? Have you read this issue of Company? What did you think?

Between the Covers: Women’s Magazines and their Readers, at The Women’s Library

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Did you know the first women’s magazine was published in 1693? It was called The Ladies’ Mercury and was a spinoff from another periodical called The Athenian Mercury, which published the first advice columns. The Ladies’ Mercury was only published for four weeks, however, and every other women’s magazine was just as short lived until the Industrial Revolution.

As more and more factories opened in British cities, increasing numbers of working-class women chose not to enter domestic service, and work in factories instead, where the conditions were better. Middle-class women, whose families could not afford to pay their servants better, suddenly found themselves having to run households and do cleaning, cooking, and other domestic work themselves, things which they would have never been taught by their mothers. This is where women’s magazines took off – they were filled with advice and instructional articles aimed at these women to help them manage their new roles.

As increasing numbers of women became literate, the numbers of women’s magazines widened and the topics featured became more diverse. At The Women’s Library, a couple of weeks ago, I visited the current exhibition Between the Covers: Women’s Magazines and their Readers, and I saw examples of these early magazines: one for Christian women, with articles and columns mixed in with hymn lyrics and passages from the Bible; a couple of magazines for burgeoning feminists; magazines which featured recipes and maths problems within the same covers; magazines the size of large books; and flimsy pamphlets originally costing a fraction of a penny. There are also plenty of examples from the 20th and 21st centuries on display, including a wall featuring covers from every edition of Cosmopolitan published one month in 2008. This was really interesting – most of the front-cover models were white, some of their poses were eerily similar, and only three of the women were smiling. The only grin that looked genuine belonged to the woman on Cosmo Taiwan. Most of the headlines mentioned sex, and the more modestly the model was dressed, the more she stood out – there were a lot of dresses cut in a V to the navel that month!

I found this exhibition fascinating. It isn’t arranged chronologically; instead it is laid out in several sections, so you can compare magazines through the ages and their attitudes towards the lives of women, how they dealt with the need to feature advertisements, and how developments in technology have changed the way they are produced and read. It’s clear that in recent times adult women’s magazines have become a lot less political, although magazines for teenage girls have definitely improved – the first were entirely devoted to idolising pop stars and silly romantic stories such as ‘Love in the Launderette’.

As well as the magazines on display, there are several interactive features of this exhibition. You can listen to interviews with various women involved in publishing magazines today, play a game to see if you can guess the magazine from its headlines (I only got one right!), answer a ‘How Liberated Are You?’ quiz from a 1978 edition of Cosmopolitan, and watch Talking Magazines, a film featuring a range women from Tower Hamlets (a borough of London) talk about the magazines they read and how they feel about them. There is also a reading area stocked with magazines from the past and present, including a few handmade zines and foreign titles. The Women’s Library has an enormous collection of magazines, so although most of the items in the exhibition are behind glass, there are many more available in the reading room upstairs (free to join and use) that you can actually touch and properly read.

I really enjoyed visiting Between the Covers, I totally geeked out and spent hours going around and looking at everything. I would recommend it to everyone who has ever loved or hated a women’s magazine, and most especially to bloggers – lots of the questions this exhibition raises are relevant to us.

Readers who live in London, or who will be visiting before 29th August 2009, should definitely pop in and check this exhibition out. Entry is free, and The Women’s Library is a really lovely building. 14-18 year old women can also join a short course in MagaZine Making from 10th – 14th August.

I liked the review of Between the Covers at Uplift Magazine, check it out if you would like to read more opinion on this exhibition.