comparative essay

How is the representation and content of Men’s Health magazine different to Women’s Health magazine?

Men’s Health magazine is aimed at men between the ages of 18 and 35 years old. In order to appeal to this target audience, the content needs to be modern and fitting to the interests of young men. Seeing as Men’s Health falls into the genre of health and fitness, the cover lines are relevant to health and fitness topics such as how to lose weight, gain muscle and dietary advice. The cover lines usually contain hash-sounding words such as ‘smash’, ‘ripped’ and ‘beat.’ This has been done to draw attention to the topics on the front cover and also so that the language being used is something that men who are interested in fitness may use in their everyday idiolect.

Similarly, Women’s Health magazine makes sure that their content is relevant to their target audience which is women aged between 18 and 35. For women, the content is mainly about weight loss and how to get the perfect body. Eye-catching language that has been used to appeal to the audience includes the words ‘sexy’ and ‘hot.’ These words are considered language associated with Laura Mulvey’s theory, The Male Gaze. This theory suggests that women are objectified and their feminine features such as breasts or legs are enhanced to satisfy a male audience. This theory has been applied in reality to the way that women want to look and the way that women want other women to look in terms of what would ‘sell’ and appeal to them in a marketing point of view for selling a health and fitness magazine for women whereas the content of Men’s Health magazine is tailored for the interests of a man.  

Another similarity of the two products is the representation shown in the salient image. The person used for the salient image on the front cover of Women’s Health magazine is typically a celebrity who is well-known for having a desirable figure or a celebrity who has recently lost weight or toned up their body to be more desirable. Women are also sometimes used on the front cover of Men’s Health magazine as well, but it is usually models standing in bikinis with a male celebrity. I think that this is done to appeal to men using The Male Gaze and is also done to appeal to men in a way that suggests that if they look like the man on the cover, they could get attractive women to surround them. Therefore, they would want to purchase the magazine so that they can obtain the tips that they would need to achieve this.

Sex is a feature used as a cover line on the front cover on both Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazine and this is because sex sells in terms of content. On every single cover of both magazines, there is articles in regards to ‘great sex’ or ‘what she wants’ and ‘what he wants’ depending on the magazine. Cover lines about sex bring the Health magazines into a crossover genre including lifestyle. Sex cover lines are represented differently on Men’s Health than they are on Women’s Health. I think that this is maybe because sex is something considered a taboo subject for women in some people’s opinions. Therefore, on the front cover of Men’s Health magazine, the line ‘Have great sex’ is more likely to be in bold, red lettering than it would be on Women’s Health magazine, where it is more likely to just fit into the general house style so that it doesn’t stand out as a sell-line.

From observation and research of several editions of both magazines, I can tell that Women’s Health has a more varied and colourful house style for their front cover than Men’s Health magazine has. I think that this is because men are known to be in a rush when they go shopping, therefore if they are looking for a magazine in particular they want to be able to pick it up quickly with no fuss and without the need to look for a long time. Also, there are less colours that are considered masculine that can fit effectively into a house style than there are colours that are considered feminine that can fit into a house style.

There is a crossover in genres that is especially shown on the covers of some editions of Men’s Health where the main content is about lifestyle rather than health and fitness. This is generally established when the salient image is of a person who is wearing a suit, for example one copy had Barack Obama on the cover and the main story was titled ‘Obama’s Plan.’
Other examples of main stories on these types of editions are ‘Steps to Success’ and ‘Reach Your Business Goals.’ I think that this is a good idea to make the content different every now and again but for a regular reader it could be off-putting to see that the regular content is different.

The aspect of weight loss and fitness regimes being ‘quick’ and ‘easy’ is a promotional tool that the magazines use in their cover lines. Some stories read ‘Strip away fat’ and ‘build a beach body’ which suggest that changing your body shape is easy and quick. When in reality it isn’t but if the magazine states that something is ‘easy’ on the cover, people will want to buy the magazine to read more into it.

To conclude, I think that both magazines have very similar features and content. The only main differences being the house-style, mainly in colours, and the way that the language has been used to market the content based on a female and male audience and also the salient image used on the front cover as I have discussed the effect of this in my essay.

Comparing adverts in newspapers

For my research, I compared the adverts in 4 different Newspapers. The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Echo. I noticed both differences and similarities in my research.

The adverts in The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Independent are all mainly food adverts. Specifically budget food deals at supermarkets like Lidl, Aldi and Asda. These three supermarkets are known to be price-friendly and popular with people on a budget and families. These adverts all have an appealing salient image of the food that they are advertising and also have colourful letting to draw the readers attention to the deal. If it is to indicate price reductions, the text will be bold and red as this brings attention to the deal.

The adverts in The Sun were also aimed at marketing products like toys for children and also gaming consoles like the Play Station 3. I think that this has been done because it is nearing the time of year that people are looking for Christmas gifts and if they are on a budget then they will know where to shop to get the best deals. The target audience of people who read Tabloid newspapers like The Sun are usually young people in the lower or middle class and therefore their household income could mean that holidays such as Christmas could cause a strain financially.

The Independent surprisingly didn't have many adverts in it. All of the adverts that I saw were food and grocery shopping related. I thought that this was strange because usually a cheaper newspaper would have more adverts inside of it but this didn't. However, the Independent doesn't fit the stereotype of general cheap newspapers in terms of the house style and content.

The Daily Echo is a local newspaper and contained adverts for local companies like skip hires, plumbers and jobs. This is because The Daily Echo is mainly to inform the readers of what is going on in the area and therefore they concentrate mainly on content relating to Dorset business'.

Survey results

For my survey, I asked 20 people questions about their reading and buying habits in regards to magazines.The results that I had collected were from a range of different ages and genders so that I had varied answers and opinions. 

Something that I was especially curious of when revising the responses of this survey was if people tend to read online magazines. My results show that only 20% of the people who took the survey said that they do read online magazines. This is important to my research because I don't think that creating a magazine suitable for online or app readers would get much of an audience as a printed magazine would get.

Out of all of my options of genre for different types of magazine, there was interest taken in every single option apart from Home and Garden. Lifestyle magazines came out with the highest percentage of readers with 80% of the people I surveyed reading them. Sports and Health and Fitness also had 50%  between them, however these genres could arguably be considered sub-genres and therefore can fall under the category of Lifestyle magazines. 

I asked in my survey how much money a person would expect to pay for a magazine, this ranging from an option of 'under £2' to £10. In my results, the most commonly given answers given were £2-3 and £3-4. Only one person said that they'd be happy to pay over £5 for a magazine and only one person said that they'd pay under £2. This shows me that I should keep the price range of my magazine between £2 and £4.

The responses to the question 'how often would you expect a magazine to release an issue?' showed a range of answers from the people taking the survey. 60% of people said that they'd expect issues to be distributed monthly, however 25% of people said that they'd expect an issue every fortnight and the remaining 15% said that they'd expect weekly issues. Most magazines in the market release one magazine each month, I think that this is the most effective idea because it means that there is time to put together a great product and also means that there would only need to be one set of production team rather than two or three running a team for each issue being released in a month if it were more than once a month. 

I think that concentrating on a specific audience is something that I want to do for my magazine. In my survey I asked what type of content people want to see and a majority said that they like 'specific content' in the magazine that they choose to read. Obviously, the topic of Mens Health is huge. This means that I could concentrate on fitness, food and lifestyle choices. However, I will try and keep to creating content to please one target audience and genre rather than several. 

Men’s magazines from madeleineblair

Market Research survey

Comparison with women's health

Similarities

-There is a lot of emphasis on 'quick' fixes in terms of fitness for women.

-There is a similar house style, however a bit of pink has been used to add a feminine detail.

-Sex is a recurring topic in both Men's Health and Women's Health.

Differences

-'The male gaze' and 'The female gaze' are used because sex sells. Men like sex and women want to feel sexy.

-Beauty - Although appearance is a big topic in Men's Health magazine, it is feminised in Women's Health magazine to be called 'beauty.'

-couples advice - advice is stereotypically a feature of women's magazines.

Men's Health Magazine Research

-First issue was released in 1988. Distributed monthly.

-Circulation statistics show that the magazine has over 20 Million readers worldwide, this includes readers in America, Britain, France, Germany and South Africa.

-The main categories of content fall under the following:

Fitness

Nutrition

Sex

Fashion

-Spin-offs created by the same magazine include the popular magazine for women, Women's Health. And also a magazine aimed at youth called MH-18, which stopped circulation in 2001. And also a book released in 2009 called Belly off Diet book

-The target audience for Men's Health magazine is men aged 18-35.

-The magazine is critiscized for focusing on physical health in a way that is considered 'extreme.' This could be because the rise in male eating disorders has soared in recent years.

-The main house style/colours for the magazine are white, red, blue and black.

-Another success for the magazine was the launch of the Ask Billy the Bartender phone app. The magazine also became one of the first to enter the apple magazine reader market.