The perky authority on all things girl since 1944, Seventzine is not mere eye candy. Mixed among the cutting-edge styles (and multitudinous ads) you'll find short but plentiful articles. Topics range in import: fluff stuff like "What Will You Wear Back to School?" and "The Ultimate Ponytail Guide" is balanced by heavier fodder, such as "No One Believes I Was Raped" and pieces on having a gay sibling and the dangers of binge drinking. Skewed largely toward a Caucasian teen audience, the magazine's coverage of beauty and relationship conundrums does offer nods to young women of color. The tone is resolutely positive, and amid all the talk of must-have hairdos and hottie alerts, the message is girl power in its most nonthreatening guise. --Brangien Davis
This is a young woman's premier fashion and beauty magazine. It is tailored for women in their late teens and early twenties and includes information on fitness, food, cars, college, careers, talent, entertainment, fiction and crucial personal and global issues.
Sex, romance, shoes, lingerie, diet, guns, war--Marie Claire is a grab bag of hot issues for the modern woman. Combining a powerful feature on gun control laws with an article on the best lingerie to wear with low-slung jeans, Marie Claire proves that beauty magazines need not be all fluff and no substance. It provides one-stop shopping for the Cosmo woman craving a little more from her fashion magazine--the kind of woman who can talk politics while painting her nails and solving her relationship woes, all while on the treadmill. Yet for all its attempts to become a jill of all trades, Marie Claire remains a powerhouse in one field: beauty. From the hottest lip or polish color to the latest haircut, from the best tools of the trade to the must-have scent of the year, Marie Claire remains unsurpassed as the best source for beauty advice, and those pages alone are worth the cover price. --Daphne Durham
MARIE CLAIRE is a combination of features, fashion and beauty for the independent woman. Its editorial reflects all areas of the reader's life, providing the time-pressed woman with a mix of information.
Cosmopolitan (or as it's affectionately known, Cosmo) has sex on the brain. Hugh Hefner is a monk compared to the Cosmo Girl in the fun fantasy world conjured by the magazine. The naughty cover headlines ("151,497 of You Begged to See THIS Guy Butt Naked") are legendary, veritable haikus of horniness reportedly perfected by David Brown, the movie-producer husband of Cosmo's most famous editor, Helen Gurley Brown. Inside, lots of articles will warn you that "names have been changed"--and you won't complain, considering that anonymity frees people to reveal what goes on behind closed doors in the lives of celebrities and average women. If you're the slightest bit curious to find out, say, what "shocking act" 41 percent of American women have tried, or which attribute Leo DiCaprio flashed in an interview, or what sort of "sexified" look might "melt his ice-cream cone," perk up your life with Cosmopolitan. --Bob Brandeis
COSMOPOLITAN focuses on personal growth, relationships and careers, with expanded reporting on fashion and beauty, health and fitness. Covered as well are celebrities and pop culture... and just about everything else young women want to know about.
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If you find the sex-and-the-single-girl style of Cosmo less relevant to your current how-do-I-juggle-kids-husband-job-sanity stage of life, then congratulations, you've graduated to Redbook. Don't worry, this isn't your mother's magazine; Redbook is loaded with steamy Cosmo-like articles (in other words, sex, sex, sex), only now they're covered under "Love and Marriage" and deal with helping you keep things together at home (including a monthly Q&A with John Gray called "Passionate Monogamy"). From here, Redbook branches out, with sections on kids and parenting, food, health and fitness, beauty, fashion, celebrity profiles, short fiction, book excerpts, and making time for yourself. --Jenny Brown
The editorial focus of this magazine is on young, working mothers. It seeks to help women who juggle a husband, family, home and job. Its feature articles deal with fashion, beauty and health, food and nutrition, parenting and relationships. Additionally, each issue offers fictional short stories and excerpts from longer fictional works. Published Monthly.
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With so many sources of health information out there, it's great to find a single magazine devoted to collating, simplifying, and explaining it all. Fitness is a woman-oriented magazine that presents a practical and realistic guide to maintaining a lifestyle that's healthy for the body, mind, and spirit, complete with everything from exercise and dieting tips to advice on beating stress and building confidence in bed. Each issue contains helpful information such as pointers on beautifying oneself naturally, reviews of health and beauty products, and strategies and recipes for eating smart, getting the proper workout, and keeping your life in balance, both physically and emotionally. --Ben Reese
Fitness is a lifestyle magazine for active, young women. It presents a realistic, balanced approach to good health covering a wide range of topics that promote total fitness of body, mind and spirit.
Glamour is the twentysomething woman's "Miss Manners" and charm-school bible, bursting at the seams with intimations, propositions, and warnings: how to dress for a dinner party, how to turn him on in five minutes, how to avoid the dreaded "fashion don't." Glamour's mission is to help the young woman trapped between Seventeen and Vogue find her way to becoming a happier, healthier, sexier gal. Unabashedly girly, including all the things we've come to expect from beauty and fashion mags--celebrity style gossip, hot trends in hair and makeup, quizzes, and quick fixes for everything from broken nails to fractured friendships--Glamour is girl talk, pure and simple. --Daphne Durham
This magazine is edited for the contemporary American woman. It seeks to inform women about trends, recommend women on how to adapt trends into their lifestyles and motivate women into action. Its features include articles on fashion, beauty, health, personal relationships, career, travel, food and entertainment.
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Vogue lives by the maxim that you can't be too rich or too thin--or have too many ad pages. But the glossy spreads of broomstick-thin supermodels draped in Prada and Chanel, and the endless pages of ads for the finest clothes, accessories, and makeup the beauty industry has to offer, help make it the leading magazine of women's style. Fashion is the main event, but every issue attends society parties, goes inside the home of a celebrity designer, and travels to an exotic resort or vacation spot. Like Playboy, Vogue is a magazine you can claim to read because the articles are good. Famously, the September fall fashion issue can easily top 700 pages. --Katherine Koberg
A magazine that defines fashion-then pushes it to the limits. Readers know Vogue as the first and final word on fashion, beauty and contemporary culture. Vogue is the ultimate image-maker. Before it's in style, it's in Vogue.
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Ladies' Home Journal both empowers women and applauds their growing power by focusing on issues that are important to them. As the oldest women's service magazine in the country, it addresses a variety of topics for active women who are evolving in new directions. Highly informational features and articles highlight food and nutrition, health and medicine, beauty and fashion, home decorating and design, parenting and self-help, personalities, and current events. Features from past issues include interviews with celebs and women in the news, life changes for a healthy heart, and warming up with comfort food. From how to handle stress and make new friends to the latest in home design and lingerie, LHJ caters to both a woman's head and her heart. --Rhonda Langdon
This magazine is designed for active, empowered women who are evolving in new directions. It addresses informational needs with highly focused features and articles on a variety of topics including beauty and fashion, food and nutrition, health and medicine, home decorating and design, parenting and self-help, personalities and current events.