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Elle Magazine / Lauren


Elle magazine is a women's fashion and beauty magazine which targets itself at working-middle class women. An appeal of the magazine is the fact that it is able to get high-profile celebrities on the cover, and give 'exclusive' insights into their life. Its representation of women is very generic and stereotypical; Kim Kardashian is presented on this front cover as a 'strong', 'powerful' female (as shown through the lexical fields of the anchorage), yet still wears a top that is so short you can almost see her chest- so therefore the magazine suggests that you can be 'strong' and 'powerful', but only if you're a super-toned, super-botoxed, super-sexualised woman. I don't think I would include this in my magazine due to the fact that it sends the completely wrong message to women and young girls (of whom the magazine is targeted at), and I strongly believe that you can create a womens lifestyle magazine without having the 'sex sells' ideology present whatsoever.



The layout of the inside of the magazine is more stylised than other women's magazines I have looked at, some images overlap each other but it doesn't feel messy. I would include something similar in my magazine due to the fact that the copy fits around the images nicely and is quite easy to read; it all has a sort of flow. An appeal of the magazine is the fact it tells you what to buy in order to be 'ideal' so it fulfils the need for guidance which the readers will probably have; this is something I would try to embed into my magazine, but not in such a strong way. I feel that it is possible to 'suggest' products to the audience, rather than telling them they 'have' to buy it- therefore not creating a sense of ostracisation for audience members who may not be able to afford.



The magazine's YouTube page also includes videos of the celebrities included in their magazine; in this instance, Kim Kardashian 'rewrites' headlines about her family. Again I think this is an appeal for the audience as it means that Kim is giving the audience an insight into the lives of her family members; something which we as society long for. It also acts as a promotion for their TV show, 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' (she tells the audience that her surrogate is 'on the show') which is clearly an appeal and would encourage them to watch the show. The light hearted feel to the video is something which I would include in my video, as it doesn't really force any products on the audience and is really more gossip-based than anything else. Kim's appearance is quite casual and laid back, she seems to be in a rather 'natural' setting and she seems quite informal- this again could be an appeal for the audience due to the fact that she seems slightly more real/relatable.

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