Cultural Girlshness

Gosmopolitan
The first thing I noticed about Cosmo and Glamour is that they are remarkably similar in appearance. They are the same size, almost the same number of pages (314 for Glam, 324 for Cosmo) and both feature pictures of beaming brunette celebrities on the cover with almost identical inviting head tilts and cleavage-baring necklines. Indeed, both cover photos violate the masthead of the magazine so that if you're not careful, and I frequently am not, you could easily mistake one for the other.

Worst Article
Glamour's riveting “No guts, no guy,” an expose proclaiming that the secret to getting a date with the guy of your dreams is to [gasp] ask him out. No, really. Seriously. It's 1954, didn't you get the memo?

Both magazines also have nine call-outs on the front cover, starting in the upper left with the eye-catching sex article (“Advanced Sex Tricks” for Cosmo, “Ultimate Sex Dos and Don'ts” for Glam). On the upper right, they both have circular call-outs just above a call-out for the cover celebrity interview. Still, you can already see a thematic difference between the two. Glamour is much more preoccupied with style and tends to be a bit more modest in its language. Cosmopolitan, meanwhile, dwells more on beauty and sex. The article descriptions boast playful double entendres like, “packed with sexy new stuff” and my personal favorite, “when you whip out one of these doozies, he'll know he's with a real woman.”

Cosmo's focus on heterosexual coupling is even more pronounced inside the magazine, where the table of contents features twelve headlines devoted solely to sex, compared with just three for Glamour. These articles range from light-hearted reader recollections of intimate mishaps to highly technical instructions for new ways to pleasure your partner. Indeed, the promised advanced sex tips offered more exhaustive detail than the owner's manual for my digital camera. Another article offered shockingly specific instructions on how to fondle a man's jaw, and still another the scientifically correct way to deploy soap in foreplay.

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