You are what you read, someone once said. And
what you put into your mind will have a lot
to say about where your priorities are and where
you spend the majority of your time and energies.
If you are starting to develop a more physically
active lifestyle with an emphasis on fitness
and exercise, it may be time to consider if
there is a women's fitness magazine out there
that is suited to your goals in this important
area of your life.
When you start to review the vast assortment
of magazines out there, you may have trouble
sorting out which women's fitness magazine
shares the same focus that you have. You would
think that a magazine devoted exclusively
to issues involving women's health and fitness
would have nothing else in it but diet and
exercise tips.
But even the quickest view of these magazines
will tell you that they are often glossy and
overproduced, adorned with overly skinny and/or
overly muscular women that shout out to you
and to anyone looking at this magazine that
the extreme looks in a woman's presentation
are what people, men in particular, are looking
for.
Any women's fitness magazine you review with
the intention of possibly becoming a subscriber
will have one or more emphasis on the following
priorities…
• Exercise
• Diet
• Education
• Inspiration
• Sex
• Glamour
• Gossip
Now all but the last three of these goals
are appropriate for any health oriented magazine
for women. So why do we see such an emphasis
on sex, glamour and gossip in those periodicals?
Very simply, those things sell magazines.
By putting a sexy girl on the front of the
magazine, it influences men to buy the magazine
for the woman in their life with a thinly
hidden motivation that maybe their girlfriend
or wife might turn into such a sex kitten.
But it also influences women to buy the magazine
to find out how to become such a sex kitten.
Examine the magazines you are considering
using to help in your quest to become a healthier,
slimmer and more fit woman and if the emphasis
is too heavily placed on sex, glamour and
gossip, it might be best to find a magazine
that's a little more focused on what really
matters.
Information about diet and exercise is exactly
what we expect form magazines devoted to this
topic. It might be a good exercise to buy
one copy of each of the leading magazine candidates
to become part of your library of healthy
choices in reading and perform a rough estimate
of the percentage of magazine copy devoted
to education and encouragement and what proportion
to subjects that are best done by People or
Glamour types of magazines.
If that test comes back showing that some
magazines just give too much time over to
the nonessentials, you have just saved yourself
the price of a subscription and a lot of clutter
subscribing to a magazine that is wasting
your time. And by patronizing woman's health
magazines that are dedicated to helping and
encouraging you in your quest for a healthier
life, you are sending a message that this
is what matters to us as consumers. Then maybe
those magazines that didn't make the cut will
get the message.
