Question 10

Radway – “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context”

Reading: Schor – “The New Politics of Consumption: Why Americans Want So Much More Than They Need”

Reading: Ouellette – “Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams”

Each of these articles creates somewhat similar constructions of how they think women should be. Radway concludes that the female reads romance novels as an escape from the stresses of life, to find hope in fairytale, and to supply the nurture that men fail to give them. Cosmopolitan magazine was constructed as a bible to being an independent, stylish, and sexually unrestricted woman. Like in Schor’s article, women exposed to media see a construction of the female consumer and what products they need to buy in order to maintain their femininity. What I am getting at is that each of these forms of media in the articles, not matter what the authors stance, present women with different ideas on how they should look or act, and what they should buy. The constructions are similar for the most part or build on one another in terms of ideal feminine characteristics. Women will pick up on the media’s construction of the ideal women and then look at themselves and analyze what they can do to conform to this image in order to fit in. Fashion and style are important parts of keeping up with the female construction. It is also forever changing which makes the cycle endless, hence the “keeping up with the Jonses’” idea in Schor’s article. Each article has its different perspectives and ways of arguing their statements. The Schor reading takes a pop culture approach through the media while Ouellette builds her argument from the ground up and showing how the ideal woman in Cosmo evolved over time until now. Radway takes a statistical approach and views the audience in terms of demographic.