I saw Russ this morning for a tutorial and was pleased to see I wasn't as behind as I thought I was. I then went to both of the learning resources centres to try and register for the library. Forty minutes later I was 'in'. I'm official, it's real and I'd better get on with it now.
We'd been talking about the magazine this morning and I want to do a women's spiritual magazine. I was so pleased to see at the library a book by Anna Gough-Yates, 'Understanding Women's Magazines'. How 'meant to be' was that! NB: Do you put a ? after a retorical question, or a full-stop?
Anyway, moving on. I'm sat in my bed, alone with the pc/a book and some chocolate biscuits- I'm officially a student ha.
From the small amount I've read so far I can feel the neuron's start to flick and ignite already. Gough-Yates talks about the fact that she feels the magazines have been putting out an image of a 'new woman' since the 70's, but more so in the 80's and 90's. An almost superwoman, who runs the home, but is mostly a middle-class young, professional woman. She talks about how some magazines are now (2005) trying to target women they had previously targeted as younger women, but who are now in their mid thirties.
It got me thinking, firstly how if the market is moving their content to fit with a certain set of aging women, that obviously there were some ingredients (culture,class,opportunities etc) that made them predisposed to purchase magazines or a certain type of magazine. The eighties and nineties, as I remember were growth periods for my career and during this period I was very much career and lifestyle orientated. It becomes a chicken and egg question, what came first the type of woman or the magazine which promoted 'being' a certain type of woman? I do remember seeing my Mother with her copy of Woman's Own and from a young age being quite repulsed by it and it's articles. Especially, anything which seemed to want to teach me to be a better 'housewife' - YUK. Although now I'm a parent, I do sometimes think it would be quite useful to know how to make clothes out of old curtains, like The Sound of Music's, Maria.
Initially, I looked on the County Council website at the local demographics and found out 18-29 yr olds were prevalent in this area of the country. So I had thought I would aim a magazine at that age group. However, because the magazine is a spiritual/women's magazine it occurred to me that most women interested were not 18 year olds. Although there are younger people interested, mostly people come to looking at their spirituality after a variation of experiences. When I say spirituality, I don't mean religion. This magazine is not about following certain rules or ways of life. I've always said the 'simplest person can still hold the strongest truth'. In a nutshell, spirituality, to me, is about helping people while finding and spreading happiness in everyday situations.
This led me on, today I had been plotting out some ideas for articles, to make it easier to plan the number of pages for the magazine, what artwork, photographs and graphics I might need. The ideas I'd come up with were, in no particular order, an interview with Nicki Ravenscroft about what it's like to be the woman behind the musician, an article on depression - a life coaches perspective/answer. Parenting - teenagers and 'crystal/rainbow' children, how to develop psychically, mah-jong horoscopes, Interviews with Reiki/Homeopathy teachers locally, etc etc. BUT, tonight, I realise that Gough-Yates is trying to say that people buy images/icon's and read magazines about things/people/etc they want to be like or are like. So, I realised it was a tougher job than I thought. Although I had decided the concept of the magazine I haven't fully considered the image that the reader is buying into. At the same time, I don't really like the idea of an image. Maybe I can have a non-image as this would fit better with the magazine. IE. Here are a series of articles which you may or may not feel an affinity with or find useful. The main aim is to boost confidence, self-esteem and start opening the reader to possibly new concepts and ideas. Like a catalyst for change. MMmmm 'Catalyst' is that a good name for the magazine???
There are a few on the shish kebab of names at the moment, 'Shhh', 'Power of She', 'Shine', 'Independent', TRY (The Real You), but I'm not 'feeling' it. I thought about Ohana - it's a Hawian name meaning 'family', but again, parenting is only a subsection of what the magazine is about, so I don't want to give the wrong impression. To me the mag's which make it, have one word catchy names, Elle, Red, Hello, Psychologies, Cosmopolitan, Glamour etc. In some ways I like catalyst better, it has scientific connotations as well as other more general associations. Catalyst, is something which happens that CAUSES something else to happen. I like the thought of the magazine giving someone/a woman a spark of inspiration to make a change. I am passionate about living a motivated purposeful life. Through these two things I've achieved and got through things I never thought I would. I like the idea of the magazine being a bit of on-hand motivation. It's not the run of the mill Closer/Hello type magazines, but it is better to die standing than to live bending (an albanian proverb).
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