Life & Style Weekly's Covers UnCOVERed

Photo: Saul Loeb, Getty Images

They are a staple in grocery lines, airport convenience stores and waiting rooms, they grab our attention instantly and offer a peek into the private lives of public figures and dish all their juicy secrets. Trashy celebrity tabloid magazines are a guilty pleasure for many and trust me, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get sucked into their bold subtitles and shocking cover images myself! Many times, the first thing we see when we glance at a magazine rack is our celebrity icons framed by bold text with extreme accusations and more than you may realize, a dangerous message being projected into the gaze of millions of people around the world.

Picture from Www.Momlogic.com from Why Women's Magazines Suck article

            One of several popular celebrity magazines we tend to check out is Life& Style Weekly. Circulating since 2004, the magazine has come out with plenty of covers complete with insulting claims about celebrity figures, featuring shocking photos mainly pinpointing appearance. This star is ‘too skinny’, that star is ‘too fat’ or look who had ‘too much plastic surgery’! Life & Style Weekly’s covers sell to society a pressure on women to be perfect. There never seems to be a happy medium or a middle ground when it comes to somebody’s body type or bone structure. These magazine covers have the control to make us ruminate excessively on what point is finally good enough or actually thin enough. They have the power to grab the attention and sway the thoughts of young girls. Not only young girls but in general very impressionable teens. Boys and girls both see these connotations of what it takes to be beautiful in society’s eyes and proceed to adopt opinions and ideas on themselves. The harsh and critical covers of Life & Style Weekly which knit-picks women solely on appearance, is a negative pressure on women and a negative emphasis on the extent of how crucial the importance of beauty is held to in society.

Emphasis on Gaining Weight

The October 28, 2013 cover of Life & Style Weekly attempts to grab the attention of a consumer who is simply passing by. Well-known celebrity icon, Kim Kardashian, is pictured loud and proud in the center of this cover, wearing nothing more than a skimpy bathing suit. First things first, the image of Kim in the suit is clearly provocative, purposely utilizing an alluring appeal to hail to an audience. This cover uses sex appeal and the exposure of a woman’s body to sell itself, essentially exploiting this image of Kim as a marketing technique. It’s understood that over all else, a magazine is a business, but it seems degrading that publications such as Life & Style Weekly have no shame is exploiting sex appeal in place of attention and sales. Getting consumers’ attention in a way that emphasizes sex and appearance in order to sell is strategic and successful, but can it also send a misleading and slightly offensive message sometimes? Think about it. We see it all the time in ads and on commercials—the female body, sex appeal of women—either objectified or used to grab attention and sell a product. This kind of approach stealthily degrades women in the sense that the female body is manipulated while making that idea appear okay to society, including women.

Beyond this, the content of this cover demonstrates the hidden message of beauty-ideals sent to consumers. As far as the image of Kim, it really seems to set standards high as of what ‘good looking’ in society is portrayed as. With no knowledge of how retouched the photo is, it leaves consumers wondering if such an appearance is even realistically attainable, especially after pregnancy weight gain! But it fools us into to thinking it is, therefore putting this universal pressure on females to live up to such standards as well has setting a bar for males of what beautiful, successful and desirable women should be able to look like.

Meanwhile, ridiculous subtitles and picture of a “heavier” Kim rests off to the side in order to show the contrast in her weight fluctuation. In regards to an article found on the inside of the magazine, Kim’s pregnancy weight gain and loss is the majority focus of this issue’s cover. Kim’s image and the untrustworthy claims swamp the mass of the page. The subtitle of the smaller pregnancy photo reads, “April 2013: Kim at her heaviest and most miserable”. While bullets at the base of the main image of Kim exclaim of her “no-starve diet”, “flat-tummy workout trick” and “secret snack that burns calories fast”. These are apparently tricks of Kim’s after having been “bullied for her pregnancy weight gain”.

Praising Kim’s weight loss is absolutely ludicrous when no less than a couple weeks prior, Life & Style Weekly were part of the exact “bullying” they refer to here. This cover has the intent of showing a heavier Kim that boasts the words “Ruining my life”, in reference to her pregnancy. Underneath it continues to claim the weight gain as a reason for Kim’s supposed distress.

This kind of attention, on weight gain—especially a pregnant woman’s—is extremely trivial and gives society the impression that weight gain is something to be ashamed of, especially if  a famous face such as Kim Kardashian “cries” over apparently “fat hands”.  Does that mean the rest of us too should be overly upset if our hands are pudgy? Society sees these claims, this emphasis on weight—in turn appearance—and may succumb to the influence that tabloids put on females to live up to the expectation of beauty. 

Emphasis on Losing Weight

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the magazine’s tendency to bash stars for their low weight. It is one thing to notice someone has gotten unhealthily thin and another to attribute it to unreliable sources, be harshly critical and mold it to almost portray it as trendy to readers. Checking out this Life & Style Weekly cover, you can see how it makes a direct effort to point out Angelina Jolie’s “scary-skinny arms”. Yes, her arms do look very thin but how is it for certain that she is obsessed with dieting as the cover claims? Angelina is the main image on the cover, but multiple photos of other very thin stars are placed off to the side. In regards to the smaller image of Leanne Rymes how is it certain that she super thin because of man troubles? These are ideas we buy as consumers when we choose to agree with whatever bit of info a magazine feeds us. More so, these ideas are extra dangerous coming from a magazine such as Life & Style Weekly because you literally see an image and a claim, no more info, reasoning or validity.

Also, if the magazine wanted to make a big part of this issue that underweight stars are unhealthy, why does the cover even include the prominent, highlighted subtext that says, “Stars’ tricks for not feeling hungry”? It’s almost as if the magazine knows readers would like to know these tricks secretly for their own benefit, so the magazine in turn tries to disguise it as just a component of the cover story. It seems somewhat that the cover isn’t promoting the image of being unhealthily underweight, but at the same time it shows celebrities, such as Angelina Jolie whom people admire, at such low weights. It also has attention grabbing text such as the line about hunger-suppressing tricks stars use, which sounds as if the magazine recognizes people would probably actually like to be in one these extreme dieting tactics too. Linking it all back together now, why is society and the public so focused on weight loss, even to an unhealthy extent? Because media such as Life & Style Weekly publish magazine covers that critique all elements on females’ appearance, reestablishing a the pressure to be perfect and up to high standards. 

More examples of covers critiquing women's low weights:

Makeup or Fake-Up?

Looking at this April 2013 cover of Life & Style Weekly which reads “Stars Without Makeup” as a large blurb of text, placed in the direct center of the cover. First of all, why is this idea of stars without makeup so fascinating to society? Sure it’s entertaining to see what stars can really look like naturally when we are so used to seeing them dolled up, but makeup or not, the celebrity is a person and doesn’t need to be exploited over something so insignificant such as dark under eye bags or uneven complexion. Though this concept can in some ways show the realness of celebrities, allowing people to almost feel relatable to the celebrities themselves, it still reinforces the idea that lack of makeup, celebrity or not, is not as “beautiful” as what one could be with it. The way the Life & Style Weekly’s cover presents the idea of stars without makeup, conveys an idea that makeup improves appearance by showing stars in an unflattering matter next to “glamorous” after pictures of caked on faces. A chuck of text states “How Celebs get beautiful”, a phrase that implies, before the foundation, lipstick and liner, these celebs aren’t beautiful. That right there is the message, that makeup creates beauty. Again, despite the fact that society sees these stars naturally and can take a sense of comfort knowing they too have flaws, this idea also influences women to feel as though makeup is necessary in order to cover flaws, become beautiful and be like their celebrity icons. 

Beg to Differ? I Think Not!

Some readers may argue that because Life & Style Weekly claims to be more geared towards a lifestyle magazine that focuses on celebrity beauty, health and trends, it only makes sense that it focuses so much on body image, but even its sister magazine, InTouch Weekly, which is under the same publisher is guilty of focusing so harshly on looks. InTouch Weekly, which is supposedly aimed more at celebrity news, still degrades and picks apart women’s images on the front covers of their weekly issues. Topics concerning weight gain, body image, among the few, pop up frequently. It is almost hard for society not to feast their eyes on these covers which shout to the world “look at this women who has gained X amount of weight”, “check out this star who can’t feed herself properly” or “guess who went under the knife again”! If such seemingly beautiful role models can’t be accepted for who they are before makeup, after weight gain, or a bit bony, how can the young girls who look up to these celebs without creating connotations about their own characteristics?

               Consider these InTouch Weekly covers where (coincidence or not?) Kim Kardashian is once again called out for her pregnancy weight gain. For Pete’s Sake, she was pregnant! One cover implies she was dumped due to her weight gain, another saying she had a 4,200-calorie diet and the third claims she desperately went on a liquid diet! InTouch Weekly and Life & Style Weekly have covers upon covers that portray women in this way, it just so happens that recently many of their covers are of Kim Kardashian because her appearance has been such a huge topic. It is important to keep in mind though that degrading magazine covers can be found of many different celebrities and public figures all with the same downfall of picking apart a woman’s appearance.

A quote from www.nationaleatingdisorders.org website makes a great point through which it says, “Mass media provides a significantly influential context for people to learn about body ideals and the value placed on being attractive.” Life & Style Weekly is a piece of media with the power to extend “body ideals” and “the value placed on being attracted” on countless people. It goes on to say even, “…the second most common source of such images is the advertisements in teen magazines directed at adolescent girls.” This quote, which is referring to degrading images of women, is a powerful point that shows how much effect this kind of media can have on people, in specific adolescent girls.

The photos, images and claims made on the front cover of Life & Style Weekly, as well at its sister mag, InTouch Weekly, creates a high expectation and standard of women’s appearance in society to the eyes of women themselves and men. From weight gain, to weight loss, to beauty achieved through caked on makeup, the emphasis of what it takes to achieve standards of beauty according Life & Style Weekly’s magazine covers is unfair, out of focus and a dangerous influence to society.