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.