Sex And Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media

12. Periodical Pleasures: Magazines for U.S. Latinas

What does it mean to be Latino? The answer is as individual as we are. . . . Being Latino in the United States means having two cultures, two sets of traditions and in some cases two different languages. But most of all, being Latino should be a great source of pride. All of us at Estylo magazine are trying to bring you that sense of confidence and self-esteem. —Juana Gallegos In October 1997 Estylo joined Latina and Moderna in a group of new magazines targeting women defined by their ethnic consciousness as “U.S. Latinas.”1 While Vandidades Continental and Cosmopolitan en Español, the best-selling Spanish-language women’s magazines, aim at Latin American women interested in the lifestyles of an international elite, Latina, Moderna, and Estylo use bilingual editorial and advertising to address women who see themselves as both “Latina” and “American.” A typical issue of each magazine includes profiles of successful Latinas; columns and stories tailored to Latinas on health, beauty, fashion, and careers; and articles on topics such as intercultural dating, bilingual education, and raising bicultural children. As publications “by Latinas for Latinas,” these periodicals exemplify and diverge from contemporary trends in the media industries. Corporate interests are increasingly aware of the consuming powers and proclivities of U.S. Latinos, but advertisers still target Latinos mainly through Spanish-language media. The new magazines are a longoverdue alternative to two centuries of derogatory media stereotypes, and they provide a forum for women excluded, not only from the media, but also from economic and political empowerment as U.S. citizens . Yet advertiser-supported magazines are a core product of the media industries, as commodities in and of themselves, as commodities that generate the production of other commodities, and as products that promote the consumption of still more commodities. In an industry dominated by transnational conglomerates, the new magazines are published by relatively small, U.S.-based corporations: Estylo’s pub164 12. Periodical Pleasures: Magazines for U.S. Latinas Amy Beer lisher is an independent firm, Mandalay Publications, based in Los Angeles; Latina is published by Essence Corporation, the owner of Essence, the first and still the most profitable magazine for African Americans; and Moderna was created by the publisher of Hispanic, the largest circulation general-interest magazine for U.S. Latinos. Women’s magazines early attracted the attention of U.S. feminists, and a number of important works interrogate the representational practices and industrial history of the medium.2 This article places the new Latina magazines in the context of the contemporary international magazine industry and considers their production of Latinas for readers and advertisers. My analysis indicates that because the magazines define Latinas primarily as consumers, they are a limited forum for women to explore nonconsumerist identities, challenge hegemony, or express oppositional points of view. The Contemporary Magazine Industry The economic structure of the magazine industry encourages reader segmentation and strict control over editorial content. With few exceptions , consumer magazines generate profit mainly from advertising and not from magazine sales, but costs of printing and distribution and readers’ insistence on a certain amount of editorial content impose perpetual constraints on the number of ad pages in any magazine. To maximize ad revenues, like all other advertiser-supported media, publishers must demonstrate that their products reach desirable consumers . U.S. women’s magazines always segmented readers by gender, race, and class, and, later, by age, and publishers early supported the establishment of an independent agency, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), to measure circulation and invested in market research to document readers’ desires and consuming habits. In addition, contemporary consumer magazines offer advertisers a variety of “value-added” promotions, such as covert ads in the form of product mentions, and, although they are loathe to admit it, tolerate advertiser input into editorial content (Pogrebin 1998a, 1998b). The consumer magazine industry is highly concentrated. A small number of transnational multimedia conglomerates now own most of the world’s magazine publishers.3 Group publication allows magazines to pool advertising sales and marketing research resources, negotiate jointly with distributors and printers, and offer discounts for multiple advertising buys.4 Group publishers owned by multimedia conglomerates are also well positioned to survive periodic downturns Periodical Pleasures / 165 and benefit from new media outlets. Beginning in the early 1980s, when a general recession, rising paper costs and postal rates, and new electronic media threatened...