Magazine Cover

 Magazines are everywhere in society, from supermarkets to sidewalks. I’ve seen countless copies of various magazines throughout my life, but I’ve never noticed the details of each one until now, when I was specifically looking for them.  

One magazine that especially stood out to me was the Rolling Stone magazine. The entire cover is dedicated to the Black Lives Matter protests around the country and the political turmoil that surrounds it. A politically vocal singer, Lil Baby, is featured on the cover. He’s standing on a wall in front of a background made up of the burnt remains from a protest. The wall reads “Black Power”, and the cover is very much a political statement. Text blurbs surrounding the image suggest protest songs, call Donald Trump out for his failures, and introduces Lil Baby as “the sound of the rebellion”. Another magazine that accomplishes this is GQ Magazine, which features Travis Scott and talks about “ragers, agitators, and activists,” and being sure to say “change is good”. This kind of magazine that stands up for extremely important movements like the Black Lives Matter movement and aren’t afraid to be politically charged are important because now more than ever, politics affects the lives of so many people, especially disadvantaged groups, and to not bring it up would be ignorant. 

Another magazine I enjoyed was the Vogue magazine, specifically because this copy strays from the usual portrayal of women. Many magazines display women on the cover and highlight their body or their features, while the Vogue magazine displays a headshot of Rihanna, drawing attention to her presence as a whole, rather than simply her body. Furthermore, she’s wearing stereotypically masculine clothes: a suit and a tie. Another magazine that does this is the Essence magazine, featuring Lala Anthony and framing her face and her traditionally non-feminine clothes. This gives the message of refusing outdated gender roles that are harmful to people of every gender and showing that she isn’t going to comply with society’s harmful female beauty standards. This also sends the message to other women and girls that they have no obligation to look a certain way to be a valuable person. One magazine that stood out to me as the opposite of this was the Sports Illustrated magazine, which portrayed women’s bodies, most of whom were thin and white, with very little diversity. 

The attention-grabbing magazine covers serve a purpose, because as the article says, “The magazine-reading future, in other words, will be bite-sized. The narrative will surrender to the newsflash. Image will subsume the written word.” This is referencing the increasingly busy new generations with shorter attention spans. The article discusses this at length, mentioning how some magazine editors are hesitant to make their magazines more “bite-sized”, but to no avail. 

For the project, I think a magazine would be a very interesting option, especially in today’s political climate, and I’m leaning towards doing a magazine for my project.