Globalised Girlhood: the teaching of femininity in Cosmopolitan and True Love

Abstract

A comparison of two South African women's magazines, Cosmopolitan and True Love, via both textual and reader analysis, examines their reception by teenage girls. Do women's magazines serve as cultural developmental markers and informal educational devices in the passage from girlhood to adulthood? The study adopts a poststructuralist view on the gendered self as socially constructed within discourse. Women's magazines give 'feminity'a material form and are discursive sites-of-struggle. Critical discourse analysis is applied to the text analysis, while the concept of ínterpretive repertoires' is applied to the focus group analysis.