Maxim Magazine Research Reflection

            I found this study to be very intriguing mostly because it is fairly recent and involves topics that continue to influence our culture today. A lot of the media we are exposed to is extremely sexualized. For example, television shows such as "Sex brought me to the ER", "Dating Naked" and "Virgin Territory", advertisements for Victoria's Secret or that feature David Beckham shirtless, popular music that constantly refers to sex and promotes sexual behavior and not to mention the provocative music videos that go along with it. Overall, as time goes on, the more and more sexual activeness is promoted in the media and it definitely impacts not only the decisions we make as consumers but the decisions businesses make.

            The whole idea of the Maxim formula of women plus sex equals readers is definitely a new and rapidly growing trend that affects all ages and all aspects of culture. The more women are sexualized in the media, the more men expect that of real-life women. It forces women to set high, and often times unreachable, weight standards which has impacted the somewhat recent trend of eating disorders. However, marketing professionals neglect this trend in order to stay in business and gain reader loyalty. Yes, it important to stay up to date with the market in order to increase revenue and stay in business, but it is also important to remain ethical and understand that you are jumping on the bandwagon. In the future, when eating disorders are even more prevalent, women are even more degraded and men set even higher expectations to a point where societal norms are shifted for the worse, are you going to want to be the one who contributed?  Maxim has contributed to a revolution of sexuality and portraying women sexually and based on this research, has caused other companies in this industry to change the way they advertise and promote their content. Has stated in the study, there was a significant increase in the amount of covers with women on the front, decrease in the amount of clothing they wore on the cover, and increase in being portrayed sexually.  These trends definitely put women  readers in a position of high, unreachable expectation and more importantly inequality and it will take a new perspective or formula to shift popular culture and societal norms into something that everyone finds admirable and equal.

Bibliography
            J. Lambiase and T. Reichert. (2006). “Sex and the marketing of contemporary
consumer magazines: How men’s magazines sexualized their covers to compete with Maxim,” in
T. Reichert and J. Lambiase (Eds.) Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and
Marketing, pp. 67-86. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum