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The Sexual Messages in Three Women's
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THE SEXUAL MESSAGES IN THREE WOMEN’S MAGAZINES, 1971-1991:
A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF W,

WWW
By

Erin Claire Gillespie

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of Journalism

1992

ABSTRACT

THE SEXUAL MESSAGES IN THREE WOMEN’S MAGAZINES, 1971-1991:
A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF W,

CQSMQEQLJIAH. AND MADEMQISEILE
By
Erin Claire Gillespie

A content analysis of three popular women’s magazines was conducted to evaluate
them as somces of sexual information. Non-ﬁction, non-advertising content was coded
according to twenty coding questions for mention of emotional, physiological and
responsibility aspects of sex, for attempts to dispel myths and misconceptions and in
comparison to statistical data on the sexual behavior of young women.

The magazines included vastly different quantities of sexual content. Sexual
relationships and sexuality in general clearly dominated all other sexual topic categories.
Mention of emotional and physical aspects of sex was fairly balanced, but the responsibility
for the potential consequences of sexual activity received very little mention. There were a
ﬁawammmmsunﬁﬂxﬂnwﬂmamdnuummummmm.

In general, the magazines studied did not appear to precede trends in sexual behavior,
and if the content responded to trends, the response was unaggressive at seemingly vital

times.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. iii
LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................. iv
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
2. SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL ...................................................... 4
3. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................... 10

Sources of Sex Information
Contraception
Pregnancy
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Women and Magazines
History
Research Questions
4. RESEARCH METHOD ............................................................... 39
Pretest
5. RESULTS .............................................................................. 47
6. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION ............................................. 71
Appendix
A. CODING INSTRUMENT

CONTENT ANALYSIS CODING PROTOCOL .................................... 78
CODING QUESTIONS ............................................................... 80
RESPONSE FORM ..................................................................... 84
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS ...................................................... 85
B. CIRCULATION FIGURES ............................................................ 88

Table of Contents, continued

C. ADDITIONAL TABLES
EMOTTONAL, RESPONSIBILITY AND PHYSIOLOGICAL]

FACTUAL ASPECTS OF SEXUAL TOPICS .................................... 89
MARITAL STATUS OF WOMEN (IN THOUSANDS), 1971-1988 ............ 90
BIRTHS PER 1,000 UNMARRIED WOMEN, 1970-1989 ........................ 91

MORBIDITY AND RATES (FEMALES) PER 1(X),0(X)
POPULATTON BY AGE GROUP, UNITED STATES,

1971-1984 .............................................................................. 92

PERCENT OF MAGAZINE CONTENT DEVOTED TO

SEXUAL TOPICS ..................................................................... 93

ITEM TOPICS ........................................................................... 94
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................. 95

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
1. Percent of never married girls aged 15 to 19 living in metropolitan

areas experiencing sexual intercourse, 1971-1989 .................................... 7
2. Degree of accuracy of sexual information ............................................. 14
3. Sources of first sex information ......................................................... 15

4. Media sources of sexual information for the non-pregnant (np) and

unwanted pregnant (up) groups ...................................................... 18
5. Percentage distribution of never manied contraceptive users aged

15-44, by contraceptive method, 1982 ............................................. 21
6. Percentage distribution of women aged 15-19 who ever used a

contraceptive method, by most recent method used, 1979 and 197 6 ............ 21
7. Data from pretest ........................................................................... 45
8. Length of items ........................................................................... 50
9. Types of items .............................................................................. 51
10. Number of times contraceptive methods were mentioned, 1971-1991 ............... 55
11. Distribution of psychological/emotional, responsibility and

physiological/factual aspects of sex among item topics ........................... 58
12. Attempts to dispel myths and misconceptions .......................................... 63
13. Peers and media as sources of sexual information regarding sexual

relationships, contraception, pregnancy or STDs, 1971-1991 . . .. . .. ........... 65

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page
1. Percent of non-fiction/non-advertising sexual content, 1971-1991 .................. 48
2. Frequency of occurrance of four item topics, 1971-1991 ........................... 52
3. Percent of item topics, all magazines combined, contraception,

STD and pregnancy items combined ................................................ 54
4. Percent of sexual content mentioning emotional, responsibility and

physical/factual aspects of sex (all magazines combined), 1971-1991 ......... 57
5. Illegitimate live births (to women aged 15 to 34) and items about

contraception and pregnancy, 1970-1991 .......................................... 60
6. Percent of items about STDs compared with reported cases of

SIDS among all populations, and AIDS among women, 1971-1991 ......... 61
7. Male vs. female methods of contraception, 1971-1991 .............................. 62

iv

INTRODUCTION

One of the main difﬁculties of being a teenager is sex, at once a great discovery, a
great mess, a great pleasure, a great frustration, and an all around great muddle.

Over the past few decades, the number of out-of -wedlock births and teenage
pregnancies in the United States has risen dramatically. Research shows that between 1960
and 1982, the number of live births per thousand unmarried females aged ﬁfteen to
nineteen climbed from 15.3 to 23.9.2 US. Census data from 1971 to 1989 show that
among the total number of illegitimate live births, by 1989 over 63 percent were to mothers
ﬁfteen to twenty-four years of age.3

Seventy percent of unmarried American women have had intercourse by their
twentieth birthday,4 and the average age at which young women have their ﬁrst sexual
intercourse is 16.5

Some psychologists suggest that teenagers are ill—equipped to make decisions about
sexual intercourse, that they lack the emotional maturity it takes to make serious judgments
about intimate relationships and to take responsibility for their actions.6 According to
Moore, “Young people today are socially pressured to be sexually active long before they
have been prepared educationally and psychologically to cope with the deeply personal and
highly charged nature of sexuality.”7

In addition to the risk of pregnancy and emotional consequences of adolescent sexual
intercourse, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including AIDS, is of
pressing concern to teenage women, who rank third after homosexual men and prostitutes
in cases of gonorrhea, cytomegalovirus, chlamydia cervicitis, and pelvic inﬂammatory

diseases of any age group.8 Irregular contraceptive use and early age of intercourse are

characteristics typical of many sexually active young women, characteristics which most
often result in 1) early and often unwanted pregnancies that have contributed to increased
abortion rates, 2) births to unwed mothers that pose serious health, social, and economic
problems, and 3) occurrance of sexually transmitted diseases at epidemic rates.9

The focus of this study is sexual relationships and sexuality in general, contraceptive
use, pregnancy, and STDs as they are presented in three large-circulation women’s
magazines from 1971 to 1991. Through content analysis an attempt has been made to
determine what the three magazines have communicated to their readers with regard to
sexual topics over the past twenty years, and what their potential as sources of sexual
information for young women may be. How women’s magazines compare to societal
trends regarding the sexual behavior and characteristics of young women is also addressed
here. 5mm, Mademoiseﬂe and W are the three long-lived and popular

magazines examined in this study.

NOTES: CHAPTER ONE

1Alan Guttrnacher Institute, Wm (New York: Planned Parenthood of
America, 1976), 57.

2Sandra L. Hanson, David E. Myers, and Alan L. Ginsberg, “The Role of Responsibility
and Knowledge in Reducing Teenage Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing,”

Eamﬂy 49 (May 1987): 241.
3National Center for Health Statistics, “Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics,”

supplement to NW, 35(45), July 1984, 35(4) July 1986, 40(8)
December, 1991.

4Lynn Crawford Cook, “Girls: Just Say ‘Not Now, ”’ W, April 1989, 59.

5Melvin Zelnik and Farida K. Shah, “First Intercourse Among Young Americans,’ ’medly
Blamingﬁetsmﬁm 15 (March/April 1983): 64

6Ach J. Moore, “Teenage Sexuality and Public Morality, 1113mm, 9-16
September 1987, 747.

IJMﬂIionIeenaaers. 57.
Cook, 59.
Moon, 747.

8Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Frank F. Furstenburg Jr., “Adolescent Sexual Behavior,”
Ammiszanﬂmhnlcaist 44 (February 1989): 259

9Ruth A. Hudson, “Sexual Knowledge, Attitudes and Sources of Information Among
Adolescents,” (M.A. thesis, Texas Women’s University, 1985), 115.

CHAPTER TWO
SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL

Traditionally, there has been disparity between the attinrdes of the adult community
and the attitudes of teenagers regarding premarital sexual activity. The adult community
says premarital sexual intimacy is wrong, while the youth community often says that
premarital sexual intimacy is not wrong, given certain interpersonal commitments.1 Such
“commitments” generally include being in love, going steady and engagement, and have
been found by researchers to be signiﬁcant catalysts for the frequency of adolescent sexual
activity, contraceptive use and pregnancy.2

The premarital sexual behavior of unmarried women became it suddenly popular topic
of public discussion in 1953 when an obscure Indiana zoologist named Alfred C. Kinsey
published the landmark study MW and “vaulted into the
same prominence once occupied by such scholars of sex and reproduction as Charles
Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Havelock Ellis.”3

It has been observed that probably no ﬁnding in Kinsey’s report was “more shocking
and upsetting to the American population than that which showed about 50 percent of all
the women they studied who had ever married had had premarital coitus. It sharply
publicized the disparity between the values of premarital virginity and actual sexual
behavior.”4

Kinsey’s study has been criticized by some for methodological reasons, most
notably, potential biases that could have been introduced by a sampling technique which
required women to recall from memory details about their earliest sexual experiences. The
validity of the sample group of women was also questioned for its accuracy in representing

the female population as a whole: the study participants were all volunteers, all white, most
4

were from northeastern states and were highly educated.

Nevertheless, the study was important for having brought into the Open the news that
50 percent of these American women had premarital sex, and that over a quarter of them
admitted extramarital relations, despite the traditionally perceived American social taboos
against it. One-third of the unmarried women interviewed had lost their virginity by age
twenty-ﬁve, and 77 percent of the married women who had been sexually active prior to
marriage said they felt no remorse or regret as a result of their premarital sexual relations.
For 69 percent of the still unmarried females who had had sex relations, there was no
regret, and only 30 percent of the still unmarried women said they intended to abstain from
sex until they were married.5

In analyzing the behavior of his subjects, Kinsey modiﬁed the traditional deﬁnition of
“virgin.” Women who considered themselves virgins were often involved in a number of
intimately sexual behaviors, and Kinsey said a woman who participated in deep kissing,
who had her breasts manipulated manually or orally, who received or performed
masturbation, who performed or received oral-genital contact, or who had contacted male
genitals with her own but stopped short of actual coitus, was still, technically, a virgin.6

As shocking as Kinsey’s ﬁndings were made to seem, in reality, the sexual behavior
of young women in 1953 was nothing new. As one magazine observed, “Kinsey’s mass
study shows that premarital sex activity of girls today has not differed over the years since
1920 from the activity of their mothers and grandmothers.”7 It seemed that the most
surprising aspect of Kinsey’s study was not the results themselves, but their popularity as a
t0pic of open discussion. An article in the August 24, 1953 issue of Ii_me magazine said
the effect of Kinsey’s work on the US wouldtake another twenty years to discover, but

that certain effects were already visible:

Perhaps the biggest of them rs conversational. Despite the tremendous increase of
talk about sex after World War I public and printed discussion was accepted only
gradually. As late as the ’305, the New York Times refused ads for Idea '

 

6

by a highly respectable Dutch physician, Theodoor H. Van de Velde, who spoke of

sex with great candor but also with an almost romantic reverence. No single event

did more for open discussion of sex than the Kinsey report, which got such matters

as homosexgrality, masturbation, coitus and orgasm into most papers and family

magazrnes.

Researchers since Kinsey have charted a rise in the number of young women who
initiate sexual activity prior to marriage, and some attribute the increase to the fact that
women are waiting longer to marry than they were twenty years ago. The percentage of
unmarried twenty to twenty-fora year-olds rose from 36.8 percent in 1971, to 55.5 percent
in 1980, to 61.1 percent in 1988. In 1988, nearly 90 percent of women aged eighteen to
nineteen were unmarried, compared with 77.5 percent in 1971. According to the US.
Bureau of the Census, the median age at ﬁrst marriage for women in 1989 was 23.8 years,
higher than any previously recorded level. An “especially rapid” increase of 2.7 years in
the median age at ﬁrst marriage occurred between 1975 and 1989 for men and women
alike.9

These increases, and the shift in age distribution of marriages to older ages during the
19703 and 19803, reflect both an increase in time spent in school and an increasing
tendency for women to work for several years before marriage. 10 (Table 16 in Appendix
C shows marital status of women aged 18 to 34 from 1971 to 1988). With more time
between puberty and marriage, the percentage of unmarried women aged ﬁfteen to
nineteen engaging in sexual intercourse also increased, by 52.9 percent, between 1971 and
1982.11 As Table 1 shows, between 1971 and 1988, the percentage of sexually active,
unmarried American women aged ﬁfteen to nineteen rose from 29.5 percent to 54 percent.

In addition to this combination of early initiation of sexual activity and delayed
marriage, the availability of prescribed, medical forms of birth control has also been
credited for the rising number of sexually active young people. Since their introduction in

the mid-19603, and their reﬁnement in recent years, medically prescribed contraceptives

such as the pill, diaphragm and intrauterine device (IUD), have lessened the risk of

pregnancy for young women and given them the independence to control their own
fertility. Some researchers have also hypothesized that the legalization of abortion in 1973
encouraged more women to be sexually active prior to marriage by giving them a “backup”

if they did become pregnant as a result of premarital intercourse.12

Table 1-—Percent of never married girls ages 15-19 living in metropolitan
areas experiencing sexual intercourse, 1971-1989'

 

15 1 6 17 18 19 Total
1971 14.4 20.9 26.1 39.7 46.4 29.50
1976 18.6 28.9 42.9 51 .4 59.5 40.26
1979 22.5 37.8 48.5 56.9 69.0 46.94
1982 17.8 28.1 41.0 52.7 61.7 40.26
1988 27.0 34.0 52.0 70.0 78.0 54.00

 

'Sources: M. Zelnik and J.F. Kantner, ‘Sexual activity. contraceptive
use and pregnancy among metropolitan-area teenagers: 1971-1979.“ Eamjlx

W 12 (Sept/Oct M980-

and

Ned Zeman. ‘The New Rules of Courtship,’ Mammal; (Special Edition:
the New Teens), Summer/Fall, 1990, 27.

The increasing prominence of sexual promiscuity in the American mass media,
especially television, has also been blamed by some as a catalyst for the early onset of
sexual behavior among adolescents. While some theorists maintain that changes found in
literature and media over time reﬂect external changes in society, societal norms and values,
others support the theory that mass media and literature conﬁrm and strengthen existing
cultural norms, attitudes and beliefs, thus shaping societal norms and values.13

While the impact of mass media is difficult to assess, the values presented there may
similarly indicate something about what is believed, or assumed to be believed, about sex
in contemporary American society. 14 Historically, the mass media, comprising radio,
television, movies, and large-circulation magazines and newspapers, have unquestionably

both inﬂuenced and threatened many people’s attitudes toward sex: 15

Among the most conspicuous changes in US. society over the past two decades has

8

been the content and visibility of the media (print, radio, television, movies, etc.).
The extensive exposure of the American public to the media and the greater liberality
of programming and advertising since the 1960s have been documented elsewhere.
Less well-documented, however, are whether and to what extent these changes in
media exposure and content have affected changing patterns of adolescent sexual and
fertility behavior, whether they simply reﬂect more pervasive changes in values,
attitudes, and behavior that have become accepted throughout society, or both. This
issue is difﬁth to study empirically, and very little relevant research has been done.
Several investigators have conducted content analyses of TV programming and have
documented the amount of time children and adolescents spend viewing, yet none has
convincingly linked program content and exposure to adolescent sexual attitudes and
behavior. Such research is needed to understand how the choices of adolescents of
different ages, genders, races, and other background characteristics concerning
sexual activity, contraception, pregnancy, and pregnancy resolution are inﬂuenced by
what they see and hear in the media. It is also needed to begin to identify strategies
for using the media to promo6te more responsible sexual, contraceptive, and fertility
behavior among teenagers.l

It is with this perceived inﬂuential power of media in mind that this study examines a
selection of large-circulation magazines which have young unmarried women as their target

audience, as a potential source of sexual information for young unmarried women.

NOTES: CHAPTER TWO

1Robert R. Bell. WWW (Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1966), 80.

2Sandra L. Hanson, David E. Myers, and Alan L. Ginsberg, “The Role of
Responsibility and Knowledge in Reducing Teenage Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing,”
MW 49 (May 1987): 248

3“All About Eve: Kinsey Reports on American Women,” Newsweek, 24 August
1953, 68.

4Bell, 98.
5“All About Eve,” 68.

51m L. Reiss. BremarilaljexnaLStandatdsinAmeriea (Glencoe. Illinois: The Free
Press, 1960), 110.

7“All About Eve.” 68.
85340 Women,” Time, 24 August 1953, 58.

9US. Bureau of the Census, WW, Marital Status of Women
(in thousands), 1971-1988.

10Month1y Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Supplement) August 26, 1991,
pg. 5.

11Melvin Zelnik and John Kantner, “Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use and
Pregnancy Among Metropolitan-Area Teenagers: 19711979,” W

W, 12 (Sept. /Oct. 1980): 231.

”Gamma s. Chihnan WWW
(Bethesda, Maryland: U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1978), 181.

13'L. Ann Geise, “The Female Role in Middle Class Women’s Magazines from 1955
to 197 6: A Content Analysis of Nonﬁction Selections,” W, 5 (1979): 52.

”Bell, 48.
151bid.

16Cheryl D. Hayes, ed., W vol. 1, (Washington, DC: National
Academy Press, 1987) 249.

CHAPTER THREE
LITERATURE REVIEW

Studies on the premarital sexual attitudes and behaviors of young women, along with
studies on how women are presented in and use the media, magazines in particular, form
the backdrop for this study. Such literature provides the historical and social perspectives
against which to compare possible trends in the content of the magazines.

Desvite the overwhelmins Pepulaﬁty 0f Kinsey’s Wm
Eemale, Princeton University researcher Hadley Cantril criticized Kinsey’s lack of attention
to the emotions and responsibilities that accompany the physical side of sexual activity:

The authors have made bold and important beginnings in their two published books.

If in their further studies they can shed light on the signiﬁcance of the sexual behavior

of men and women as human beings endowed with the capacity to experience love,

devotion, sacriﬁce, choice, responsibility, guilt, anxiety, and frustration rather than
as males and females having erotic experiences through petting, masturbating,
homosexuality, or coitus, then they will truly be on their way to contributions of even
greater social and scientiﬁc importance.”1

A decade after publication of Kinsey’s report came the work of Ira Reiss. Like
Kinsey, Reiss addressed the concept of virginity and the paradoxical idea of a
“promiscuous virgin” who, though technically a virgin because she has not participated in
intercourse, “is also a sexually experienced female.”2

But Reiss criticized prior research which paid much attention to sexual behavior, yet
neglected consideration of sexual standards.3 While the major emphasis of Kinsey’s study
was on the physical aspects of sexual behavior, Reiss found psychological and attitudinal
factors largely missing. So, unlike Kinsey, Reiss’s research considered the role of

emotions and other psychological factors in the premarital sexual behavior of young adults.

Reiss distinguished between two basic types of sexual behavior, “body centered” or

10

ll

“unaffectionate” intercourse which accents only the physical aspects of the act, and “person
centered” or “affectionate” intercourse which emphasizes the emotions and feelings of the
particular person with whom the sexual act is being performed.4

Like Reiss, Chilman in 197 8 found it inappropriate that most adolescent sexual
research concentrated on speciﬁc sexual activities signiﬁcantly more often than it did the

emotional aspects of sexuality:

Heterosexual behaviors and attitudes during adolescence usually have been
researched and discussed in speciﬁc sexual terms. Research generally has referred to
such sex activities as kissing and hugging, light and heavy petting, and intercourse
It would be more appropriate to think of premarital sexual attitudes and behaviors as
those that encompass the development of adolescents 1n their mterests and abilities to
form 1ntimate, interpersonal social, psychological, and physical relationships, as they
move from their families of origin to families they may form 1n the future. However,
the nann'g of the available research requires an overemphasis on speciﬁc sexual
subjects.

 

This concern over the lack of attention to emotional and psychological aspects of sex
stems from an apparent gap between what young women know about sex and its
consequences, and their actual sexual behavior. Some researchers maintain that their
ﬁndings “do not support contentions that the knowledge of sex and birth control gained
through sex education leads to greater sexual activity and thus more teenage pregnancies
and births,” but that such increases in activity occur in spite of increased education.6 A
1984 study of teenage girls’ sexual decision-making behavior by Blum and Resnick found
that the number of pregnancies among teenage girls rose 13 percent between 1974 and
1984, and only a third of sexually active teenagers consistently used birth control, even
though knowledge of contraception, adoption and abortion had improved. As the authors
observed, “In so many instances it’s heartbreaking—they have the knowledge, the
awareness and the understanding, but somehow it doesn’t apply to them”7

This gap between knowledge and behavior has become a major challenge facing sex
educators. While sex education is a very important part of the sexual decision-making

12

process, Resnick emphasized it must be “more than just an organ recital.”8 In 1987,
Hanson et a1. made a distinction between the effectiveness of knowledge of speciﬁc sexual
facts versus support of responsible attitudes in reducing the rate of out-of-wedlock teenage
pregnancies. The researchers observed that,“Explanations for early births among unwed
women often allude to a lack of factual knowledge about sex and birth control,” but added
that, “Without a complementary and supportive set of attitudes that stress the notion of
responsibility, knowledge about sex and birth control is not likely to affect behavior.”9 A
1970 survey of readers of Smnteen magazine revealed that young women did in fact have
a desire for more “ethical and emotional guidance in handling a part of their lives that is
central to their well-being and to their development into happy, healthy, responsible

womenz”

Though the poll shows that you are cmious about sex techniques and gratiﬁcation,
you seem even more concerned with ‘the real meaning of sex,’ ‘the connection
between our biological functions and our emotions,’ and ‘the causes and
consequences of premarital sex.’ Even when you ask for the hard facts about birth
control, it is apparently not in order to be free to run wild but 1n order not to be
irresponsible” .Even more than concrete facts, you want to learn about‘ f meanm g
of sex in and out of marriage’ and ‘the relationship between sex and love.’

According to the ﬁndings:

Most girls consider sex connected with deep emotional feelings and bound up with
important human values. They feel that these matters Should be a part of their sex
education. Indeed, 96 percent of them said, in reply to another question, that sex
education in schools should include the psychological and emotional apects of
sex—an indication of their liberation from traditional American puritanism, which
pointedly avoided any talk thlaf made sex sound pleasurable and, instead, dealt with it
in terms of cold physiology.1

Onyehalu called for a comprehensive sex education program “in the turbulent second
decade of the human life cycle” that would attempt to provide accurate scientiﬁc information
about a) the physiology of human reproduction, b) the common venereal diseases, c)
various contraceptive devices pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each, and d)

appropriate sex roles for male and female adolescents. 12 Others also acknowledged the

13

imponance of factual sexual information, but considered it inadequate in itself and not
likely to affect behavior “without a complementary and supportive set of attitudes that stress
the notion of responsibility.”13

A worthwhile program of sex education, Onyehalu said, should also stress the
hazards of irresponsible activity, and suspend the attitude that sex education merely serves
to promote adolescent promiscuity and premature sexual involvement. Onyehalu suggested
“A realistic approach would be to accept the fact that if youth necessarily seek information
about human procreation, such information should be supplied by competent,

knowledgeable persons.”14

/ Wm/
In 1906, sex educator E. Keyes contemplated the potential demythologization of sex

he thought might occur if “education upon sexual matters was offered to youth,” saying:

Perhaps it is better so, I know not. But it is less lovely, and life will be much less
worth living when all the transfonnation Shall have been accomplished.But, as I said
before, this condition of things is in the air and we must face it and make the best of
it. Knowledge comes to children and to cufgouth and that it should be accurate and
not distorted knowledge is most desirable.

But as members of a society tangled in conﬂicting sexual messages, young people

often get caught in the cross-ﬁre, unsure whether to “just say no” or to “just do it:”

Premarital sex relations are widely believed to be bad, silly and pointless; but
thoroughly enjoyable; but normal and natural; but necessary for healthful living; but
smart, gay, and sophisticated; but romantically permissible and thrilligg; but
adventurous and exciting; but inevitable in this all-too-ﬂeshy world.

“Our society presents sexuality as Simultaneously good and bad,” concluded a 1985
study. “For example, sexual attractiveness is highly valued, and the media exploit sexual
attracriveness. But actual sexual interaction by an unmarried individual is not accepted by

many individuals.”17 “Sexually schizoid” is what another researcher dubbed this

14

contradictory environment in which young adults are forced to make important personal

decisions:18

The result is a tug and pull on the individual and especially on the girl as to what is
“right” in the area of sexual intimacy the young woman is pulled in two directions
at the same time, one way by residual Victorianism and leftover Puritan ideals, the

otherlygay by contemporary hedonism and the emphasis on the healthful fulﬁllment of
love.

Table 2—Degree of accuracy of initial sexual iniormation.‘

 

Topic Highly Accurate Distorted Highly
Accurate Distorted

Abortion 45.7% 48.9% 5.0% 0.4%
Conception 50.5 33.1 8.7 7.7
Contraception 19.8 47.0 30.1 3.1
Ejaculation 20.1 47.1 27.4 5.4
Homosexuality 26.1 50.0 - 20.1 3.8
Intercourse 41 .0 41 .5 12.8 4.7
Masturbation 20.9 56.3 19.4 3.4
Menstruation 49.4 35.1 7.9 7.6
Petting 30.2 50.3 15.8 3.7
Prostitution 30.6 54.3 7.5 7.6
Seminal Emiss. 20.8 45.1 25.7 8.4
V.D. 36.6 43.7 12.0 7.7

 

n-1 .152 subjects
“source: Hershel D. Thornburg, “Adolescent Sources of Information on Sex,"

IhaJollmaLoLSenmLHaalm 51(April 1981) 1276-

Amidst this tug and pull, just where do young women turn for sexual information?

In a review of studies on sources of adolescents’ sexual information, Hudson found
peers to be the some cited most often by women ages eighteen to twenty-one. Ironically,
the sexual concepts understood least accurately by young women were also those learned
primarily from peers.

Tables 2 and 3 show results from a study of 1,152 high school students grades nine
through twelve, in which Thornburg found that out of twelve sexual terms, those

understood least accurately were contraception and ej aculation, and ﬁrst information about

15

both topics was leamed primarily from peers. One-third of the respondents said the initial
information they received concerning contraception was either distorted, or highly
distorted. Thomburg found the results “especially problematic in light of the high
incidence of adolescent sexual intercourse and pregnancy.”20 And a 1989 report on the
health of America’s youth found 54 percent of adolescents surveyed would talk ﬁrst to a
friend if they thought they had an 5119.21

Table 3-Sources of first sex intormation‘

 

 

Mother Father Peers Lit. School Minister Physician Experience

Abortion 21 .5% 1 .0% 20.0% 32.0% 23.7% 1.0% .3% .5%
Conception 49.4 1.2 27.4 3.2 16.4 .9 .7 .8
Contracept. 13.1 2.4 42.8 23.8 16.7 .0 .2 1 .0
Ejaculation 8.9 2.6 38.9 22.1 20.7 .7 .9 5.2
Homosexu. 7.5 4.3 50.6 19.4 16.1 .0 .0 2.1
Intercourse 23.8 3.9 39.7 15.2 7.6 1.0 1 .3 7.5
Masturbation 1 1 .1 1 .3 36.3 25.0 17.5 .0 .8 8.0
Menstruation 41 .5 1 .1 21 .5 1 1 .2 15.7 .7 .7 7.6
Petting 4.5 2.2 59.7 10.0 9.0 .2 .4 14.0
Prostitution 7.5 1.0 49.7 26.8 1 1.7 1.0 .3 2.0
Seminal Emiss. 4.2 1 .4 35.2 37.4 21 .1 .0 .0 .7
V.D. 9.4 2.1 28.2 21 .2 36.8 .0 1.2 1.1
Totals 17.4% 2.2 37.1 21.9 15.2 .5 3 5.4

 

n-1152 subjects. 'source: same as above.

Studies by Onyehalu and Kisker agreed that “during adolescencéIr/nost information
about sex comes from the peer group and often brings with it many misconceptions”?-2
As one Chicago woman said, “Your friends don’t always know what’s right. Sometimes
they don’t even have sex and they think they know it all. They think they can tell you
everything, you know. ‘Oh, you won’t get pregnant standing up.’ You think you know so
much when you are younger.”23

Young adults in Kisker’s focus group study claimed that they were either too

embarrassed or too scared to ask their parents questions about sex or contraception. Some

_/\

16

feared initiating such discussion would “get them into trouble” by revealing that they had
become sexually active. Kisker pointed out, that the reluctance to talk about such topics
was mutual in many cases, and by the time some parents mustered the courage to initiate
discussions about sex and contraception, their efforts came after their child had already
become sexually active.24 Such timidity and procrastination on the part of adults,
Onyehalu said, is not atypical:

It is not only tempting but customary for the society to adopt one of two attitudes,
both of which are negative and unsatisfactory, toward adolescents’ sexuality. The
ﬁrst is the apparently utopian attitude that the problem does not exist. The second is
one in which it is admitted that the problem exists but it is hoped that yzcglths will
somehow magically resolve it in an acceptable manner by themselves.

Onyehalu pointed to the decline of the home as a mediator of adolescents’ sexual
behavior, and said, “The traditional social cohesion as well as time-honored social
institutions such as the extended family system which hitherto produced lasting checks and
balances on human conduct, are now of questionable effectiveness.”26 A shift toward
“outside information sources” such as community educational services and school systems,
and away from parents and peers was suggested by Hudson as a way to get correct
information about human sexuality “to as large a part of the teenage population as
possible,” since information received from peers as well as parents may be insufﬁcient or
inaccurate.27 “This change in approach to outside information somces,” said Hudson,
“would be in line with the recent view that adolescents no longer consider parents their

major source of sexual information.”28

,4

A.\

According to a 1970 W magazine survey, 82 percent of women readers were ./
in fact learning about sex from their mothers. Books and magazines were the second most \
common source of sexual information reported, with 79 percent of respondents saying <
printed media were responsible for at least part of their sexual education. Girl friends and [/1

teachers ranked third and fourth respectively as sources of sexual information. But while ,-/

17

mothers and teachers were considered the most respected and reliable sources, they were
not entirely without ﬂaw, and teenagers were wary of information received from books,

magazines and peers. The magazine’s editors observed that:
’ﬁ)
All in all, it seems that most of you are very doubtful of the value of sex information
gleaned from pop culture—published or ﬁlmed—or from your peers of either sex.
Moreover, it would appear that the sources you do trust are either helping very little
athers, doctors) or leaving large gaps in sex education (mothers, teachers). 9

As the “time-honored social institutions” were failing as sources of sexual

$~_—- -mr— -

 

 

information for many young people, Onyehalu said mass media had become an an
increasingly popular: altematiyﬂfonnation source. The pervasive role of media in
American culture was too powerful an inﬂuence to deny, he said, adding that if the
destructive sexual images Spread by some media were not countered by more constructive
ones, young people would inevitably form misconceptions about sexual behavior based on
misinformation:

The current role of technology in disseminating pornography through movies,
television and the press [cannot] be convincingly denied or ignored. It is against the
background of these new developments of the human social order and the need and
desire of youth to conform to peer standards even in sexual matters, that the greater
experimentation by contemporary adolescents with sexuality must be critically and
objectively reassessed. The problem is further compounded by the fact that
unfortunately, there is no corresponding effort by the mass media to distribute
informative scientiﬁc literature which focuses on the biological facts of human
reproduction and mental hygeine. The result is that youths’ sexual knowledge and
actions are based, at best, on potentially dangerous half truths and misconceptions.

— ’—..-_‘

/" Among women surveyed by Hudson, subjects cited television as an available media
source of sexual information more often than magazines or movies. However, as Table 4
4”,, '“') shows, more subjects also indicated they had actually acquired sexual information from
/ magazines than from television or movies. After peers, Davis and Harris found
‘ adolescents cited school, books and magazines, and parents most frequently as sources 0f /
E’\" sexual information.31 :

Hayes criticized television for its lack of information about contraception, which she

18

said “is almost never mentioned or referred to, and the negative consequences of an
unintended pregnancy are rarely portrayed.”32 She said broadcasters’ neglect of
advertising for nonprescription contraceptives did nothing to counteract the sexual
misinfonnation young women were receiving from other sources, and that a potentially

valuable source of information was not being utilized:33

Historically, television networks and radio stations have been resistant to advertising
contraceptive methods. Yet studies of factors affecting attitudes and contraceptive
behavior in European countries suggest that contraceptive advertising may be one
means of increasing teenagers’ awareness of contraceptive methods and making them
feel that these methods are accessible. There is no evidence to suggest that
advertising alone will directly alter behavior; however, the potential of the media
through programming and advertising to inﬂuence teenagrs’ attitudes about desirable
models for behavior, including sexuality, is signiﬁcant.

 

Table 4--Media sources of sexual Information for the non-
pregnant (hp) and unwanted pregnant (up) groups.‘

 

 

Sources Groups Available Angular:
yes no %
Television npa 26 23 3 86
upb so 22 e 73
Books up 25 23 2 92
up 30 23 7 77
Magazines up 23 20 3 87
up 27 23 4 85
Movies np 20 15 5 75
up 29 21 8 72
834 subjects
subjects

'source: Ruth A. Hudson, “Sexual Knowledge. Attitudes and
Sources of Information Among Adolescents,’ (M.A. thesis, Texas
Women’s University. 1985), 107.

19
99991991211911

Prior to the development and wide availability of medically prescribed methods of
contraception, condoms were the most often used contraceptive among many American
men and women.35 But by the mid-605, the new “intercomse independent” contraceptives
were being used by women. The contraceptive pill and the IUD, for the ﬁrst time in
history, made it possible for women to control their own icrtility.36

But in 1971, a study conducted by Zelnik and Kantner provided data concerning
contraceptive practices of sexually active adolescent women aged ﬁfteen to nineteen, and
found a remarkably high percentage of young women eschewed the use of contraceptives
for up to a year after the initiation of sexual activity. A later, similar study examined sexual
activity, contraceptive use and pregnancy among young women between 1971 and 1979,
and found continued neglect of birth control use. As one journalist reported in 1980, “For
all their carnal knowledge teenagers are surprisingly ignorant about the hazards of
freebooting sex. Many girls ﬁnd it less troubling to get into bed with a boy than to prepare
for the act with a contraceptive.”37

Results from a nationwide survey conducted in 1971 by Zelnik, Kanmer and Shah
showed that four-ﬁfths of sexually experienced never-married women aged ﬁfteen to
nineteen had engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse. Furthermore, about three in ten of
those who reported premarital sexual experience had become pregnant out of wedlock.38

In their research, Zelnik and Kantner found that many women who understood the
risks of becoming pregnant through unprotected intercourse practiced unprotected sex
anyway. That they “didn’t expect to have intercourse” was the dominant reason for the not
using contraception. Apparently, if she does not expect to have intercourse, a young
woman is not likely to be prepared with contraception because, “If you come prepared, it
appears that you’re easy and available.”39

Among other reasons given by respondents, more than half attributed their

20

unprotected intercourse to the belief that there was no risk of pregnancy if they had
intercourse during a time of the month when they thought they were unlikely to conceive,
even though few were certain when their infertile time was.40 Difﬁculties in obtaining
contraception, lack of knowledge about available methods, the belief that young age and
infrequent sexual activity made pregnancy improbable and the desire to become pregnant
were also cited as reasons for contraceptive nonuse among adolescents. About one-quarter
of the teenagers surveyed admitted having a hedonistic objection to contraception, saying it
interfered with the pleasure, spontaneity or convenience of sex, and a few reported moral
or medical objections to contraception.41

In light of their ﬁndings, the authors concluded “that regular contraception is not easy
to establish when sex is episodic, as it tends to be among teenagers, and when the act of
planning in such matters is in conﬂict with the high valuation placed on spontaneity in
sexual encounters.”42

In 1981, Zelnik and Kantner again found a marked lack of regular contraceptive use
among sexually active teenagers, and again cited the low frequency and sporadic nature of
intercourse among never-married women as factors contributing to the high levels of
unprotected intercourse.43 Miller (1980) made a similar observation in his study of sexual
and contraceptive behavior of unmanied women aged seventeen to twenty-six. After ﬁrst

intercourse, Miller found that:

Frequently, their second intercourse was delayed weeks or months or took place with
an entirely different partner In most cases intercourse continued on a spo 'c
basis for the ﬁrst several months and years of these women’s sexual careers.

The study explained that the regularity of sex in a married relationship provides the
stable context needed for making decisions regarding regular contraceptive use,45 but that
the sexual patterns of young women make them poor candidates for currently available

contraceptive methods, especially medical methods, that “might not the most suitable for

21

young unmarried couples, unlike married couples for whom regular sex is a reasonable
assumption.”46

Choice of contraceptive methods by never married women aged eighteen to forty-four
were ranked by Bachrach (1982) (see Table 5) who found that never married women aged
ﬁfteen to nineteen relied very heavily on the pill (62 percent), less so on the condom (22
percent), and very little on other methods.

Table 5--Percentage distribution 01 never married contraceptive users aged 15-44 by
contraceptive method‘, 1982.

 

steril. pill IUD diaph. condom othert all methods
All women 5.0 53.2 5.5 13.5 11.7 11.1 100.0
1519 0.4 62.3 0.9 6.4 22.2 7.3 100.0
2024 3.3 56.1 4.9 13.3 3.3 13.0 100.0
25-44 10.9 41.1 10.3 19.7 6.2 11.3 100.0

 

“so:urce Christine A. Bachrach, “Contraceptive Practice Among American Women,1973-1982.'

W161 Nov/Dec 1984): 253
Iincludes foam, periodic abstinence, withdrawal, douche, suppositories and other methods.

Table 6—Percentage distribution or women aged 15-19 who ever used a contraceptive
method, by most recent method used, 1979 and 1976“

 

pill ' IUD diaph. condom roam douche withdraw rhythm total
1976 47.3 3.2 9 22.9 3.3 2.3 14.6 3.3 100.0
1979 40.6 2.0 3.5 23.3 3.9 2.1 13.3 5.3 100.0

 

source: M. Zelnik and J. M. Kantner, “Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use and Pregnancy

Among Metropolitan-area Teenagers: 1971-,“1979 W 12 (Sept/Oct,
1980): 230-237.

Among older contraceptive users (aged twenty-ﬁve to forty-four), 41 percent used the
pill, 20 percent relied on the diaphragm, 11 percent depended on sterilization, 10 percent on
the IUD and 6 percent on condoms.47 Earlier ﬁndings by Zelnik and Kantner (see Table

22

6) showed an increase in pill use among unmanied teenage women after 1979, with 47.8
percent of unmarried women aged ﬁfteen to nineteen in 1976, and 40.6 percent in 1979
reporting the pill as their most recently used method of contraception, followed by condom
and withdrawal.48

A decline in the condom’s popularity after the advent of the pill was noted by Scales
and Beckstein.49 The pill, they said, caused many to regard birth control as a “women’s
issue,” and the condom fell out of fashion. In 1987, however, Hayes described an
increased promotion of condom use by family planning providers and public health
ofﬁcials concerned about pregnancy prevention and the reproductive health of adolescents.
Hayes cited two factors that may have been especially relevant to the renewed interest in

condom use by teenagers:

(I) recognition that the vulnerable period between ﬁrst intercourse and ﬁrst use of
prescription contraception methods by adolescent girls is frequently as long as a year
and (2) concern about the spread of sexually transmitted disses?) especially genital
herpes and more recently the aquired immune deﬁciency virus.

Hayes said that, given the current contraceptive technology, the pill and the condom
are the most promising methods for adolescents, whose menstrual cycles may be irregular
and whose patterns of sexual activity may be sporadic, and that minor side effects from pill
use and condom failure rates are signiﬁcantly smaller risks than those associated with
unintended pregnancy and childbirth.

Hayes pointed out, however, that adolescents are frequently deterred from use of
both the pill and condom “by misunderstandings about their unintended consequences,
including exaggerations of the health risks and unpleasant side effects associated with the
pill and of the diminution of pleasure ﬁom condom use.”51

Emanuel
Birth rates among unmanied women aged ﬁfteen to thirty-four rose from 152.5 per

23

thousand births in 1971, to 234.9 per thousand births in 1989. Birth rates were
consistently highest among women aged eighteen to twenty-four years, with nearly 120
births per thousand in 1939.52 As was mentioned earlier, the rise in out-of-wedlock
pregnancies and inconsistent use of birth control among teenage women continues despite
teenage girls’ improved knowledge about contraceptives, adoption and abortion , and
availability of more sex education and birth control options than ever before.

Statistics from 1990 Showed that one out of ten girls aged ﬁfteen to nineteen become
pregnant every year, that ﬁve out of six of those pregnancies are unintended, and that about
40 percent of them end in abortion. Half of teenage mothers never complete high school.
Many of the dropouts end up on welfare. Girls who have babies at ﬁfteen or sixteen are
likely to have at least one other child before they are twenty. And given the stresses on
their families, many of these children are at risk of being abused or ending up in foster

care.53

5 II I . I 12'
STDs have turned sex into a medical mineﬁeld. As the ﬁrst cases of AIDS were

diagnosed in the early 1980s, the free-wheeling sex of the “swinging Seventies” gave way to

“safe sex” in the “age of AIDS.” Young womens’ sexual decisions have become less a matter

of morality, and more a matter of life and death.

The exact prevalence of STDs is difﬁcult to assess because many carriers have no

symptoms. However, it is estimated that each year 2.5 million teenagers are infected with an

STD. Furthermore, over the next several years, today’s teens will be entering the highest risk

group (ages twenty to twenty-nine) for all types of STDS, and the women in the age groups

targeted by the magazines in this study are also the highest risk groups for syphilis and

gonorrhea.54

In 1979, eleven “Objectives for the Nation” were established to address STDs. Of the

24

eleven objectives, ﬁve involved national priority areas: syphilis, gonorrhea, gonococcal pelvic
inﬂammatory disease, provider proﬁciency, and student awareness. When progress toward
these objectives was evaluated through 1988 by the Centers for Disease Control, two were
deemed “unlikely to be met,” one of which was the objective that, “By 1990, every junior and
senior high school student in the United States should be receiving accurate, timely education
about sexually transmitted diseases.” According to unpublished CDC data, only 77 percent of
teenagers surveyed in 1988 reported receiving STD education by age eighteen. In addition,
awareness by students of STD symptoms, signs and approaches to prevention was considered
“low.” The report also said in 1988 that a larger percentage of teenagers were initiating sexual
intercourse at younger ages than in 1982, despite the emergence o “a new sexually transmitted
agent, human immunodeﬁciency virus (HIV ),” which had become a major contributor to STDS
after the objectives were developed.55

The results of a 1989 National Adolescent Student Health Survey revealed that many
students were still unsure about how to avoid STDS, how to identify common signs of STDS,
and how and where to seek treatment for STDS. According to the survey’s ﬁndings, three out
of every ten students did not know that most people get STDS by having sex. Two out of three
students were not sure or believed that washing after sex is effective in avoiding STDS. More
than half of the students did not know that taking birth control pills is ineffective in avoiding
STDS, and one-quarter of them did not know that using condoms is effective in avoiding
STDS. One-third did not know that a sore on the sex organs is a common early sign of STD.
More than four out of ten students did not know that abnormal discharge from sex organs or
pain during urination are common early signs of STD or that it is harmful to wait to see if the
signs of STD go away on their own before seeking treatment. Approximately two-thirds of
teenagers did not know that it is harmful to take medicine only until the signs of an STD go
away. About three-fourths of the students were either unsure or mistakenly believed that the
Public Health Department must inform parents about STD in patients under age eighteen.

25

Nearly eight out of ten said they were either unsure or mistakenly believed that most clinics
must have parental permission to treat patients under eighteen for STDS, and 39 percent said
they would not know where to go for medical care if they thought they had an STD.56

In general, the survey found students were better informed about AIDS than other STDS,
which was attributed to the intensive informational campaigns at the national, state and local
levels to combat the spread of the disease, and to the current emphasis on AIDS education and
the corresponding lack of instruction about other STDS in many school districts. Despite the
heightened awareness about AIDS, however, students still did not seem to understand basic
concepts about communicable diseases, which apply to AIDS as well as other STDS. This
ﬁnal point was echoed in Ms. magazine in 1991: '

While public awareness of sexually transmitted disease (STD) has focused on the
human immunodeﬁciency virus (HIV) in recent years, many other STDS rage
virtually unnoticed. This attention has grave implications for women, who are
infected with STDS more readily than men, yet are harder to diagnose. STDS can lead
to a higher risk of cervical cancer, pelvic inﬂammatory disease (PID), infertility,
ectopic pregnancy, increased risk of infection with HIV, the infection of fetuses and
newbonrs, and fetal death.

The World Health Organization estimates that at least 250 million new STD cases

appear each year Safe-ssix education has not been effective enough or STDS would
not be spreading so fast.

MmandMagazines
In addition to research on adolescent sexual behavior, this study examined literature
on how young women use the information they ﬁnd in magazines, and how magazine
content has related to social trends. 7
A 1982 study by Frisco showed how portrayal of women’s roles in We
magazine reﬂected not only changes in 19705 fashion trends, but more signiﬁcant social
changes as well. The study relied on the theory that major fashion magazines played a

signiﬁcant part in the socialization of women to discover “acceptable” societal roles.

26

Through content analysis, Prisco found Mademoiselle magazine to be an accurate chronicle
of women and their society during the 1970s. By tracing the changing social role of
women in a popular magazine, Prisco observed that by openly discussing certain “drives,”
(i.e. ambitious, competitive, career-oriented goals), the magazines provided justiﬁcation for
certain behavior and thus “legitimated them for millions of women.”58

In an analysis of two other women’s magazines, WM and
Redneck, Geise found a marked increase in the number of articles related to sex and
morality between 1955 and 1976 . The belief that women were as interested and active in
sexual activities as men, and that unmanied couples had sexual relationships or lived
together, appeared in six items before 1967 and in thirty-one items in the next decade.
Small increases in support were found for the belief that premarital sex was acceptable and
that abortion was acceptable at least in certain instances.59

Another Student of women’s roles in relation to contemporary culture as found in
popular magazines is Newkirk, who examined the roles of women in the non-ﬁction
articles of 3.112119312159119, M5. and 39412991; between 1966 and 1974. Results of her study
showed that changes in the three magazines, though gradual, did in fact reﬂect women’s
changing roles in relation to changing social sentiment surrounding those roles.60

The ways in which women use information in magazines was studied by
Sonenschein and Ross, who examined the sexual information available in the content of
“romance” and “confession” magazines. While the content and audience demographics of
romance magazines undoubtedly differ from those of traditional women’s magazines, the
authors’ conclusion that “the analysis of these magazines can tell us a good deal concerning
our cultmal values about sex and gender roles” seems applicable to the more traditional
magazines as well.61 In the articles analyzed, the authors found a common theme that did
not emphasize the story itself so much as the idea that the story contained valuable

information to be conveyed to the reader.52 Through analysis of reader response columns,

27

the authors found the magazines played a distinct role as a some of information and advice
for women readers and concluded that:

The mass media serve a large number of people in this fashion, a kind of “lay referral
system” that offers the authority of the lanted word through the medium of an artifact
that speaks the language of the readers. .

From their study, Sonenschein et al. showed how magazines could play a signiﬁcant
role in some womens’ psychosexual development and socialimtion, and could conceivably
be relied upon as sources of information on sexual topics.

Eskridge found “romantic/sexual interests” were the second most frequent subtopic of
content, accounting for 29.6 percent of the total articles in her study of women’s
magazines. Each magazine studied contained at least one article with a romantic/sexual
primary theme, and Cosmopolitan and SW contained the majority of such articles,
with 43.1 and 29.6 percent of total content respectively.64

Him

An historical look at the content of women’s magazines is necessary to effectively
analyze the content of contemporary magazines. Niether the time nor space constraints of
this study will allow a complete historical portrait of women’s magazines, but it will allow
a brief Sketch with special attention to the historical role of women’s magazines as
purveyors of sexual information. A glance back at the “pioneers” of women’s periodicals,
their goals, achievements and legacy will provide the background and perspective
necessary for understanding the contemporary periodicals in this study.

In discussion of early women’s magazines, three names come up noticeably more
often than any others: Louis A. Godey, Edward W. Bok, and Helen Gurley Brown. Louis
Godey was publisher of mm, which had appeared in 1828 under the title,
Magazine and set the Stage for many of today’s women’s periodicals including

28

MM which appeared in 1883. Shortly after Ms ceased publication
in 1898, Edward W. Bok assumed editorship of the Lorna], and by 1903 the magazine
became the ﬁrst women’s magazine to reach a million in circulation following Bok’s simple
formula: men belonged in the business world, and women in the home.65 Bok’s
philosophy would certainly be considered outdated and unpopular by today’s Standards,
but in early 1900 it “probably expressed the opinions held by many, especially those
reading the nation’s magazines.”66
In the January 1889 issue of the Journal, Bok published his ﬁrst “Side Talk to Girls”
advice column, which he wrote under the pseudonym “Ruth Ashmore.” Bok began the
column after he had “divined the fact that in thousands of cases the American Mother was
not the conﬁdante of her daughter, and reasoned if any inviting human personality could be
created on the printed page that would supply this lamentable lack of family life, girls
would ﬂock to such a ﬁgure.”67 Implementing this belief, Bok, writing as Ruth Ashmore,
advised girls to:
“Learn to say no. There is in that little word much that will protect you from evil
tongues.” He circumspectly warned his young readers not to give their photographs
to every Tom, Dick and Harry. In February, “Ruth Ashmore” wrote about “The Girl
Who Hints,” the wearing of jewelry, neamess in dress, and when dancing is wrong.
“It’s all very well to say that there is no harm in dancing. There isn’t. But there is
harm in having about you, a sweet, pure girl, kept as much as possible from the

wickedness of the world, the armégf a man who may be a proﬂigate, and not possess
the ﬁrst instinct of a gentleman.’

In 1906, Bok went beyond jewelry, dancing and saying “no,” and published an
editorial on venereal disease. Despite protests from readers, cancelled subscriptions and
threats from offended advertisers, Bok persisted and eventually gained support for his ﬁght
against VD. Despite opinions to the contrary, Bok insisted “that the time had come when
women should leanl the truth, and that, so far as it lay in his power, he intended to see that
they did know,”69 and “the 10mm; published article after article” at a time when such

subjects were not openly discussed, especially among women:70 As one historian

29

observed:

Though completely open discussion of venereal disease did not became common for
perhaps another 25 years, the W31 made the facts known, made a
forbidden topic a possible subject of open and sensible discussion in the press, in
schools 3171? colleges. A woman’s magazine was the ﬁrst periodical to discuss sex
frankly.’

Frank discussion of sex was alive and well in 1962 when Helen Gurley Brown
published Wig, a non-scientiﬁc celebration of being single, female, and
sexual. The book introduced millions of women to a “new morality” where sex was “more
than the act of coitus,” and was completely in the woman’s control to do with as she

wished. According to Brown, sex was natural, and not sleeping with the man one might

eventually marry was “complete lunacyz”

Perhaps you will reconsider the idea that sex without marriage is dirty. This rs not a
plea to get you into bed—your moral code 1s your business—but if you are already
involved, you might remember that sex was here a long time before maniage. You
inherited your proclivity for rt. It rsn ’1750 me random piece of mischief you dreamed
up because you’re a bad, wicked girl.

Brown addressed her book to any young women who “may not marry, but who are
not necessarily planning to join a nunnery,”73 and helped to break a barrier that permitted
many other sex-oriented books to follow.74

In 1965, three years after the publication of her book, Brown assumed editorship of
W- The magazine’s circulation was dismal at the time, less than 800 thousand,
and W faced failure. But Brown had a new editorial formula in mind, and
within a few years had revived W by simply recognizing the needs of young
women, married and single, and directing the magazine to them."5 Said one observer:

Obviously, Brown has carved out the “Cosmo Girl” into a devoted client group for
her messages, recommendations, and suggestions concerning daily living. And with
a circulation approaching7glree million, death rs no longer a threat around 99m:
New York headquarters.

While womens’ “daily living” was once conﬁned to the home, the kitchen and the

30

children, over time it expanded to include careers, politics and social issues, and sexuality.
In 1970, Iadiciﬂemalemal editor John Mack Carter’s office was invaded by more than
one hundred women’s liberation advocates, demanding his resignation and calling for
magazine space to convey their views to the public. They demanded “an immediate stop to
the publication of articles that are irrelevent, unstimulating and demeaning to the women of
America.”77 As a result of the confrontation Carter granted permission for the women to
use eight pages in the following August edition of the magazine to express the views of the
feminist movement. Three years later Lenore Hershey was editor of the Loam, and
promised to “amplify, enlarge and illuminate” the lives of readers, and to provide guidance
and help in all aspects of life, “from the world of the home to the world of business to the
wider world of ideas and values.”78

In 1972, the ﬁrst nationwide edition of Mg, magazine appeared and the two-month
supply of magazines (300 thousand copies) sold out in eight days.79 Publisher Pat
Carbine’s goal was “to make Ms, a necessity for readers rather than a luxury.” Even
Ms magazine, in early 1971, departed ﬁom its traditional food, cooking, fashion and
beauty topics and featured articles on “Your Legal Rights as a Woman,” and “Sexual
Problems of Single Women.”80

In May 1973, a magazine for teenage women titled W; was published by
Twenty First Century Communications to replace mgr-gum, which had been previously
published by the Dell Publishing Corporation. The purpose of the revamped magazine was
to “present new trends in young women’s reading material, to Stimulate their thinking and
give them a magazine that is relevant to their changing needs.”81 Whereas 111mg; had
sought “general topical articles treated with an analytical approach,” N w was
more avant-garde, soliciting articles about “current uends in activities, attitudes, interests
and achievements of teenagers, their lifestyles and relationships. Topics included problems

and solutions dealing with personal identity, health, drugs, and scrt.82

31

Ironically, it was a particularly frank article on teenage sex published under the old
editorship in one of the ﬁnal issues of 1029.011: that caused a storm of protest and angry
parental letters that killed W. Despite it’s ambitious goals, Mugging issued
its last monthly copy in April, 1975, less than two years after the magazine began.83 A
form letter printed in the ﬁnal issue informed subscribers about the unfavorably received
sex article published under the previous management that had caused to the magazine’s
demise.“

Ironically, while parents protested sexual content in Mugs-hug, readers of
W clamored for more. In its July, 1970 issue, Smum published results from a
“Special Sex Education Survey” that told readers “Here’s how you currently learn about
sex and how you’d like to learn about it.” The survey was based on ﬁfteen hundred
questionnaires completed by thirteen to nineteen-year—old readers of 5mm and
assessed readers’ attitudes about sex and sex education.

The editors of Scum seemed surprised at the responses elicited by their survey.
“Nearly all of you now see sex as a decent, healthy activity and sexual pleasure as normal
and good, and feel that the subject can be taught frankly and freely in the classroom,” the
article said. Teens’ responses showed they were even willing to discuss such nefarious
subjects as masturbation or sexual perversions, “astonishing as it may seem to adults.”85

The editors of the magazine vowed to take their readers’ interests to heart, and
promised “Since so many readers have expressed a strong interest in such subjects as
premarital ethics and birth conuol, future issues of W will cover these themes in
greater dctail.”36

Whether there was an actual change in sexual content would require a content analysis
of m in years prior to 1970. But regardless of whether the magazine expanded its
coverage of sexual topics, the potential consequences of doing so were tempered by

something 553331331; had that W did not: a strong reputation to fall back on.

32

Since it was ﬁrst published in 1944, the magazine has been a perennial favorite among
young women who generally begin reading it at age thirteen, and continue reading it well
into their college years.87 Its appeal to generation after generation is a testimony to the
W’s ability to adapt to the changing needs of its readers. In 1971, the magazine
was subtitled “young America’s favorite magazine,” and as such, according to one of the
magazine’s editorial assistants, Semrjm could “afford an occasional controversial article
now and then, whether on sex, drugs, politics or even lesbianism.”88

Mademstelle magazine is aimed at college-educated, unmanied working women
aged eighteen to thirty-four, and is positioned roughly between Seventeen and
W in age-appeal. According to the magazine’s editors, the nonﬁction selections
in Mademejeeue are “of interest to the intelligent young woman, including personal
relationships, health, careers, trends, and current social problems.”89 As Taft observed,
since its founding in 1935, Mademoiselle has been “ahead of the times” in some areas,
“such as a series on the ‘new morality’ in the 19605 when such topics were not too
generally discussed in the open.”90

Prisco’s analysis of MW looked at “women’s issues” and “current
issues/personalities” which tied for ﬁfth place in coverage behind fashion, personal
improvement, education, and poetry/ﬁction/photography categories. Combined, the two
“issues” categories covered a range of topics that included controversial sexual t0pics and
contraception. Mademiseﬂe’s coverage of such issues, Prisco concluded, was an

indication that the magazine was “in touch with the contemporary woman.”91

82W
With the foregoing ﬁndings and ideas in mind, the following research questions were

developed to determine the extent to which selected women’s magazines, from 1971 to

33

1991, had published information which female readers could have used to make informed
decisions about their sexual behavior (assessing if and how they used the information,
however, would require another study beyond the scope of this one):

1) Between 1971 and 1991, did the extent of coverage about sexual relationships and
sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy and STDs in the three magazines increase,
decrease or remain the same?

2) Which speciﬁc topic area, sexual relationships/sexuality in general, contraception,
pregnancy or STDS, received the most attention from the magazines between 1971 and
1991 ?

3) Between 1971 and 1991, did items concerning sexual topics more often discuss
the emotional and responsibility aspects of sex, or were they more likely to include
physiological/factual information about sexual relationships and sexuality in general,
contraception, pregnancy and STDS?

4) How does coverage of sexual topics in the three magazines compare with young
womens’ sexual behavior, contraceptive practices, pregnancy rates and prevalence of STDS
as presented in statistical and survey data from 1971 to 1991?

5) What, if any, effort did the magazines make to dispel myths and incorrect sexual
information perpetuated by other media and by the peer groups of young women?

Throughout the analysis, comparisons will also be drawn between the individual

magazines’ relation to these ﬁve research questions.

NOTES: CHAPTER THREE

1Hadley Cantril, “Sex Without Love,” W. 10 October 1953, 296-297.

2Ruth A. Hudson, “Sexual Knowledge, Attitudes and Sources of Information
Among Adolescents,” (M.A. thesis, Texas Women’s University, 1985), 197.

3Cathen’nc S. Chilman. MW
(Bathesda, Maryland: U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1978), 17.

4Hudson, 79.
5Chilman, 103.

6Sandra L. Hanson, David E. Myers, and Alan L. Ginsberg, “The Role of
Responsibility and Knowledge in Reducing Teenage Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing,”
WW1!” (May 1987): 250

7Robert Blum and Michael Resnick quoted in “Teenage Girls’ Sexual
Decision-Making,” W, 1 December 1984, 3.

8“Teenage Girls’ Sexual Decision-Making,” 3.

9Hanson, et al., 242.

10Morton Hunt, “Special Sex Education Survey,” Seyemeen, July, 1970, 133.
“mm, 95.

12Anthony S. Onyehalu, “Inadequacy of Sex Knowledge of Adolescents:
Implications for Counselling and Sex Education,” Adeleseenee, 18(Fall, 1983): 627-628.

13Hanson et al., 242.

14Onyehalu, 628.

15E. Keyes, “If Education Upon Sexual Matters is to be Offered to Youth, What
Should be its Name and Scope, and at What Age Should it Commence?” mm
mm. 33 (1906) 274-275

16A1ben Ellis, W (New York: Grove City Press, 1960), 60.

17Hudson, 43

18Robert R. Ben. WW (Englewood Cliffs. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1966), 51.

34

35

19Ibid, 166.

20Keyes, 277.

21American School Health Association, Association for the Advancement of Health
Education, and Society for Public Health Education, Inc., “The National Adolescent
Student Health Survey: A Report on the Health of America’s Youth,” (Oakland, California:
First Impression, 1989): 125.

220nychalu, 627.

23Elaine Eliason Kisker, “Teenagers Talk About Sex, Pregnancy and
Contraception ” We 17 (March/April 1985): 85

24Ibid, 86.

250nyehalu, 628-629.

26lbid, 629.

27Hudson, 16.

23Ibid.

29Hunt, 97.

300nyehalu, 629.

31Sally Davis and Mary B. Harris, “Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Interests, and
Sources of Sexual Information of Rural and Urban Adolescents From Three Cultures,”
Adeleseenee, 66 (Summer 1982): 478.

32Hayes, 91.

33Ibid.

341nm, 276.

351nm, 166.

36Chilman, 82.

37 David Gelman, Diane Weathers, Lisa Whitman, Pamela Abramson, Terrence
Ill/$23613? and Jeff B. Copeland, “The Games Teenagers Play,” W1 September

38Fanlda Shah, Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, “Unprotected Intercourse
Among Unwed Teenagers,” Emlxﬂanmngﬂempeenxes 7(January/February 1975): 39.

39Me1vin Zelnik, John F. Kantner and Kathleen Ford, MW
Adeleseenee (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1981), 126.

36
Gelman, et a1. 48.
408hah, et al., 39.
4libid.
421bid, 44.
432elnilt, Kantner, Ford, 87.

44Warren B. Miller, “Sexual and Contraceptive Behavior in Young Unmarried
Women ” BMW (1980): 215

452e1nilt, Kantner, Ford, 18.
46 Ibid, 87.

47Christine A. Bachrach, “Contraceptive Practice Among American Women’ ’Eamily
Wm. 16 (Nov lDec.,1984) 258

43Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, “Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use and
Pregnancy Among Metropolitan- -Area Teenagers: 1971-1979,” Eamlbdzmming
W12(September/October 1980): 237.

49Hayes, 166.

5Grind.

511bid, 272.

52National Center for Health Statistics, Supplement to Memmy gm] 51mm“ BM
35 (14) July. 1986: Table 19.

Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics, Supplement to Memmy Mite] Stan‘sﬁgs
Rem 4O (8) December, 1984 Table 17.

53Barbara Kantrowitz, “High School Homeroom,” W (Special Edition: The
New Teens), Summer/Fall, 1990, 50.

5"'“The National Adolescent Student Health Survey,” 50.
55‘ “Progress Toward Achieving the 1990 Objectives for the Nation for Sexually

Transmitted Diseases,” WWW 263(23 February
1990): 1057.

5W. 5951.

57The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, “STDS on the Rise,” M5,,
(March/April, 1991); 76.

58Dorothy D. Prisco, “Women and Social Change as Reﬂected in a Major Fashion

37

Magazine.” WW. 59(Spring. 1982): 134.

59L. Ann Geise, “The Female Role in Middle Class Women’s Magazines from 1955
to 1976: A Content Analysis of Nonﬁction Selections,” W. S (1979): 59.

6oCarole Ruth Newkirk, “Female Roles in Non-Fiction of Three Women’s
Magazines,’ W 54 (Winter, 1977): 781.

61David Sonenschien and Mark J .M. Ross, “Sex Information in the ‘Romance’ and
‘Confession’ Magazines,”MedjeaLAsmets_ef_Hnman_Sexualiu (August, 1971): 136.

621bid, 140.
63Ibid, 149.

64Melissa J. Eskridge, “How the Psychology of Women 15 Presented 1n Women’s
Magazines: An Examination of Selected Articles from Ms. ., Wm, Seyenm,

,and W” (M. A. thesis, University of Tennessee,
1986),40

65wmiam H. Taft. AmericanMasazinesiouheJm (New York: Hastings Press
Publishers: 1982): 102.

661bid.

67James Playstead Wood,
Emnemielnﬂnenee (New York. The Ronald Press Co., 1979), 109.

681bid.
691bid.
7OIbid, 119.
7llbid.

72Helen Gurley Brown, Semdjheﬁingleﬁjﬂ (New York: Random House, 1962),
257.

73lbid, 28.
74Taft, 106.
75Ibid, 58.
761bid, 107.
77Ibid, 103.
78mm.
79Ibid, 1 11.

38

801bid, 104.
311bid, 22.
82Lynne Ellinwood and Jo Anne Mosher, eds., W (Cincinnati:

Writer’s Digest, 1971), .

83M. George Haddad, “A Study of Three Teenage Magazines,” (M.S. thesis, San
Jose State University, 1976), 1.

84Ibid, quote from We editor Joanne Brown.
85Hunt, 95.

86lbid, 133.

87Taft,134.

88Haddad, 63.

89Glenda Tennant Neff, ed., 1221mm (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest
Books, 1990), 596 .

90raft, 117.
91Prisco, 132.

CHAPTER FOUR
RESEARCH METHOD

After formulating the foregoing research questions, a coding instrument including
twenty variables and accompanying operational deﬁnitions was developed with which to
code each individual item for its treatment four sexual topics. The coding instrument is in
Appendix A.

The ﬁrst research question includes four speciﬁc sexual topics which were derived
from areas frequently studied by researchers of adolescent sexual behavior.

To answer the question, “Between 1971 and 1991, did the extent of coverage about
sexual relationships, contraception, pregnancy and STDs in the three magazines increase,
decrease or remain the same?” items were coded based on the following: (1) main topic,
which had to be one of the four predetermined sexual topics; (2) the length of each item;
(3) the type of item; and (4) the total number of items, sexual or otherwise, in each selected
issue of the magazines. The following coding questions helped determine the magazines’

extent of coverage about sexual topics:

~This item is primarily, but not necessarily exclusively about:
0= a sexual relationship, the physiology of sex or sexuality in
general
l= contraception
2: a sexually transmitted disease
3= pregnancy

OWhat is the total number of individual items listed in the magazine’s table of
contents?

aHow long is the item?
0: very short (less than one half of one page)
1= short (one half to one full page)
2: medium (between one and two full pages)
3: long (longer than two full pages)

39

oWhich of the following best describes this type of item?
0= a regular column
l= a non-ﬁction, feattn'e article
2: and advice column where readers’ speciﬁc questions are
answered
3: a news item about a recent development or event
h a survey, quiz or poll, or a report of results from a survey, quiz
or poll conducted by the magazine or other source
5= other

The second research question asked which speciﬁc topic area, sexual relationships
and sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDS received the most attention
from the magazines between 1971 and 1991. The question was asked to determine the
balance struck by the magazines in their coverage of sexual topics. The ﬁrst coding
question listed above, regarding item main topic, was used to answer this research
question.

Research question three was asked in response to researchers’ cries for more balance
between the factual, informational aspects of sexuality and those aspeCts related to
responsibility, emotions and values. Three coding questions were designed to answer this

question, and asked:

Does this item address any emotional or psychological aspects of sex, pregnancy,
contraception or STDS? Yes or no?

oDoes this item address any responsibility aspects of sex, pregnancy or STDS? Yes
or no?

0Does this item address any physiological or factual aspects of sex, pregnancy,
contraception or STDS? Yes or no?

Emotional and psychological aspects of sex were considered present if an item
discussed the non-physical feelings related to sex, feelings such as joy, sadness,
emptiness, fulﬁllment, accomplishment, confusion, self doubt, loneliness, relief, fear,
ecstasy, nervousness, passion or love.

Responsibility aspects of sex were considered present in the magazines’ content if an

41

item addressed young womens’ (or mens’) acceptance or denial of accountability for their
own sexual activity and the potential consequences it could have on themselves or others,
such as their partner(s), children, family members or friends.

The physiological and factual aspects of sex were considered present if an item
included information about the physical, biological, medical, health or technical aspects of
sex, pregnancy, contraception or STDs.

The fourth research question compared aspects in coverage of sexual topics in the
magazines with the actual sexual behavior of unmarried young women in the United States
population. To help answer the question in relation to womens’ contraceptive practices,
items were analysed for mention of contraception. If mentioned, then identiﬁcation of any
speciﬁc contraceptive methods was recorded. The ages of particular women involved in
sexual acts or decision, when explicitly mentioned, were divideded into the following
categories: sixteen and under, seventeen to twenty-two, twenty-three to thirty, over thirty,
and variations of “teenage.” Marital status and womens’ relationships to sexual partners
were recorded when mentioned, whether couples were lovers, friends, engaged, married,
or casual acquaintances.

Whenever possible dming the time frame studied, United States Census data and
Statistical Abstracts were used to determine conception and birth rates among unmarried
women. Marital status of women, the ages at which they marry, and statistics on
prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases were also derived from census data.

The ﬁnal research question asked what, if any, effort was made by the magazines to
dispel myths and misconceptions perpetuated by peers or media. As was discussed in the
literature review, peers are a popular, and often unreliable source of sexual information for
young women. In addition, media, especially television and movies, are often criticized for
their negative and unrealistic portrayals of sexual relationships. To evaluate the three

magazines’ efforts to combat the misinformation perpetuated by these sources, the

42

following coding questions were asked: -

oDoes the item make an effort to dispel any popular myths or misconceptions about
sexual relationships or sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDS?

Does the item point to media such as television, movies, novels, books, newspaper,
music or magazines as sources of information or pressure regarding sexual
relationships or sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDS?

oDoes the item state anywhere that “real ' e” sexual relationships or sexuality in
general, contraception, pregnancy or S'IDs might be different from these things as
depicted by media?

Does the item point to peers as sources of information or pressure regarding sexual
relationships or sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDS?

Does the item state anywhere that “real life” sexual relationships or sexuality in

general, contraception, pregnancy or STDs might be different from how peers said
they would be?

Women’s magazines comprising the sample group for this study included m,
Mademeiselle and mammalian. The magazines in this sample have reached millions of
American women aged thirteen to thirty-ﬁve monthly for decades and are circulation leaders
among their target audiences; These particular magazines were selected for this study
precisely because of their high circulation rates (circulation ﬁgmes from 1971 to 1991 are
listed in Appendix B), their longevity, and because they span the critical age period during
which young women make many important choices about their sexual lives. Fashion
magazines such as Xegne and Elmer, and women’s service magazines such as
We, M12991; and LadiesLHemeLQuLnal were not included as potential sources of
sexual information because of their heavy focus on fashion and advertising (the fashion
magazines), and their target audience of older, married readers (the “ladies” magazines).

The representative sample was drawn from three randomly selected months of nine
selected years between 1971 and 1991, for a total of eighty-one magazines. Months were
drawn blind separately for each of the three magazines using slips of paper marked with

each of the twelve months:

Items from mammalian were selected from the following issues:

1972: January, February, December1
1973: July, August, November
1976: April, August, November
1979: January, August, September
1981: January, March, April

1985: February, July, December
1987: January, February, October
1988: March, April, May

1991: April, July, August

Items from mm were selected from the following issues:

1971: January, March, June

1973: February, March, December
1976: May, September, December
1979: August, October, December

1985: June, August, September
1987: February, April, September
1988: January, June, July

1991: January, April, August

1981: January, March, August
Items from Mademelselle were selected from the following issues:

1971: February, April, May

1973: January, February, July
1976: August, September, October
1979: May, July, September

1981: February, April, June

1985: March, June, August
1987: May, August, December
1988: February, May, November
1991: February, April, June

The years of study were chosen for the following reasons:

1971: the point at which much of Zelnik’s survey data was collected, and the starting
point of this content analysis.

1973: Supreme Court decision made abortions legally possible in all States, and
allowed Federal funds to help defray the costs.

1976, 1979: both years in which Zelnik et a1. collected abundant data concerning the
sexual activity and contraceptive habits of unmarried women.

1981: AIDS was ﬁrst recognized as a disease by the Center for Disease Control.

1985: All three major networks refuse to place public service announcements on
teenage pregnancy (although they do subsequently with no negative public response).2

1987: All three networks reject a public education message about oral contraceptive
use as too controversial.3

1988: Public health service messages on condom use to prevent AIDS were aired on

network television.4

44

1991: The most current possible full year available for study, and a year in which
media coverage of teenage sexual activity burgeoned, perhaps due to the rapid spread of
AIDS.

The content analysis followed a two-step process. First, the magazines were
screened for appropriate non-ﬁction “items” (articles, columns, stories or departments)
with any of the four predetemrined categories (sexual relationships and sexuality in general,
contraception, pregnancy, and STDs) as a their focus. The appropriate items were then
analyzed according to twenty content categories. Content categories were applied
consistently to the text. The content analysis protocol, coding instrument, response form
and deﬁnitions are included, in their entirety, in Appendix A. The unit of analysis was the

entire magazine, and the recording unit was each item about a sexual topic.

21:61:51

A pretest of the coding categories was conducted to test the reliability of the coding
instrument and operational deﬁnitions. The pretest involved the coding of ﬁfteen items of
varying length. Five items were selected from each of three the magazine, from issues not
included in the study sample. Items were coded by the author and one other independent
coder according to nineteen variables (the question asking the date of each magazine was
not relevant to the pretest, so it was omitted). A goal of 85 percent agreement was set forth
in the proposal.

Percent agreement was derived using a simple formula where the number of times the
two coders agreed on each variable was divided by the total number of items (n=15), and
then multiplied by one hundred. As Table 7 shows, 100 percent agreement was achieved
on two variables, coders agreed 93.3 percent of the time on nine variables, and 86.6

percent of the time on seven variables.

45

Table 7--Data from pretest

 

 

Variable % agreement Variable °/oagreement
v1 93.3 v1 1 ‘ 80.0
V). 86.6 v12 86.6
vs 93.3 v13 93.3
v4 93.3 v14 93.3
v5 93.3 v15 86.6
v6 86.6 v16 86.6
V? 100.0 v17 100.0
v8 93.3 v18 93.3
v9 86.6 v19 93.3

v1 0 93.3

n - 15 items

 

The two coders failed to reach 85 percent agreement on only one question in the
pretest, achieving 80 percent agreement on the question which sought to identify the
relationship between the sexual participants. The speciﬁcity and directness of the question
should have lent itself to the same high percentage of agreement as the other variables since
it asked coders to identify information that had to be implicit in the content in order to be
counted. After reconsideration of the question, the operational deﬁnition explaining it, and
a look back at the content, it was decided that disagreement was due to in part to coder
carelesness, and in part to an unclearly phrased question. As a result, variable 11 was
modiﬁed in an attempt to clear up any confusion in the wording of the question or its
interpretation.

During the pretest, questions and deﬁnitions were reﬁned slightly and minor

inconsistencies were remedied.

NOTES: CHAPTER FOUR

1Throughout the study, issues of W from 1972 are included in place of
1971 issues, due to the absence of the 1971 volume from the Michigan State University
magazine collection.

2Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Frank F. Furstenburg Jr., “Adolescent Sexual Behavior,”

Ameﬁeanﬁmhnlogist 44 (February 1989) 255
3Ibid.
4Ibid.

46

CHAPTER FIVE
RESULTS

In response to the ﬁrst research question, which sought to evaluate the extent of
coverage of sexual relationships and sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy and
STDs in magazine items between 1971 and 1991, data showed that the percentage of total
non-ﬁction, non-advertising magazine items in four selected sexual topic areas in the
combined content of Suemeen, Mademeiselle and Qesmemljlan followed a general
increase, as can be seen in the “all magazines” line in Figure 1. In 1971, items about
sexual relationships/sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy and STDS accounted for
just 3.81 percent of total number of items in the three women’s magazines combined. But
a gradual increase over the next nineteen years, with only slight dips in 1976 and 1988,
brought the ﬁgure up to a more substantial 12.7 percent by 1991.

Of the three magazines, 99mm consistently included the highest percentage of
non-advertising, non-ﬁction items devoted to sexual t0pics, surpassed only by
Mademejselk in 1981 when 10.41 percent of the total items for the year focused on sexual
topics, compared to W’s 9.42 percent. The low and high percentages for
W came in 1976, when 6.45 percent of the total items addressed sexual topics,
and 1991, when 18.31 percent of the total items addressed sexual topics. 1

Like W: Mademeiselle reached its peak in 1991 with 14.62 percent of its
items being non-ﬁction, non-advertising items about sexual relationships and sexuality in
general, contraception, pregnancy or STDs. The lowest percentage of sexual items for
Mademiselle was .67 percent in 1971 when a lone item in the April issue addressed “the

nature of female sexuality.”

47

48

Figure 1: Percent of non-liction/non-advertising sexual content, 1971-1991

 

 

20
18
16
.. 14
C
‘3 12 Seventeen
8 Mademoiselle
To 10 Cosmopolitan
5 .
.3: All magazmes
‘E
8
8

 

 

V“? M

1971
1973
1976
1979
1981- -
1985
1987-
19884
1991_

The sample group of magazines drawn from Seyenteen produced the lowest overall
percentage of sexual items, with no coverage of sexual topics in 1973, and less than one
percent in four other years, including 1976, 1979, 1981 and 1988. The highest percentage
of sexual items for a single year in Seaman was 4.07 percent in 1987.

For all of the years and all the magazines combined, 6.5 percent of the total items
were non-ﬁction, non-advertising items about sexual relationships and sexuality in general,
pregnancy, contraception or STDs. Individually, Qeememljm focused on sexual topics
in 11.12 percent of its items, Mademeiselle in 6.02 percent, and Seyemeen in 1.94 percent
of its items between 1971 and 1991.

The increase in sexual items between 1971 and 1991 for all magazines combined was
8.89 percentage points. Mademeieelle showed the greatest increase in sexual items over
the twenty year period, rising 13.95 percentage points between 1971 and 1991. Seeeateen
showed the smallest increase, only 1.5 percentage points, and W’s coverage of
sexual topics increased by 9.58 percentage points during the twenty year period. Changes
in percentage points from year to year are included in Table 19, Appendix C).

49

While an identical number of issues from each of the three magazines was selected
for analysis (three issues of each magazine from nine selected years, for a total of
twenty-seven issues of Seyeateeg, Mademiselle and WEE) the content of the
magazine’s yielded three very different total numbers of sexual items. In W,
133 items focused on at least one of the four selected sexual topics between 1971 and
1991. Mademeiselle included seventy-eight such items, and Semen-en produced only
twenty items about sexual relationships and sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy
or STDS. Per issue, Coememh’tan averaged 4.93 sexual items, Mademeiselle averaged
2.89 items, and 89191319911 averaged less than one item (.74) per issue between 1971 and
1991. For a complete table of item topics for each magazine and each year, see Table 20 in
Appendix C.

Statistical analysis of the number of sexual items in the fun categories in all three
magazines resulted in a chi square just short of that required for statistical signiﬁcance at the
.05 level of probability. Another chi square comparison of the magazines in pairs revealed
that W magazine was signiﬁcantly different from the other two magazines in
number of sexual items from 1971 to 1991.

Based on percentage and number of items alone, Seyemeen would appear to be the
least adequate of the three magazines in its coverage of sexual topics. But the length of
items was also considered in this analysis, and in terms of item length Ween emerges
as the magazine that devoted more editorial space to each individual non-ﬁction item it
included with a sexual topic.

As Table 8 shows, the highest percentage of Seyenma’s sexual items (33.33
percent) were in the “long” category, meaning they covered more than two full pages.
Sexemeen also included a higher percentage of “medium” length items (items between one
and two full pages in length) than did the other two magazines. Medium length items
accounted for 23.81 percent of Seyenm’s sexual content, 15.04 percent of

50
Commuters and 14-1 peteent of Mademoiselle’s.

Table 8--Length of items

 

magazine very short short medium long
Seventeen 14.28% 28.57% 23.81% 33.33%
Mademoiselle 44.87 20.51 14.10 20.51
Cosmopolitan 49.62 3.01 15.04 32.33
all magazines 44.83 1 1.21 15.52 28.45

 

n-231 items (20 in Seventeen; 78 in Mademoiselle; 133 in Cosmopolitan)
x284.88, p<.10, d.t.=2

The smallest percentage of Sea/emeea’s sexual items fell into the “very short”
category, which contained items less than one half of one page in length. In contrast, both
Ceememljgan and Mademiselle produced more “very short” items than it did items of any
other length. Of all W’s non-ﬁction, non-advertising sexual content, nearly
half (49.62 percent) was concentrated in items less than one half of one page in length, and
44.87 percent of Mademeiselle’s sexual content was concentrated in the “very short”
category. Chi square analysis shows that this relationship is signiﬁcant at the 10 percent
probability level, but falls short of the 5 percent level. This may be due to the difference
found between Seam and the other magazines as was discussed earlier.

The type of individual items was also considered in assessing the extent of coverage
of sexual topics. The ﬁve item types included regular columns, non-ﬁction feature articles,
advice columns, news items and surveys or quizzes.

Between 1971 and 1991, six of Emma’s sexual items appeared as regular
columns, four as non-ﬁction feature articles, six as advice columns, one news item and
two reader surveys or quizzes. None of W’s sexual items appeared as regular
columns, but ﬁfty-nine were non-fiction feature articles and ﬁfty-six were advice columns
where specific questions were answered. Cesmemljm included eleven news items and
three surveys or quizzes. Like Wm, the majority of Mademejeelle’s sexual items

51
appeared as non-ﬁction feature articles, of which there were twenty-ﬁve. The magazine

included seventeen regular column, eighteen advice columns, ﬁfteen news items, and one
survey or quiz. Overall, 23 in regular columns, 88 non-ﬁction feature articles, 80 advice

columns, 27 news items and 6 surveys or quizzes.

Table 9--Types of items

regular advice feature news survey!
magazine column column article item quiz other

 

Seven. 30.00% (6)‘ 30.00% (6) 20.00% (4) 5.00% (1) 10.00% (2) 5.00% (1)
Mmlle. 79.00 (21) 23.07 (18) 32.05 (25) 19.23 (15) 1.28 (1) 2.56 (2)
Cosmo. 0.00 (0) 42.11 (56) 44.36 (59) 8.27 (11) 226 (3) 3.01 (4)
alrnags. 996 (23) 34.63 (80) 38.10 (88) 11.69 (27) 4.51 (6) 3.03 (7)

 

“actual number or items in parentheses

Although not included as a qustion on the coding instrument, it may be worth noting
that only W and Mademeiglle included regular columns reserved for sexual topics.
While the columns generally addressed speciﬁcally sexual topics, other subjects were
occasionally addressed. W’s “Sex and Your Body” column ﬁrst appeared in the
sample group in the June, 1985 issues with an article titled “Is There Really a New
Chastity?” MademgLiselle’s “An Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex” appeared earlier in the
sample group, in the January 1973 issue, and discussed the validity of information found
in “sex books.” particularly W. W. and 191111.205!
mm. Unlike the magazines for younger audiences, Cememlitan did not include a
regular column or department for sexual topics. These columns were usually written by
the same writer month after month.

The second research question in this study asked: which speciﬁc topic area, sexual
relationships and sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDs received the most

attention from the magazines between 1971 and 1991?

52

Figure 2: Frequency 01 occurrence 01 four item topics, 1971-1991

 

Relationships
Contraception

BID-
3

PW

 

 

 

percent of content

Far and away, the bulk of each magazine’s non-advertising, non-ﬁction sexual items
was in the category of sexual relationships and sexuality in general , as is shown in Figure
2 . For all years and all magazines combined, 66.52 percent of the sexual items between
1971 and 1991 were in this category. Individually, 57.14 percent of sexual items in
Sexermen were about sexual relationships and sexuality in general, along with 58.97
percent of sexual items in Mademejselle, and 72.39 percent of sexual items in
metropolitan.

For all magazines combined, STDs were the second most featured sexual topic,
accounting for 12.88 percent of the sexual content overall. Mademelsﬂle gave the most
attention of the three magazines to the topic of SIDS, with 20.51 percent of its items in this
category, compared with QQsmepeliran’s 8.96 percent and Sexemeen’s 9.52 percent.

Among individual magazines, Sexemm included the highest percentage, 28.57

percent, of items about contraception. Items about contraception accounted for 12.82

53 ..
percent of Mademeiselle’s and 7.46 percent of W’s total items. The overall

percentage of sexual items about contraception in the three magazines combined was 11.16
percent, making it the third highest category of sexual content featured between 1971 and
1991.

Pregnancy was the least frequently featured sexual topic in both Mademoiselle (7.69
percent of items) and Sexemeeg (4.76 percent of items). Pregnancy, overall, was the least
frequently counted sexual topic, accounting for 9.44 percent of total sexual items in the
three magazines combined. Pregnancy was the second most frequent sexual topic in
99510999111311. accounting for 11.19 percent of sexual items in the magazine.

Items about pregnancy, contraception and STDs were engaged in a continual battle
for second place behind items about sexual relationships and sexuality in general between
1971 and 1991. This obvious separation of one category from the other three indicates the
sexual relationships and sexuality in general category may have been too general in relation
to the other three more speciﬁc categories for an accurate assessment of the balance the
three magazines displayed in treatment of diverse sexual topics.

Therefore, by combining items about contraception, STDs and pregnancy into a
single category representing the “body-centered” aspects of sex, the percentage of sexual
content they ﬁll compares perhaps more accurately to the percent of sexual content occupied
by items about sexual relationships and sexuality in general, the more person-centered
aspects of sex.

Figure 3 helps illustrate how, combined in this way, the magazines’ coverage of
sexual relationships and sexuality in general rose and fell between 1971 and 1991 while
their coverage of the other three sexual topics combined fell and rose inversely. Coverage
of the two came closest together in 1987 and 1988 when items about sexual relationships
and sexuality in general occupied 54.55 and 55.17 percent of the sexual content, and items
about contraception, pregnancy and STDs combined occupied 45.45 and 44.83 percent of

54
the sexual content respectively.

Figure 3: Percent of item topics, all magazines combined,
contraception. STD, and pregnancy items combined

 

 

 

 

100
80
787
‘E
8 60"
g ‘ 4:- Relationships
3 -l- Cont/STD/Preg
.3 40-
'5
§
8 20
o I 1 ' 1 ‘ I ' I
'- 0 ‘D '- IN '—
5 a a i a 8’ a :52 a

The frequency with which various methods of birth control were mentioned in these
items is illustrated in Table 10. The condom was the most-often mentioned method,
appearing in 48.28 percent of the items that mentioned contraceptives, followed by the
diaphragm (34.48 percent) and then the pill (28.74 percent). Roughly the same
order-condom, diaphragm, pill--held true for the magazines individually as well. In
W the condom was mentioned in 76.92 percent of the items that mentioned
contraception, and spermicides were mentioned in 53.85 percent. The diaphragm and pill
were each mentioned in 46.15 percent of the items.1 In Mademeieelle, the condom was
metioned in 50 percent of the items, the diaphragm in 43.75 percent, followed by
spermicides (31.25 percent), and the pill (25 percent). In W the condom was
mentioned in 38.1 percent, the diaphragm in 23.81 percent, and the pill in 26.19 percent of

the items that mentioned contraception.

55
Table 10--Number of times contraceptive methods were mentioned, 1971-1991‘T

 

Method Seventeen Mademoiselle Cosmopolitan Total

condom 76.92% (10)§ 50.00% (16) 38.10% (16) 48.28% (42)
diaphragm 46.15 (6) 43.75 (14) 23.81 (10) 34.48 (30)
pill 46.15 (6) 25.00 (8) 26.19 (11) 28.74 (25)
toamflel/cream 53.85 (7) 31 .25 (10) 1429 (6) 26.44 (23)
IUD 30.77 (4) 1250 (4) 19.05 (8) 18.39 (16)
abortion 15.38 (2) 18.75 (6) 1429 (6) 16.09 (14)
sponge 30.77 (4) 1250 (4) 4.76 (2) 11.49 (10)
other 30.77 (4) 625 (2) 11.90 (5) 12.64 (11)
generic terms 30.77 (4) 938 (3) 11.90 (5) 13.79 (12)
FAM/rhythm 38.46 (5) 3.13 (1 ) 238 (1) 8.05 (7)
withdrawal 30.77 (4) 3.13 (1) 4.76 (2) 8.05 (7)
cervical cap 15.38 (2) 0.00 (0) 4.76 (2) 4.60 (4)
hormonal implant 15.38 (2) 3.13 (1) 2.38 (1) 4.60 (4)
sterilization 0.00 (0) 0.00 (0) 4.76 (2) 230 (2)

 

‘Sums or percentages exceed 100% because many items mention multiple methods of birth control.
Tligures on this table are based on 13 items in Sexenteen, 32 in W, and 42 in
' mentioning contraception.
actual number of items in parentheses

 

Abstinence from sexual intercourse was not included as a birth control option in this
study, but it was considered in the question, “Is abstinence mentioned as an alternative to
sexual activity?” Abstinence was not always mentioned as birth control and was often
discussed in relation to a young woman’s decision whether to have sexual intercourse or
not, or as a defense against contracting an STD. In a few instances, brief periods of
abstinence were suggested as a way to heighten the pleasure of subsequent sexual
intercourse.

Not one of the thirteen items mentioning abstinence in Mademejselle considered
abstinence as a form of birth control, and it was only referred to once as birth control
among the twenty-four Cesmepeljm items that mentioned abstinence.

Of the three magazines, Seyemeeg was most likely to discuss abstinence from sexual

intercourse as birth control with statements such as:

56
The only 100 percent effective method of birth control, of course, is abstinence (not
having intercourse), which you may need to do if you truly don’t have access to any
method of birth control and you ﬁnd it impossible to go to your parents, a doctor, or

a clinic for help. You can slzrare love without sex, or you can give each other pleasure
without having intercourse.

A third reason given for abstinence, aside from birth control and as sex therapy, was
as a precaution against STDs, particularly AIDS. And abstinence was sometimes discussed
simply as a woman’s right to a choice. Just as she had a right to say “yes” in the 19708, a
woman in the 19808 and 1990s had a right to choose “the new chastity” or the “no of the
’903.”

The only instance in which abstinence was spoken against, was in the February,
1981 issue of Mademeiselle. An item titled, “Living without sex” discounted sex
“faddists” and “quacks” who prescribed celibacy as a reaction to the “overhyping of sex in
America” and as a “new elixir” to “hawking open marriage, group sex, brutality chic and
kiddie porn.” According to the article, sex didn’t deserve the bad rap it was getting, and
called “vows of celibacyz”

just a symptom of the hype, not a cure-all. Celibacy can be just a frightened
retreat from the conﬂict between our need for traditional commitment and our
newly-awakened appetite for sexual freedom. Celibacy is actually the fg'p side of the
coin from promiscuity. Neither promises transcendence or the full life.

In an attempt to identify the women’s magazine’s attempts to be “more than just an
organ recital,” by providing a “complementary and supporting set of attitudes,” this study
asked the question: between 1971 and 1991, did items concerning sexual t0pics more often
discuss the emotional, psychological and responsibility aspects of sex, or were they more
likely to disuss the factual and physiological aspects of sexual relationships, contraception,
pregnancy or STDs?

Figure 4 illustrates mention of these aspects as they occurred in the magazines over

time, and Table 11 enumerates them as they apply to individual sexual topics. Statistical

57
analysis showed that the magazines’ mention of these aspects of sex was signiﬁcant at the

.05 level of probability with 4 degrees of freedom. For a complete table of these aspects
as they were mentioned individual magazines, see Table 15 in Appendix C.

Figure 4: Percent of sexual content mentioning emotional, res sibility and
physical/lactual aspects of sex (all magazines combined), 19 1-1991

 

100

80

43- emotion
+ responsibility
-I- physiology/leer -,

percent of items

 

 

 

 

 

1971
1973
1976
1979
1981 1
1985 t
1987
1988 1
1991

On the subject of sexually u'ansmitted diseases, nearly all (93.33 percent) of the
magazine items mentioned some factual and physiological aspects of STDs. In 100 percent
of items about STDs in Mum and Qeemepeljmn, and in 87.5 percent of items about
STDs in Mademiselle, factual andphysiological aspects were mentioned. The emotional
and psychological aspects of STDs were included in 50 percent of W’s, 31.25

percent of Mademlselle’s and 41.67 percent of W’s items about STDs.
Responsibility was discussed in 50 percent of Men’s, 25 percent of Mademiselle’s
and 16.67 percent of W’s items about STDs.

 

 

58

Table 11--Distribtrtion oi psychological/emotional, responsibility and physiological!
factual aspects 01 sex among item topics

Sexual relatJ

 

sex in gen. Contrac. STDs Preg.

Seaman

oamotlon 91.67%(11)' 83.33% (5) 50.00%(1) 100.00% (1)
oresponsibility 41.67 (5) 100.00 (6) 50.00 (1) 100.00 (1)
ophys/lact 41 .67 (5) 100.00 (6) 100.00 (2) 100.00 (1)
Mademoiselle

-emotion 87.23 (40) 0.00 (0) 31 .25 (5) 33.33 (2)
orasponsibility 10.64 (5) 0.00 (0) 25.00 (4) 33.33 (2)
~phys/lact 42.55 (19) 100.00 (10) 87.50 (14) 83.33 (5)
Qasnnmlltan

-emotion 84.54 (82) 10.00 (1) 41 .67 (5) 26.67 (4)
-rasponsibility 9.28 (9) 10.00 (1) 16.67 (2) 26.67 (4)
-physllact 48.45 (47) 80.00 (8) 100.00 (12) 86.67 (13)
alLtnaaazines

oernotion 85.90 (133) 40.00 (6) 36.67 (11) 31.82 (7)
oresponsibillty 12.18 (19) 64.00 (7) 23.33 (7) 31.82 (7)
-physllact 46.15 (71) 92.00 (14) 93.33 (28) 86.36 (19)

 

‘actual number of items in parentheses
x2-15.91, d.r.-4, p<.01

Items about contraception in all three magazines were also more likely to include
factual and physiological information than either emotional or responsibility aspects.
Ninety-two percent of items about contraception in the three magazines combined included
physiological and factual information. Sixty-four percent mentioned responsibilities
associated with contraception, and 40 percent mentioned the emotional and psychological
aspects of contraceptive use. One hundred percent of contraception items in Emmeeg and
Mademeiselle, and 80 percent of contraception items in W mentioned the
physiological, biological, medical, health or technical aspects of birth control.

Notable differences between the individual magazines were, however, revealed in

their attention to the emotional, psychological and responsibility aspects of contraception.

59
While Sexemeen mentioned responsibility in 100 percent and emotional and psychological
aspects in 83.33 percent of its six items about contraception, Mademeiselle gave no
mention of either responsibility or emotional aspects in any of its ten items about
contraception. W mentioned both responsibility and emotional aspects, but in
only 10 percent of its ten items about contraception.

As with STDs and contraception, items about pregnancy also were more likely to
mention physiological and factual aspects than either emotional or responsibility aspects.
Combined, 86.3 percent of pregnancy items in the three magazines mentioned
physiological and factual aspects of pregnancy. Equal attention was paid to both the
responsibility and emotional aspects of pregnancy, with each being mentioned in 31.82
percent of all items about pregnancy from 1971 through 1991.

Emotional and psychological aspects were dominant only in items about sexual
relationships and sexuality in general. ﬁeyemeen mentioned emotional aspects in 91.67 of
its twelve items about sexual relationships, with 41.67 percent of these items mentioning
physiological and factual and responsibility aspects of sexual relationships. Mademeiselle
mentioned emotions in 87.23 percent, physiological and factual aspects in 42.55 percent,
and responsibility in 10.64 percent of its 46 items about sexual relationships and sexuality
in general. And distribution in Ceememlitan included 84.54 percent emotions, 48.45
percent physiological and factual, and 9.28 percent responsibility. Complete data for
mention of aspects for each year studied is presented in Table 15, Appendix C. .

The fourth research question in this study sought to compare coverage of sexual
topics in the three magazines with young womens’ sexual behavior, as presented in survey
and statistical data, from 1971 to 1991. As the percentage of teenage women who were
experiencing sexual intercourse increased nearly twenty-ﬁve percentage points between

1971 and 1988, the combined percentage of non-ﬁction, non-advertising items in

Wise Mademoiselle and Emerson increased as well. but much less

60
dramatically, less than nine percentage points.

Figure 5 shows that attention to pregnancy and contraception in the three women’s
magazines showed no clear relationship to this steady increase in out-of-wedlock births
among women aged ﬁfteen to thirty-four between 1970 and 1989. While the steady
upward trend in births is evident, there is no clear pattern in corresponding percentage of
items about pregnancy and contraception to indicate the magazines’ attempts to counter the
trend. (More detailed data on birth rates is incluad in Table 17, Appendix C).

Figure 5: Illegitimate live births (to women aged 15-34) and items
about contraception and pregnancy (all magazines), 1970-1991

 

 

 

 

50
5 .
E
S 40-
i:
5.5 30‘
§§ 4:1- illeg.births
-8 -I- preg+eontitems
g::, 20-
as
33 10-
'6
a;
1:
" O T v I I ‘ I
.0 W I
o '- m CD O F N a '-
5353555335333

Coverage of STDs in Seyemgn, Madmeiselle and gamma}; included 6.67
percent of sexual item topics in the three magazines combined in 1971 and 1973. In 1976,
there were no items about STDs in any of the magazines. Then, between 1976 and 1987,
coverage of STDs increased, with only a slight dip in 1985, from zero to nearly 25 percent
of sexual items. But despite increasing prevalence of STDs, especially AIDS, among
American women, coverage of STDs declined after 1987, to 13.79 percent in 1988 and
10.42 percent in 1991.

61

Figure 6: Percent 01 items about STDs (all magazines) compared with reported
cases ct STDs‘ among all populations, and AIDS among women, 1970-1 9911‘

 

40

30 d

20 ' -D- STD Items
+ all STDs

 

-I- Women with Aids

  

 

 

 

V

ermmmoF¢§1¢5§uT¢o
333338388 3°18
v- v-v- v-v-

STDs (100.000) . AIDS (1.000)
and percent of sexual content

19874
1988‘
1989
1991

'includes gonorrhea, syphilis and other STDs
tsource: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the
United States: 1991 (111th edition) Washington, DC, 1991

Figure 6 illustrates how the magazines’ coverage of STDs compared to national
trends in reported cases of AIDS and other STDs from 1971 to 1991. While cases of
syphilis, gonorrhea and other STDs (not including AIDS) remained relatively stable over
the twenty year period, and even declined slightly (see detailed data in Table 18, Appendix
C). Cases of AIDS have risen sharply since they were ﬁrst reported in 1981. The drOp in
coverage of STDs in the magazines is especially interesting in light of the rapid increase in
AIDS cases among women.

With the development of prescribed methods of birth control, contraception became a
“women’s issue.” The woman was responsible for procuring and using her own pills,
diaphragm or IUD. If she did not, then the man had to assume responsibility and wear a
condom. The dawning of the “age of AIDS” seems to have made the issue of contraception
less gender-speciﬁc. Contraception no longer only means prevention of fertilization, it
means prevention of infection as well. Since pills, diaphragms and IUDs cannot stop
STDs, women who want to protect themselves have begun to furnish the condoms.
Condom manufacturers have even begun marketing their product toward women with

package designs in pastel colors and names such as “Lady Trojans.”

62
As Figure 7 shows, mention of traditionally “male” and “female” forms of

contraception in womens’ magazines seem to reﬂect this trend as well. While mention of
the three prescribed contraceptives has increased from eight mentions in 1971 to thirteen
mentions in 1991, mention of condoms has as well, from two mentions in 1971, to nine
mentions in 1991, including a brief jump to a high point of fourteen mentions in 1987.
Statistical analysis shows that treatment of the three designated aspects of sex is
statistically signiﬁcant at the one percent level of probability. Thus, the sample drawn is an

accurate representation of magazine content for the time period studied.

Figure 7: Male‘ vs. female? methods of contraception, 1971-1991, all magazines
20

 

 

-l- female
-0- male

 

number of times methods mentioned

 

 

1 971
973
976
979
981

1 985

1 987

1 988

1 991

‘male methods include condom
ﬂamale methods include pill, diaphragm and IUD

x2-7.01, d.I.-2, p<.05

The ﬁnal research question in this study pertained to the magazines’ efforts to dispel
myths or misconceptions about sexual relationships or sexuality in general, pregnancy,
contraception or STDs.
In the three magazines combined, 11.21 percent of the items with sexual topics made
some attempt to dispel sexual myths or misconceptions. Table 12 shows that individually,

W magazine had the highest percentage of attempts (35 percent), with seven of its

63
twenty items addressing a speciﬁc myth or misconception about sexual relationships,

contraception, pregnancy or STDs. Six of Maﬁemeiselle’s seventy-nine items (12.77
percent), and thirteen of Milan’s 133 items (9.77 percent) made such an attempt.

Of the years from which magazine issues were selected, 1985 showed the highest incidence
of items with attempts to dispel sexual myths and misconceptions, with eight items, ﬁve of

which came from Cosmomlitan. one from Mademoiselle. and two from Smnteen.

Table 12--Attarrpts to dispel myths and misconceptions

 

 

year Savant. Madam. Cosmo. totals
1971 2 0 0 2
1973 0 0 2 2
1976 1 0 1 2
1979 0 0 2 2
1981 0 3 0 3
1985 2 1 5 8
1987 0 1 1 2
1988 0 1 1 2
1991 2 0 1 3
Totals 7 (35.0%) 6 (12.77%) 13 (9.77%) 26 (11.21%)

 

"-232 items (20 in Sexenteen: 79 in Mademoiselle; 133 in Cosmopolitan)

Myths and misconceptions addressed by the magazines ranged ﬁom the
seemingly-naive, such as the belief that douching with soda after intercourse could prevent
pregnancy, to mistaken notions about causes of impotence and how STDs are spread. To
illustrate this variability, some speciﬁc examples of myths and misconceptions addressed

by each of the magazines are included here. From Mum:

“Despite the persistent myth that you can tell a homosexual by appearance and
mannerisrn, only about 15 percent of homosexuals show effeminate characteristics
(and only about 5 percent of female homosexuals are obviously mannish). The rest
have no recognizable outward differences.’

“Some have the mistaken notion that if they do not have an orgasm dming
intercourse, pregnancy cannot follow A few believe the untrue gossip that

64
swallowing a handful of contraceptive pills just before or after intercomse will protect
them Msany are frightened of effective methods like the pill by rumors about its
dangers.”

“Which of the following statements are true, and which are false?

1. If you have sexual dreams or fantasies about someone of the same sex, it means
that you’re gay.

2. The ﬁrst time you have sex is the best time you’ll ever have.

3. Guys suffer from terrible pain and may even become sterile if they don’t have sex
after becoming sexually aroused.

4. It’s safe to have sex without birth control in the days just before your period.

5. You can get a sexually transmitted disease even if you have one partner.

6. You can get pregnant the ﬁrst time you have sex.

7. If a boy has sexual intercourse or masturbates too much when he is young, he’ll
use up all his sperm and be unable to father children later on.

8. Planning for sex and using birth control is unromantic.

9. If you’re sexually active but have no symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease,
you have nothing to worry about.

10. There is only one right way to make love.”6

From Mademoiselle:

An article titled “Five myths about the big ‘o,”’ the following myths about orgasm:
“All orgasms are pretty much alike,” “Orgasm is a sign of love,” “If he loved me,
he’d know how to make me climax,” “If you can’t have a vagin orgasm, it means
you’re neurotic,” and “Some women just can’t have orgasms.”

“I have heard that uncircumcised men have a greater chance of contracting and
passing on sexually transmitted diseases than circumcised men do. Is this true?”8

“Q: True or false: Wearing tight jeans makes you prone to uninary-tract infections. A:

False. And you also won’t get an infection from downing lots of coffee, 118,31
tampons or urinating infrequently, according to a myth-busting new study.’

And from Compound:

“One of our culture’s most absurd double standards is the value judgment placed on
rapid orgasms: if a woman comes quickly, she’s considered a passionate lover, one
to be admired, whereas a man with the same facility is considered incompetent and to
be pitied! (Actually, believing a woman is sorﬂphow more ‘female’ if she has quick
orgasms is one other myth to be discarded)”

“I never imagined the problem [impotence] could hit younger men. That may sound
naive, but I don’t think I’m the only woman to buy the myth that most men—healthy,

younger men anyway—can spring into action at the mere sight of a good body.”11

“Q: My husband is a professional baseball player and refuses to make love the night
before a game; he says it will weaken him. Is this true or just a silly myth? A: It’s
the latterl—zand one that goes back at least as far as the story of Samson and
Delilah.”

65
“Though a mere three decades ago popular opinion pivoted on the premise that men
erebqsalcally more sexual than women, scientific research has begun to overturn this

myth.”

“Q: What do you consider? be today’s biggest sexual myth? A: If he loved me he
would have an erection.”

Of all the items coded, 42.49 percent included mention of peers or media as sources
of sexual information or pressure. Table 13 shows peers were mentioned in thirty-eight
items between 1971 and 1991, and media was mentioned in sixty-one items as a source of

sexual information.

Table 13--Pears and media as sources of sexual information regarding sexual
relationships, contraception, pregnancy or STDs, 1971-1991

 

 

# of items #of items # of items # of items
mentioning indicating mentioning indicating
mediaasa sax maybe pearsasa sex maybe
source of different than source of different than
sexual as depicted by sexual as depicted
information media Information by peers

Seventeen 33.33% (7)‘ 14.29% (3) 66.67% (14) 19.05% (4)

(n-21)

Mademoiselle 26.92 (21) 897 (7) 6.41 (5) 385 (3)

(n-78)

Cosmopolitan 24.63 (33) 5.22 (7) 14.18 (19) 5.97 (8)

(n-1 34)

all rnagazinas 26.18 (61) 7.30 (17) 16.31 (38) 6.44 (15)

(n=233)

 

x2-11.12, d.f.-2, p<.01
‘actual number of items in parentheses

Sexemeen and CesmemlLim were responsible for most of the peer references, with
fomteen and nineteen items respectively. Mademieelle mentioned peers in only ﬁve items.
Media was mentioned most frequently in Cesmepelim as well, with thirty-three items
referring to some form of media as a source information on sexual relationships,

contraception, pregnancy or STDs. Madmue featured twenty-one items with reference

66
to media, and Seyenm had seven such items between 1971 and 1991.

Of the magazines combined, 32.32 percent of items mentioning peers or media also
said the depiction given by either of those sources was somehow inaccurate. Information
from peers alone was deemed incorrect in 39.47 percent of the items where it was
mentioned. Sexual information from media was questioned in 27.87 percent of the items
where it was mentioned.

An example of a statement contrary to media depiction of sex comes from an item in
Seymteerl titled “Your right to say no!” which stated, “Sexual innuendo is standard fare on
television and in the movies. Magazines, books, and popular songs urge us to be sexy,”
and then said readers should not “be fooled by TV shows or movies into thinking that sex
is just one more fun experience, like going to a disco. It’s not: It’s big and personal and
deep, 8 real giving of yornself.”15 An example of incorrect peer information is described
by a Seyemeen reader who, in 1991, wrote about her boyfriend who “constantly
pressures” her to have sex. “He says I won’t get pregnant, but he doesn’t use protection,”
she said, asking, “Is it true that if the guy pulls out before he ejaculates, you won’t get
pregnant?” In response, the author explained the inaccuracy of the boyfriend’s claim,
saying:

For starters, when a boy gets an erection, droplets of pre-ejaculatory ﬂuid appear:

This ﬂuid does contain sperm and can get you pregnant Anorher problem is that a

guy may promise to pull out before he ejaculates, but when he’s really excited he may
not have the self-control Even if he does you can get pregnant if he winds up

ejaculating next to your vagina. Sperm are powerful swrmpgers If you’re going to
have sex, you must use birth control to prevent pregnancy.

Examples from Mademelselle include a 197 3 item that critiqued some popular “sex
books” and concluded that they “either don’t tell you enough or they give you incorrect
information.”17 An item titled “Making love for the ﬁrst time” described how “Cynthia
and Jackie tried to live up to what they perceived as society’s expectations of them and

ended up abandoning themselves.” The young womens’ sexual perceptions, the author

67
explained, were formed by their contact with peers and media:

Pressure—from the media and from friends—can cause enormous anxiety at a time
when we’re just beginning to discover who we are as individuals and when the desire

to belong, to ﬁt in, often seems the most important thing in the world. But we really
can only discover ourselves by listening to our own feelings.18

In 1988, Mademeiselle blamed media for promoting inaccurate sex images. In an
item titled “You were wonderful (and other big bed lies),” the author explained that some
women fake orgasm because they “are feeling enormous pressure to have magical orgasms.
In movies, novels and sexual self-help books, orgasm has become the only goal of

lovemaking.” Later in the item, a sex therapist emphasized the inaccuracy of media

portrayals of sex, saying:

When you watch most mainstream movies, sex always involves the man getting on
top of the woman and ramming it in. They don’t use their hands and {gray perform
oral sex—and yet in real life, this is how most women reach orgasm.

Media references in Cesmgmlitag were often allusions to instructional “sex books”
that supported statements made by the author. For instance, a 1979 item titled “The new

chastity,” included quotations from “the forthcoming W.” A 1976 item

about “The male orgasm: what every girl should know,” discussed information in a book

titled W-

W did not refrain from criticizing media, however. An item about
illegitimate children born to celebrities described how the glamorized vision of Hollywood

children seen on television and in news media is an unrealistic vision for real life single

parents.

News of the stars the glamorous life makes for interesting reading a pretty

story, but easiest to behave when one is sitting in a brainless daze at the hairdresser.

In more rational moments, most of us realize 281m even in Hollywood the fantasy life

is not possible for just any unwed mother.

In a 1985 W advice column, the unreliablility of peers as sources of

68
sexual information was illustrated by a woman who said a friend told her that taking certain

vitamins could actually increase sex drive. In response, the doctor who wrote the column
mentioned the hazards of taking megadoses of vitamins, and said the only foundation for

the friend’s claim was “that you must be healthy and well nourished to function at your best

in all areas—sex included.”

NOTES: CHAPTER FIVE

1The frequency with which spermicides were mentioned could be due to the fact that
they are frequently used in conjunction with condoms.

2Kathy McCoy, “Sex and Your Body,” Sexemeen, (April, 1987): 56, 58.

3Judith Coburn, “Living Without Sex,” Mademoiselle, (February, 1981): 78.

4Abigail Wood, “How Should You Feel About a Homosexual?” Seyenteen, June,
1971, 161.

5Alice Lake, “Questions You Ask Most About Birth Control,” 8mm January,
1971, 1 14.

6Kathy McCoy, “Test Your Sexual l.Q.,” Seyemeen, September, 1985, 40

7Lonnie Barbach, “Orgasm: Five Myths About the Big O,” Mademeiselle, February,
1981, 145, 200, 202.

8Maj-Brit Rosenbaum, M.D., “Body and Soul,” Mademoiseno. May, 1987, 116.

9Maria Sandmaier, “The Cystitis-Sex Connection,” Mademoiselle, February, 1988,
102.

lOMartin Shephard, M.D., “Do-it-Yourself Sex Therapy,” Cosmopolitan.
November, 1973, 156. -

11Jane Margold, “How to Love and Cure Your (Occasionally) Impotent Male,”
Cesmemlitan, November, 1973, 182.

12Susan Okie, “Your Body,” Cesmepelim, July, 1985, 74.

l3Katharine Merlin, “When Men and Women Think About Sex; Ways They Differ,”
Cosmopolitan. February. 1987. 179.

14Ralph Gardner, Jr., “Cosmo Talks to Helen Singer Kaplan, Pioneering Sex
Therapist,” Cesmemlinn, March, 1988, 162.

1SSally Helgesen, “Your Right to Say No!” 3919019911. August, 1981, 336.
l6Debra Kent, “Pregnancy Myths,” Sexemeen, February, 1991, 63.

l7Lillian Roxon, “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex,” Mademoiselle, January,
1973. 20.

18Robert Grant, “The Other Side of Innocence: Making Love for the First Time,”
Mademoiselle. April. 1981. 181.

69

70

19Ellen Kunes, “You Were Wonderful (and Other Big Bed Lies),” Mademjselle.
February, 1988, 149, 206.

20Suzanne McNeer, “The Case Against the Illegitimate Child,” mmeeelitan, July,
1973, 82.

CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
Historically, American attitudes toward premarital sex seem to have been ﬁltered
through a centuries-old Puritan ethic that says sex before marriage is wrong, and that
educating young people about sexuality will only serve to encomage their early
participation in premarital sexual activity. Despite the perceived social taboos and society’s
efforts to protect the innocence of the young by keeping them uninformed, landmark
research by Alfred Kinsey helped reveal that, for decades, young women have been
making choices about their own sexual behavior and moral codes. Furthermore,
researchers since Kinsey have maintained that providing sexual information does not
promote sexual promiscuity, and withholding information can only result in young women
who are unequipped educationally and emotionally to deal with the responsibilities of
sexual activity and its consequences.

Xillagejejee senior editor Ellen Willis called sex before marriage “a
taken-for-granted part of growing up” for most teens.1 Sex educator Carol Cassell called
no sex before marriage an outmoded and unrealistic message. “We owe it to young people
to own up to the fact that sexual feelings are normal, and that desire can be very strong

because sex is pleasurable,” she said,2 echoing Bell’s observation that:

For the married population, some forms of sexual outlet are approved, but for the
unmarried no outlets are given complete social approval. Yet the sexual needs of the
unmarried individual do not lie dormant until his [or her] wedding day and then for
the ﬁrst time suddenly burst forth Often it is assumed that the sexual needs of the
unmanied individual carg be ignored, conditioned, or transferred, but in reality, they
usually ﬁnd expression.

As was stated at the outset of this study, the overriding purpose here has been to

examine the nonﬁction, non-advertisin g content of three popular women’s magazines over

71

72

a twenty year period, to evaluate their potential as a source of sexual information for the
young women who may have read them during that time. By dividing sexual content into
four topic areas deemed by researchers to be of primary importance in sexual education of
young people, the magazines were analyzed as a whole, and individually, to answer ﬁve
research questions. The research questions were designed to determine the extent of the
magazines’ attention to sexual topics, their balance in treatment of physical, emotional and
responsibility aspects of sex, their efforts to dispel myths perpetuated by peers and media,
and their relationship to trends in young womens’ sexual behavior between 1971 and 1991.

By addressing sexual topics in their pages, the three women’s magazines in this study
have openly acknowledged the sexual activity of their readers. By making editorial
promises to provide information that is relevant to the daily lives of young women, the
magazines have assumed the responsibility of providing such information in regard to
sexuality. They have also opened themselves up to scrutiny from mass media researchers
who wish to evaluate their performance in this area.

The regular presence of items with a variety of sexual topics indicates that, overall,
the three magazines have been a source of sexual information since 1971. But the results in
no way indicate that the magazine content has preceded trends in sexual activity,
pregnancy, contraceptive practices or prevalence of STDs. Although the magazines may
have been responding to trends, that response was unagressive and did not always seem to
coincide with the real needs of the public. The imbalance between items about sexual
relationships and sexuality and general, and items about contraception, pregnancy and
STDs illustrates this frequent lack of attention to the more serious consequences of
premarital sex. And when the content is compared to social trends in pregnancy and STDs,
the magazines’ treatment of these topics seems especially weak.

For instance, after the ﬁrst cases of AIDS were reported in the early 19805, one might

expect a reaction in the magazines’ coverage of STDs and contraceptives, especially

73

condoms since they are the only form of birth control that can also protect against the
spread of STDs. Such a reaction did appear in the content of the three magazines between
1985 and 1987 as items about STDs increased nearly 10 percentage points. Dming the
same time, items mentioning condoms nearly tripled, from ﬁve items in 1985 to fourteen
items in 1987. But in the course of the next year, coverage of STDs and mention of
condoms fell to or below their 1985 levels. Items mentioning condoms did rally slightly by
1991, but items about S'IDs continued to fall to their lowest point since 1979. Meanwhile
the problem of heterosexual AIDS continued its rapid growth.

Likewise, though the number of illegitimate teenage births continued to rise during
the time period studied, the sample drawn from W magazine did not produce an
item about pregnancy until February, 1991. And in items about contraception,
Mademoiselle never once mentioned the emotional or responsibility aspects of birth control.
W did not fare much better in its mention of emotions and responsibilities
involved in contraception. Only 10 percent of items about contraception mentioned
emotional aspects, and only 10 percent mentioned responsibility.

This neglect of the responsibility aspects by the magazines is one of the most
perplexing ﬁndings of this study. As out-of-wedlock and teenage pregnancies increased,
and the number of women with AIDS grew, mention of the responsibilities for actions with
the potential for physical or emotional consequences remained low. If the AIDS epidemic
has taught us anything, it is that the disease knows no social or economic boundaries. If at
least one sexual partner is not careful, premarital sex can be deadly, and a reaction to this
reality did not seem to have hit the women’s magazines in this study as of 1991. Whether
they will respond more aggressively in years to come remains to be seen.

Attempts to dispel sexual myths and misconceptions were not overly abundant in the
content of the three women’s magazines included in this study. And even though 42.49

percent of sexual items mention peers or media as sources of sexual information, less than

74

one-third of those items indicated that peers or media could be unreliable sources of sexual
information.

The intent of this study is not to exalt one women’s magazine over the others.
Instead, it has been a look at what potential women’s magazines might have as sources of
sexual information for young women based on their sexual content over the past two
decades. However, obvious differences between the three selected magazines cannot be
ignored.

While Mm and Medemiseﬂe undoubtedly produced the largest volume of
sexual items, the more occasional items in Seventeen tended to be longer, more balanced in
attention to the four topic categories, as well as more balanced in attention to the
physiological, emotional and responsibility aspects of sexual relationships and sexuality in
general, contraception, pregnancy and STDs. The low number of non-advertising,
non-ﬁction sexual items could indicate room for improvement in Emma’s potential role
as a source of sexual information for its readers, especially since its readers make up the
youngest age group of the three magazines and are undoubtedly in the earliest stages of
sexual activity when many difﬁcult sexual decisions are made. But, as one magazine editor

has pointed out:

Fashion is the “meat” of female juvenile periodicals. At this age range, readers are
still ﬁnding themselves, and it’s much easier to deﬁne oneself in terms of clothgs and
looking like one’s peers than in terms of personal convictions and philosophy.

Nevertheless, an increase in the number of sexual items and continued care and
attention to thoroughness of explantion could enhance the magazine’s potential as a source
of sexual information for young women.

While not included as part of the formal analysis, the presence of regular sex-oriented
columns in later issues of Seymeen and Medemeiselle could be noted as a positive effort

by the magazines to develop a sense of trust or rapport with regular readers, similar to what

75

Edward Bok was attempting to achieve as Ruth Ashmore more than a hundred years ago.

In light of all that has been said with regard to women’s magazines as information
sources, one must nevertheless keep in mind that the magazines studied here are sources of
entertainment ﬁrst and foremost. In a society where sex is used to sell everything from
soft drinks to power tools, it is no surprise that magazines include sexual material to attract
readers as well. To rely on popular magazines for the sexual education of our young
people would be simply irresponsible. But viewing them as supplements to home, church
and school-based sexual education may be a more realistic approach. The magazines are
written in the language their readers understand, they are not condescending or preachy,
and they may be able to reach young women with correct sexual information when the
more traditional sources and other media fall short.

The responsibility to help readers sort through the conﬂicting sexual messages they
may receive from peers and media belongs at least partially to the magazines. That is not to
suggest that the entire burden for the sexual education of young women should be
shouldered by popular magazines, for that is not their rrrission. But certainly these
long-lived periodicals could use their popularity to provide solid, timely, correct sexual
information in a society where women are continually inundated with stereOtypical,
sensational and secondhand messages.

Implications for further research arising from this study might include evaluation of
the extent to which women actually do rely on the content of popular magazines for
information on sexual matters, and whether their personal values and moral standards are
shaped at all by the content of the magazines they read and whether they consider women’s
magazines a good source of information about sexual topics.

The magazine industry should have a vested interest in the ﬁndings of studies such as
this, and should be supportive of attempts to determine the nature and effect of magazine

content when used as a “lay source” of information by the public in general, and the female

public in particular.

76

NOTES: CHAPTER srx
lEllen Willis, “Teen Lust,” M5, July/August 1987, 193.

2Lynn Crawford Cook, “Girls Just Say ‘Not Now,’” My, April
1989, 59.

3Robert R. Bell. W (Englewood Cliffs. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1966), 92.

4M. George Haddad, “A Study of Three Teenage Magazines,” (M.S. thesis, San
Jose State University, 1976), 51.

77

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A
CONTENT ANALYSIS CODING PROTOCOL

11m

Publications selected for this study are W, Magemiseue, and W.
A content analysis of these magazines will be conducted to determine their potential as
sources of sexual information for young unmarried women from 1971 to 1991.

All content, to the exclusion of advertising, horoscopes and fashion will be potential
content for analysis. Items about, food, sports, beauty, entertainment and celebrities will
not be subject to analysis unless they, in some way, address one of the following sexual
issues: sexual relationships/sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy, or sexually
transmitted disease. When identiﬁed as containing at least one of the above subjects as its
focus, the item will be further analyzed according to 21 speciﬁc questions, and coded onto
a response form. Reader response letters commenting on previous issues of each magazine

will not be included in the formal analysis.

Wm

Any item in a magazine which discusses a sexual topic as its main focus will be
counted, regardless of the length of the item. Code answers according to the questions
onto the response form. Use only one response form per item and refer to the operational
deﬁnitions as often as necessary to help you understand the questions. Please read the
entire question and all possible answers before marking an answer on the coding sheet. If
multiple answers seem applicable, choose the best one.

This study is concerned only with non-ﬁction, non-advertising items relating to the

sexual activity of young women, which will include items about: 1) sexual relationships

78

79

and sexuality in general, 2) pregnancy, 3) contraception, and 4) sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs). To determine whether an item ﬁts into one of these categories, refer to
the deﬁnitions of each.

A few miscellaneous coding precautions include:

1. An item is considered “sexual” and should be coded if it deals anywhere with
sexual relationships and sexuality in general, contraception, pregnancy or STDs.

2. If an item is part of a series appearing in more than one issue of the magazine,
count it as a separate item each time it appears.

3. Do not count any advertising content, even if it is an advertisement for products or
services that could be considered sex-related, such as contraceptives, douches, in-home
pregnancy tests, pregnancy crisis hot-lines and the like.

4. Items about sexual abuse will not be included in the ﬁnal analysis since young
women who are sexually abused do not generally engage in the activity willingly. This
study is concerned with young womens’ conscious choices to participate in or abstain ﬁom
sexual intercourse and other sexual behaviors prior to marriage.

5. Refer to the list of deﬁnitions as frequently as necessary to ensure content is
identiﬁed accurately.

6. Do not count any ﬁction content.

7. Use a single response form for each item.

APPENDIX A (Continued)
CODING QUESTIONS

V]: This item is primarily, but not necessarily exclusively about :

0= (a) sexual relationship(s), the physiology of sex, or sexuality in general
l= contraception

2: a sexually transmitted disease/sex related illness

3= pregnancy

v2: Which magazine is this item from?

0=stms2mlim
1= Smmeen
2=Mademoiselle

v3: Record the month and date of the magazine.
v4: What is the toral number of individual items listed in the magazine’s table of contents?
v5: How long is the item?

0= very short
1= short

2: medium
3= long

V6: Which of the following best describes this type of item (choose the most speciﬁc
answer):

O= a regular column

1= a non-ﬁction, feature article

2: an advice column where readers’ speciﬁc questions areanswered

3= a news item about a recent development or event

4: a survey, quiz or poll, or a report of results from a survey, quiz or poll conducted
by the magazine or other source

5: other

v7: Does this item address any emotional/psychological aspects of sex, pregnancy,
contraception or STD?

0= yes
1: no

80

81

v8: Does this item address any responsibility aspects of sex, pregnancy, contraception or

STD?

0= yes
1= no

v9: Does this item deal with the physiological or factual aspects of sex, pregnancy,

v10:

v11:

v12:

v13:

contraception or STD?

0: yes
1: no

Is contraception mentioned in the item? (If no, circle 14 in v12 below):

O= yes
1: no

If yes, what method(s)? (Circle all that are mentioned. If none are mentioned, circle
14. Circle 12 only if no other speciﬁc methods are mentioned)

O= pill

1= diaphragm

2= condom

3= withdrawal

4: IUD

5= contraceptive sponge

6= spermicidal foarnfjelly/cream

7= cervical cap

8= fertility awareness method (FAM or “rhythm method")

9: sterilization (vasectiomy in male, tubal ligation in female)

10= Norplant (hormonal implant)

11= abortion

12: generic terms, such as “protection,” “precautions,” “contraception” or “birth
control”

13: other

14: n/a

If the ages of particular women involved in a sexual act or decision are speciﬁed,
what are their ages? (Circle all that apply):

0: 16 or under

1= 17 to 22

2= 23 to 30

3= over 30

4: “teen,” “teenager,” or “teenage”
5= age not speciﬁed

If indicated, what is the relationship between any sexual partners (actual or potential)
in this item? (Circle all that apply):

v14:

v15:

v16:

v17:

v18:

v19:

82

0= boyfriend/girlfriend or lovers

l= ﬁance/ﬁancee

2= husband/wife

3= roommates/housemates

4: relationship not speciﬁed; generic terms such as “partner,” “man,” “woman”
‘twy’99 del,” 6‘guy,’9 86mm” or “date,’

5= other

6: n/a

Does the item mention or question the social acceptability of the sexual activity,
pregnancy, STD or contraceptive practice in question?

0= yes
1= no

Is abstinence mentioned as an alternative to sexual activity?

0= yes
1: no

Does the item make an effort to dispel any popular “myths” or misconceptions about
sexual relationships/sexuality in general, contraception, STD’s or pregnancy?

O= yes
1= no

Does the item point to media such as television, movies, novels, books, newspaper,
music or magazines, as sources of information or pressure regarding sexual
relationships, contraception, pregnancy or S'I'D’s?

0: yes
1= no

Does the item state anywhere that “real life’ ’sexual relationships/sexuality,

contraception, pregnancy, or STD’ 3 might be different from these things as depicted
by the media?

0= yes
1: no

Does the item point to peers (sexual partner/friends/siblings) as sources of
information or pressure regarding sexual relationships, contraception, pregnancy or
STD’s?

0: yes
1: no

83

v20: Does the item state anywhere that “real life” sexual relationships/sexuality,

contraception, pregnancy or S'I'D’s might be different ﬁom how peers said they
would be?

0= yes
1= no

v1:

v2:

v3:

v4:

v5:

v6:

v7:

v8:

v10:

v11:

v12:

v13:

v14:

v15:

v16:

v17:

v18:

v19:

v20:

 

APPENDIX A (Continued)
RESPONSE FORM

6 7 8 9 10 ll

l2 l3 l4

APPENDIX A (Continued)
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS

To the fullest extent possible, the following deﬁnitions have been derived from
scholarly and professional sources. Please refer to them often to ensure accurate coding.

S l l . l . I

W3 items that focus mainly on the people in the relationship and their
sexual (emotional and/or physical) involvement with one another. Items for this
category may also address more general aspects of “sexuality,” such as sexual
emotions and feelings or speciﬁc sexual activities, as they apply to one or both of the
partners in the relationship.

5 ll . I 1. [SIDE I

Wm: an item is about a sexually transmitted disease or illness if it addresses
any sex related ailment as life-threatening as AIDS, or as seemingly minor as a yeast
infection. Some of the most common names of S'ID’s include: syphilis, venereal
disease, gonorrhea, Chlamydia (vaginitis), venereal warts, genital lice (crabs),
Herpes Simplex Virus Type II (HSV-Z, herpes progenitis, or genital herpes),
cytomegalovirus, pelvic inﬂammatory disease (PID), Acquired Immune Deﬁciency
Syndrome (AIDS)

Ecumenism: any item dealing with some aspect or method of birth control. Speciﬁc
examples of birth control include: the pill, diaphragm, condom (rubber,
prophylactic), withdrawal(coitus interruptus), intrauterine device (IUD), sponge,
spermicidal foam/jelly/cream, cervical cap, fertility awareness method (FAM or
“rhythm method”), sterilization (vasectomy or tubal ligation/“tubes tied”), hormonal
implant (Norplant), and abortion.

W: for the purposes of this study is not restricted to heterosexual intercourse
and may include kissing, petting, masturbation, oral sex and homosexual activity.

W: is the combined amount of space taken up by item copy, photographs,
diagrams or other graphics. For items that are nested within some unrelated,
nonsexual content, such as on news pages or question and answer columns, consider
only the length of the sexual section of the item. Do not include advertising copy in
the length of the item. Categorize length according to the following deﬁnitions:

overy short: less than half of one page
oshort= one half to one full page
-medium= between one and two full pages
olong= longer than two full pages

85

86

: a section of the magazine that appears on a monthly or other regular
basis, address the same general category of content each time and is often written by
the same author every time. Since only random issues of each magazine are being
coded, it may be difﬁcult to determine if a column appears regularly or not, so
column headings, the lists below and contents pages should be used as guides. Items
in this category usually include the regular column name as a heading. Some of the
regular columns listed below can be subcategorized into “advice” or “news” items.
When the item ﬁts best into one of the more speciﬁc categories deﬁned below, place it
there. Some examples include:

Mademoiselle: “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex,” “Man Talk,” “Health,” “An
Opinion,” “His,” “Body Talk,” “Body and Soul,” “Health News,” “News,” “The
Private Eye,” “The Drs. Frank Talk About ...,” “What Every Single Girl Should
Know,” “Medical Express,” “Health Express,” “Doctor, Doctor,” “Scruples,”
“Feeling Good”

Seventeen: “Sex and Your Body,” “Him,” “Relating,” “Talk,” “New Voices,” “Your
Words,” “Your Opinion,” “Body Talk,” “Mini-Mag,” “You Said It,” “Frankly
Speaking,” “Free For All,” “What’s New,” “Young Living,” “Hot Talk”

Cosmopolitan: “What’s New--What it Does for You,” “Your Body,” “Analyst’s
Couch,” “Speakeasy,” “COSMO Tells All,” “Irma Km'tz’s Agony Column,” “On My
Mind,” “Health Memo: News From the Medical World,” “His Point of View”

We: Items listed by the table of contents as an article or feature.
Does not include regular/monthly columns or departments. Speciﬁc headings under
which such items are listed include:

Mademoiselle: “Features and Fiction,” “To Read,” “Articles”
Seventeen: “Articles,” “You and Others”

Cosmopolitan: “Nonﬁction Book Exerpts,” “Articles,” “Features,” “Articles and
Features

Indnddnaljtems: using the table of contents as a guide, count the number of items that are
assigned their own page numbers.

MW: appears regularly and may address questions pertaining to one
particular subject or a combination of unrelated subjects. In this type of column,
questions are submitted by readers who may or may not be identiﬁed. Questions are
usually answered by a single author or expert, or by a panel of individuals each

specializing in a speciﬁc area.
New: are often a mix of short unrelated timely informational items, usually
restricted to a single page, that are of particular importance to the lives of young

women. These pages are popular places for news items on new forms of birth
control, or other health related sexual topics such as STDs.

W: is that portion of the magazine devoted to display advertising, and copy

87

identiﬁed as advertising. This includes classiﬁed ads and house ads, and beauty and
fashion sections that promote and list prices and sales locations of speciﬁc products
or clothing. Do not include any advertising in the coding procedures.

: stress the non-physical feelings related to sex,
such as joy, sadness, emptiness, fulﬁllment, accomplishment, confusion, self doubt,
loneliness, relief, fear, ecstasy, nervousness, passion and love.

: address young womens’ (or mens’) accepting or or denying
accountability for their own sexual activity and the potential consequences that the
activity may have on the self, or others such as their partner, their child, other family
members or friends.

: information about the physical, biological,
medical, health and technical aspects of sex, pregnancy, contraception and STD’s fall
into this category.

“ ”: refers to an item that may touch on all three of
the above aspects of sex, but which has a particular one of the aspects as its focus.
Mention of emotional, responsibility, or biologicalfrnforrrrational aspects in the title,
in pull quotes, in the lead paragraph(s) of the item are indicators of this focus, as is
the amount of space allocated to one aspect over others.

. includes any individual(s) with whom a woman has sexual relations; may
include male or female partners.

Absmmnee: to refrain from sexual intercourse; celibacy; chastity
WW: refers to any mention of whether or not the sexual activity would or

would not be approved of by some member(s) of society, ranging from family and
ﬁiends, to co-workers, neighbors and other men and women in general.

 

' ' : refers to ideas about sexual activity which are popularly
believed, but not grounded in scientiﬁc fact.

APPENDIX B

Table 14--Circulation Figures. 1971-1991‘

 

Cosmopolitan Mademoiselle Seventeen
1971 1,231,094 675,536 1,489,320
1972 1,428,279 671,203 1,389,688
1973 1,644,800 731,201 1,431,309
1974 1,804,304 809,687 1,447,806
1975 1,881,835 807,352 1,502,160
1976 2,014,208 873,878 1,445,215
1977 2,214,655 873,686 1,450,105
1978 2.501 .983 850.019 1 .467.322
1979 2,658,571 854,747 1,457,871
1980 2,766,627 930,184 1,372,994
1981 2,812,507 922,049 1,455,561
1982 2,750,516 1,065,659 1,470,369
1983 2,802,494 1,173,633 1,471,579
1984 2,983,979 1,112,622 1,523,451
1985 2,987,970 1,163,189 1,695,382
1986 2,820,109 1,194,404 1,737,622
1987 2.935.488 1,204,027 1,803,752
1988 2,873,071 1,297,938 1,853,314
1990 2,778,497 1,141,271 1,173,440
1991 2,778,497 1,141,271 1,750,000

 

'1971-1986 circulation figures from Ayer’s Directory.

1987-1991 figures from the Gale Directory of Publications
(formerly Ayer’s).

88

APPENDIX C
ADDITIONAL TABLES

Table 15--Emotional . responsibility and physiological/factual aspects of sexual topics

 

 

number of items mentioning items mentioning items mentioning
items emotion responsibility physiology/tact
521901990.
1971 3 3 2 1
1973 0 — - -
1976 1 1 1 1
1979 1 1 0 1
1981 1 1 0 0
1985 3 3 1 1'
1987 5 5 4 4
1988 2 0 0 2
1991 _4 .3 .3 .2
20 17 (85%) 12 (60%) 13 (65%)
Madameisalle
1971 1 1 0 0
1973 5 5 0 2
1976 3 1 0 2
1979 7 4 0 4
1981 14 7 2 11
1985 12 6 4 6
1987 8 4 3 6
1988 9 5 1 6
1991 2.0 .15 .1 1.1.
79 48 (60.76%) 11 (13.92%) 48 (60.76%)
Qasmmlitan
1972 11 8 0 4
1973 10 7 3 5
1976 8 8 2 5
1979 10 5 0 8
1981 13 9 2 8
1985 18 11 3 9
1987 20 15 1 12
1988 18 11 2 11
1991 25 18 .3 .11
133 92 (69.17%) 16 (12.03%) 80 (60.15%)
Totals n-232 157 (67.67%) 39 (16.81%) 141 (60.78%)

 

x2.14.23. d.i.-4, p<.05

89

APPENDIX C (Continued)
Table 16-- Marital status 01 women (in thousands).1971-1988

Single Married Divorced

 

1%) 1%) (%)

18-19 1971 77.5 22.2 2
1975 77.7 21.6 6

1979 83.1 16.1 9

1983 87.0 12.5 . .6

1986 88.4 11.0 7

1987 89.8 9.9 3

1988 89.3 9.3 1.3

20-24 1971 36.8 60.5 2
1975 40.3 55.9 3.5

1979 49.4 47.3 3.2

1983 55.5 40.6 3.7

1986 57.9 38.9 3.1

1987 60.8 36.0 3.2

1988 61.1 35.7 3.0

25-29 1971 12.0 83.0 4.3
1975 13.8 79.3 6.5

1979 19.6 72.1 7.8

1983 24.8 66.2 8.6

1986 28.1 63.8 7.6

1987 28.8 63.3 7.6

1988 29.5 62.2 7.8

30-34 1971 6.9 86.8 5.3
1975 7.5 84.5 7.1

1979 9.5 79.6 10.2

1983 13.0 75.3 11.0

1986 14.2 73.5 11.5

1987 14.6 73.4 11.2

1988 16.1 72.4 10.9

 

'Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
We

APPENDIX C (Continued)

Table 17—-Birth rates per 1,000 unmarried women. 1970-1989

 

15-17 18-19 20-24 25-29 30-34
1970 17.1 32.9 38.4 37.0 27.1
1975 19.5 32.8 31 .6 27.5 17.9
1980 20.6 39.0 40.9 34.0 21.1
1981 20.9 39.9 40.9 34.7 20.8
1982 21.5 40.2 41.4 35.1 21.9
1983 22.1 41 .0 42.0 35.6 22.3
1984 21 .9 43.0 43.2 37.0 23.2
1985 22.5 46.6 46.8 39.8 25.0
1986 22.9 48.9 49.7 42.0 26.9
1987 24.5 49.9 53.1 44.3 29.3
1988 26.5 52.7 56.7 48.1 31 .7
1989 28.8 57.4 62.0 52.3 34.4

 

'source: National Center for Health Statistics. 1986. Advance Report

of Final Natality Statistics. 1984. Supplement to W
W 35 (4) July: Table 19.

and

Supplement to W 40 (8) December:

Table 17.

91

APPENDD( C (Continued)

Table 18-M0rbidity and rates (females) per 100,000 population by age
group, United States, 1971-1984

 

A96 Year Syphilis Gonorrhea
cases rates cases rates
1519 1971 1.998 20.5 73,666 757.0
1973 1.989 19.5 124,773 1,225.5
1975 1.833 17.5 151,109 1,446.4
1977 1.308 12.4 148,185 1,402.5
1979 1.478 14.1 150,765 1,438.9
1981 1,906 19.1 137,807 1,379.7
1983 2.104 22.4 131,598 1,401.8
1984 1,580 17.2 126,585 1,375.9
2024 1971 2.541 28.2 76,512 849.5
1973 2.513 27.4 127,928 1,394.8
1975 2.263 23.5 155,196 1,610.8
1977 1.694 16.8 155,407 1,538.4
1979 1,778 17.0 156,646 1,493.9
1981 2,550 23.6 154,076 1,428.1
1983 2.829 26.4 141,373 1,320.0
1984 2.646 25.1 141,530 1,340.4
2529 1971 1,373 19.5 25,152 356.4
1973 1.374 17.4 44,203 558.7
1975 1 .272 14.7 57,424 664.1
1977 992 10.9 59,064 646.4
1979 1 .043 10.9 60,983 637.1
1981 1,493 14.9 64,068 637.4
1983 1 .758 16.7 57,883 550.2
1984 1 .754 16.5 58.851 552.4
3034 1971 817 13.5 9.043 149.9
1973 817 12.3 15,498 233.1
1975 720 10.0 18,971 264.6
1977 421 5.3 18,916 238.7
1979 583 6.8 21,413 249.8
1981 861 9.1 23,231 245.5
1983 990 10.3 20,493 213.8
1984 934 9.5 21,339 216.2

 

‘source: U.S. Department 01 Health and Human Services. Sexually
’ ' ' ' . 1984. Centers for Disease

Control. Atlanta. Georgia.

92

Table 19-Percent of magazine content devoted to sexual topics

APPENDIX C (Continued)

 

% % % %
year Salem, change' Mmlle, change Cosme. change Total change
1971 2.01 .67 8.73 3.81
1973 0.00 - 2.52 3.62 +2.95 8.40 -.33 4.40 +59
1976 .93 + .93 2.24 -1.38 6.45 -1.95 3.29 -1.11
1979 .81 - .12 4.76 -2.52 7.46 +1.01 4.46 +1.17
1981 .74 - .07 10.41 +5.38 9.42 +1.96 6.80 +2.34
1985 2.55 +1.81 7.45 -2.69 14.52 +5.10 7.69 +89
1987 4.07 +1 .52 5.44 -2 .01 13.99 -53 7.99 +30
1988 2.20 -1 .87 5.96 +52 1 1 .61 -2 .38 7.30 -.69
1991 3.51 +1.31 14.62 +8.66 18.31 +6.70 12.69 +5.39

 

Totals: 233 total sexual items (21 items in 53190192078 items in Mademiseﬂe; 134 items in

Cosmopolitan)

‘indicates change in percentage points from preceding year

93

Table 20—ltem topics

APPENDIX C (Continued)

 

 

sex relat/
year sex in gen. contrac. STDs preg. totals
W 1971 2 1 0 0 3
1973 0 0 0 0 0
1976 0 1 0 0 1
1979 1 0 0 0 1
1981 1 0 0 0 1
1985 3 1 0 0 4
1987 1 3 1 0 5
1988 1 0 1 0 2
1991 ..3 .Q .Q .1. ._4
12 6 2 1 21
(57.14%) (28.57%) (9.52%) (4.76%) (100%)
W 1971 1 0 0 0 1
1973 5 0 0 0 5
1976 1 1 0 1 3
1979 4 1 1 1 7
1981 9 1 3 1 14
1985 6 2 3 1 12
1987 3 0 4 1 8
1988 4 3 2 0 9
1991 1.3 .2 .3 .1. .19
46 10 16 78 78
(58.97%) (12.82%) (21.51%) (7.69%) (100%)
W19” 9 1 1 0 11
1973 6 1 1 2 10
1976 8 0 0 0 8
1979 8 1 0 1 10
1981 10 0 2 1 13
1985 12 2 2 2 18
1987 14 0 3 3 20
1988 11 4 1 2 18
1991 19 .1 .2 .4 .25
97 10 12 15 134
(72.39%) (7.46%) (8.96%) (1 1 .19%) (100%)
Totals 155 26 30 21 233
(66.52%) (11.61%) (12.88%) (9.44%)

94

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