Every time I’m in a queue at my local grocery store I see – seemingly week in, week out – ghastly looking women’s magazines in garish background colours with unflattering photos of Judy Finnegan on the cover. Very occasionally of Dawn French, but usually Judy. For non UK readers Judy Finnegan is a middle-aged former daytime TV show presenter. I suppose you could say she’s put on a bit of weight, but so what. She is no longer a public figure, as far as I’m aware. Somehow, vast numbers of these trashy looking women’s magazines seem to be more of less entirely based on serving up ever more unflattering paparazzi pics of Judy on the cover with sensational (and almost certainly non-story promoting) headlines such as ‘Fat!!!!’ ‘Wrinkles!!!’ ‘Judy goes shopping!!!!’ ‘Judy puts bins out!!!’
My question (specifically to AW women) is this: who buys this sh*t? Is there REALLY a commercially significant tranche of women who want to buy magazines promising photos of flabby has-beens minding their own business? Why?!?
deramdaze says
I can seriously say I don’t buy, and never have bought, this stuff.
Better person? Probably not, but seeing The Sun every day in a post room for three years of my life made me think….anything else.
About Judy, apparently, coming from Manchester, her and her mates used to hang around to see the groups going to the Top of the Pops studio.
Not your favourite group, I know Colin, but the act she used to wait for was The Stones – her favourite Stone, Brian.
I like her VERY much.
minibreakfast says
Not me, that’s for sure. Unless it turns up in Record Collector, I shall remain blissfully unaware of it.
Moose the Mooche says
These aren’t the kind of magazines I generally peruse either.
todayoutof10 says
Hey @colin h. I’m a woman who loves looking at other women (and men) who look great. Ofcourse, that’s subjective. I personally am a sucker for the lean, good looking, stylishly dressed look. And I, at times, subscribe to coveting that look. I guess that makes me a perfect consumer for fashion mags, although I do most of my browsing online.
However, I don’t derive any pleasure from the other side of this media, which, as you describe, seeks to shame people when they’re other than model like. Judy certainly looks like she’s had a hard shift but I shake my head when I see this. I don’t think I’m in the minority so I’m guessing what’s inside the mag might account for sales. If anyone buys them, that is…. ❤️
RubyBlue says
I haven’t bought a women’s magazine in decades.
I don’t think it’s just magazines. It’s everywhere- newspapers, forums, Twitter, Facebook…the picking apart of women for the terrible ‘crime’ of getting older. Or having cellulite; no makeup; too much makeup; too thin; too fat; ‘flaunting their curves’ blah blah.
Accidentally read some vile abuse on FB today about a woman’s eyebrows. Eyebrows! Oh and ‘back dimples’ are the new ‘thigh gap’.
It’s scary out there.
Colin H says
Jeez, it sounds like it is – stay indoors, Ruby, for God’s sake!*
(* Not that any of the ‘crimes’ you mention apply to you in any way! Just a general warning to the sane and normal among us…)
Mike_H says
They are scandal & gossip mags, loosely-based on a tried-and-tested American model but slightly less libellous. Only targeted at women because men are less interested in the sort of gossip and scandal that they peddle.
I don’t know if any research bears this out or not, but I imagine their primary readership is the wives/girlfriends/daughters of Sun or Star-reading men.
Tiggerlion says
I don’t buy any music magazines.
Moose the Mooche says
The Word used to do a pretty good line in unflattering cover pictures of celebrities…
pawsforthought says
I assume that these are the same magazines that have a picture of smiling soap stars alongside some real life story with the headline ‘my killer husband’ or ‘raped by my dad dressed as Santa Claus.’ Similarly I can’t imagine anyone reading let alone buying one of these things, but they always seem to turn up in our waiting room at work.
Colin H says
It means that SOMEBODY is buying the stuff… and then donating it to waiting rooms…
I think one of the Finnegan headlines I spotted today was (in all seriousness) ‘Judy’s new hell: daughter back at home!’
Locust says
There’s no pleasing these magazines really; a woman will be mocked for being either too fat or too thin, looking too old or having ruined her looks with too much plastic surgery, flaunting her disgustingly expensive wardrobe or looking like a homeless person, showing too much of her body or probably hiding something awful underneath those baggy clothes…etc
I haven’t properly read one in many years, but working in a shop that sell them, and being in charge of sending back the unsold copies, I amuse myself sometimes by guessing what the sensational headlines on the covers actually mean…
I don’t know what the British magazines are like but here they are experts at writing headlines that makes you think one thing, and then it’s actually something much less exciting when you read the article in the magazine.
I got a good laugh recently when the cover of one of these said in big bold letters (next to a photo of them looking like they just had a fight): “Chris’ embarrassing secret – Madeleine doesn’t know what to believe!” (that’s one of the Swedish princesses and her husband) and the story inside was that Chris told the reporter in passing about the time when he’d fallen off his pony as a child, and his wife looked at him like she’d never heard that story before… It’s just idiotic non-stories like that from start to finish, really.
Colin H says
You’d think even the (presumably) stupid women who buy this stuff would realise they were being duped after two or three times of buying such magazines with sensational headlines that end up being total non-stories.
Apart from minor royals, is there a constant stream of faded minor television personalities in Sweden on these magazine covers? Or is that just a UK thing? There is, I believe, a general feeling that the UK media like to build people up then knock them down (and in some cases trample the ashes of their careers for years in these crappy ‘celeb’ magazines, it seems).
Locust says
Oh yes, and these days a surprising amount of reality TV “stars” and bloggers with pumped up lips and fake tans. Both Swedish ones and of course the ubiquitous Kardashians.
But it was much the same in ye olde days as well, when I grew up the busiest “celebrity” in these magazines was a female dentist who enjoyed wearing leopard prints and getting her photo taken while sipping free champagne. Well, I guess it beats drilling into other people’s teeth…
Colin H says
I going to see a dentist this afternoon. If I walk in and he’s wearing leopard print and guzzling champagne, I will be walking straight out again.
Carolina says
The UK magazines use exactly the same misleading cover headlines here, Locust. I often see the ones like Woman or Woman’s Own at the local petrol garage shop and it is usually a picture of Judy Finnegan taken on a bad day looking miserable with the headline “Judy alone and desperate” and inside it will be a story that Judy was alone at home and was desperate for a cup of tea but had run out of tea bags. Well maybe I exaggerate slightly but not much. Also getting the same overblown cover treatment will be Colleen Nolan and the state of her marriage, or Linda Robson.
I can ‘t work out why people don’t catch on to their ruses either, Colin, but maybe it’s the whole magazine they want to read anyway.
Colin H says
I laughed out loud, Carolina! ‘Judy desperate for a cup of tea’ – fantastic! 😀
Locust says
I’ll never forget the one from many decades ago when the headline said “The King’s best friend has died” and inside was the story of how his horse had passed away to the green pastures on the other side… (a horse again – what is it with royals and their horses?)
Twang says
I have to laugh at the The Observer with the main paper full of hand wringing right on articles about equality etc, anti body consciousness, fretting about the effect on young girls and so on, then the magazine is full of pin thin models and recommendations for £200 flip flops or whatever.
mikethep says
Daily Mail Oz recently went for Samantha Armytage, a local TV presenter, for wearing what it delicately termed ‘giant granny panties’ while out shopping. Lord knows why they thought that was news, but the resulting backlash shocked them into retracting, apologising and promising not to indulge in ‘fat-shaming’ again. I doubt they’re delivering on that promise though.
Sniffity says
Not quite shaming, but last week another magazine had a photo of ex-wife of Paul “Crocodile Dundee” Hogan out and about with a man by her side. The breathless copy told us “Despite reports to the contrary, Noeleen and her husband Reg Stretton…were spotted shopping for homewares in Sydney recently. The cute pair, who married in 2000, are even planning a special celebration for their 17th wedding anniversary” with anonymous sources declaring that the couple are “happier than ever” and that Reg “has always been her rock.”
One tiny problem, as one of Noeleen’s grandchildren pointed out – Reg has been dead for many years, and that was her son she was snapped shopping with (no wonder the “sources” were anonymous).
mikethep says
It’s the incompetence that is so unbelievable. Obviously you can’t get the staff.
fentonsteve says
I flicked the past covers of about two dozen copies of Hello/OK/TakeABreak whilst waiting for a haircut. Judy was the only cover star* I recognised. Does that make me high-brow? As the father of a teenage daughter, it does make me a bit concerned.
(*) Headline: worded to make you think Richard had died, story actually: a bit teary at George Michael’s funeral.
Colin H says
If I were Judy Finnegan (which is, I admit, very hard for me to imagine), seeing godawful photos of myself on multiple ghastly looking magazines on national newstands and at supermarket tills every week, year after year, I think I would simply move to the Shetland Islands, buy an island and hide for years. She must have enough money from those decades of daytime TV shows.
Moose the Mooche says
Richard blew it all stocking up his Millennium cupboard.