Queerly ?

Cosmo Transnationally

Introduction

I became interested in tracking and analyzing the production of subjectivities

(raced, sexualized, gendered, and classed) through the process of transnational

consumerism as an interesting way for me to put together my local interests in the

representation of black women in popular U.S. print media with the interests of a

transnational feminisms class I took with my mentor Dr. Lessie Jo Frazier. With funding

from the Friends of the Kinsey Institute Collaborative Grant, Dr. Frazier and I obtained

subscriptions to international issues of Cosmopolitan to allow for a more focused study

of a particular “Western” artifact of popular culture that now freely circulates in the global

marketplace. Examining the “fun, fearless, female” branded form of womanhood that is

published and disseminated by the largest diversified communications organization

through the best selling women’s magazine on the planet, Cosmo, which ultimately

allows us to reflect on the implications of American influence in the kinds of cultural

production from emergent democratic (capitalistic) development projects worldwide.

Ultimately, Cosmo is important because it has a long history rooted in the Great

American tradition of the free market and has become, as mentioned before, the largest

circulating women’s magazine in the world. Cosmopolitan magazine is useful as a tool

of analysis to explore theories of globalization as they relate to consumer practices,

advertising, and women’s magazines, because while Cosmo is creating “imagined”

subjectivities—the fun, fearless, female—it is literally helping to build up and legitimize

“real” world cities and by extension nations that are able to participate in the lucrative

endeavor of publishing and distributing Cosmopolitan.

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Sources and Methods

This paper utilizes primary resources materials and comparative and critical

content analysis for investigative research, and when I was limited by language, I

engaged in interviews to access and discuss findings. [THE DATA SET] The primary

resources discussed herein include eight issues of Cosmo UK published 1997-2008,

one Cosmo France published September 2000, five issues of Cosmo South Africa,

myriad Cosmo US and representing Cosmo’s most recent market expansion into a

newly developing free market economy, one Cosmo Russia published May 2007. Other

primary sources include HMI (Hearst Media International) corporate documents

including promotional materials, websites, court cases, merger and acquisition

materials, and media coverage of the same. Our insights about the internationalization

of Cosmopolitan Magazine is contextualized by theories of globalization, including

Saskia Sassan’s ideas about what constitutes a “World city,” in conversation with the

critical feminist theory in Inderpal Grewal’s Transnational America: Feminisms,

Diasporas, Neoliberalisms.

[cosmo brand blurb] First I am going to give you a bit of Cosmopolitan history,

because it helps to us understand how Cosmo has proven itself as a “successful”

vehicle of power for nation building in burgeoning democracies, as demonstrated by its

own rise to the position of the premier women’s magazine on the globe. Cosmopolitan

Magazine is indeed a manifestation of the American Dream 1 for the Hearsts who made
1
The American Dream is based at least in part on “the Protestant work ethic” and insinuates that America
is a meritocracy where success and wealth is possible for anyone through hard work. Stuart Ewen claims
that at the outset advertising appealed to the American Dream and created “universal notions” of human
desire appealing to the “human instinct” to fulfill one’s needs, while simultaneously connecting products to
those natural desires; Walter Dill Scott, a prominent 1911 psychologist, argued all humans aspire for
“social prestige,” “beauty,” “acquisition,” “self-adornment,” and “play” which are all facets of high social
status and evidence of the realization of the American Dream. Advertising still nurtures “universal” human
desires calling for coherence to the social order in accordance with progress and homogenization; Stuart
Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, (New

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their fortune by helping build the great nation of the United States. The Hearst fortune

began the nineteenth century with George Hearst’s foray into the American west to find

gold. What he found instead were minerals for mining and an interest in American

politics where he became one of the first U.S. Senators (to protect his business

interests). Much like the mindset of his father who through mining took advantage of

the land’s natural resources, in 1887 William Randolph Hearst began to take advantage

of business opportunities in publishing by purchasing other’s failed endeavors; thus, it

was through corporate mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, and monopoly that Hearst

Corporation began its ascent to become the largest “diversified communications” empire

in the world. 2

In the early twentieth century, William Randolph Hearst changed Cosmo to a

women’s monthly magazine geared toward one of the nation’s first niche markets:

married white women. The magazine was used as a means to connect advertisements

for new products that were created in the American factory boom of early mass

capitalism to the nation’s growing white populace. By purchasing the magazine white

American women and men interpellated themselves into the new capitalistic system

playing their role as the good consumer citizens. Cosmo taught upwardly mobile white

women the latest in American fashions and helped to solidify the white national beauty

norms and standards that still exist today, but it also brought politics and popular fiction

of the time to its readers who included men as well as women. The Cosmo reader was

a cultured person of the world who read “America’s Best Fiction and Fact,” as an early

York: McGraw Hill, 1976): 30, 35.

2
“A Brief History of Hearst Corporation,” Hearst Corporate Site, 2007, Accessed at the world wide web
on June 15, 2008 at: http://www.hearstcorp.com/magazines/property/mag_prop_cosmo.html

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cover boasts.3 While it successfully brought international politics and pulp fiction to its

readers for a half a century, during the Second World War Cosmo dropped its focus on

politics altogether. The Hearst Corporate Website reports that Cosmo was faltering by

1965 when Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl, became the editor.

I would like to think that Cosmo’s failure to reach its readership of the early 1960s

was due in part to Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking 1963 book The Feminine Mystique,

which critiqued the media for exploiting women by using their “femininity” in what she

called a “sexual sell.”4 In Mystique Friedan connects women and men’s rigid, limiting,

and ultimately devastating gender roles to nation building through the fostering of false

promises of “individuality and freedom of choice” in one’s married relationships. 5 In

other words, the sexual sell was based on the fiction of gender roles in a capitalistic

system. Friedan asked her readers “what happens when a woman bases her whole

identity on her sexual role; when sex is necessary to make her ‘feel alive’?” 6 The

answer for Cosmo magazine is simply that millions of dollars happen. When Helen

Gurley Brown became editor in 1965, she transitioned the failing magazine known for its

engagement in “the cult of true womanhood” into a sexy lifestyle magazine for young

women.

While the activist arm of the second wave of the feminist movement worked on

such important women’s issues as equal pay and the right to safe abortion, Cosmo

covered other new topics, such as single womanhood and women’s sexuality. Gone

was the sexually repressed “victim of the sexual sell,” 7 here was a new sexually free
3
Original emphasis, Cosmopolitan, September 1951, Vol. 131, No. 3, pages 45, 108-110, (New York,
NY:Hearst Magazines, Inc., 1951).
4
Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique, (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963); 209.
5
Friedan, 228.
6
Friedan, 265.
7
Friedan, 209.

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woman, the “fun, fearless, female.” Richard Streitmatter in Sex Sells! The Media’s

Journey from Repression to Obsession compares Cosmo to Playboy in terms of the

level of sexual freedom expressed, and although Cosmo has been rightly criticized by

feminists for promoting a too narrow view of modern womanhood it did serve to open

the media floodgates to (A CERTAIN KIND OF) public discourse about sex and

sexuality for women.8 This change in the direction of the magazine marks a turning

point in American popular culture, because it gave white heterosexual women (and

men) if only rhetorical sexual citizenship that they had not heretofore experienced.

Cosmo’s readership took off and through acquisitions and merger opportunities, in 1971

Cosmo hit the international market in the UK and today the “Fun Fearless Female”

Cosmo woman is a internationally recognized brand and a lifestyle in more than “34

languages and distributed in more than 100 countries”. 9 [cosmo dist.]

Findings
Cosmo Russia
The magazine as a text cannot be interpreted at this time, however, the Russian
edition of Cosmo is strikingly different in appearance than its counterparts listed herein
(see footnote ii). The magazine is 98 pages—nearly one hundred pages fewer in length
than the U.S. Cosmo at 244 pages, the French Cosmo at 170 pages, and the UK
Cosmo at 320 pages, which debuted on the market ten years ago; according to The
Moscow Times, Cosmopolitan was the first glossy magazine to appear in post-Soviet
Russia and has since entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the magazine
with the highest circulation rate in Europe.10
The magazine is filled with American celebrities that have arguably left the
spotlight, including Sylvester Stallone and Barbara Streisand, but Angelina Jolie, who is
featured on the cover in a modest grey t-shirt, is still a popular American figure and the
corresponding article appears to be her filmography (pursuant to the imagery
accompanying the text which depicts scenes from her films). The magazine appears to
have very few feature articles, but includes multitudinous advertisements featuring
8
Richard Streitmatter. Sex Sells!The Media’s Journey from Repression to Obsession. (Cambridge:
Westview Press, 2004): 68.
9
“A Brief History of Hearst Corporation,” Hearst Corporate Site, 2007, Accessed at the world wide web
on June 15, 2008 at: http://www.hearstcorp.com/magazines/property/mag_prop_cosmo.html
10
The Moscow Times / FIPP (International Federation of the Periodical Press), “Russian Cosmo becomes
Europe’s official top seller,” accessed on the World Wide Web on May 6, 2007:
http://www.fipp.com/Default.aspx?PageIndex=2002&ItemId=11977.

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American or “Western” products, such as Gillette Venus razors, Chanel, and three
different makeup ads for L’oreal Paris. There are no women of color in the magazine
and only one small image (2x3) of an Asian girl of about ten years old smiling directly
into the camera in what appears to be a feature about travel (determined from the photo
of Paris also on the same page).11 Images that illustrate men and women together are
few, but appear as candid photos of lovers dancing and kissing paired with what
appears to be a quiz (a characteristic of Cosmo magazine in general).
Cosmo France
While heterosexuality is the primary mode of sexual preference or sexuality in the
Russian edition of Cosmo, the French September 2000 issue acknowledges and
politicizes at least one aspect of queer identities, male homosexuality. “Elles aiment les
homes qui aiment les homes,” or “women who love men who love men” is a four page
feature article that first discusses American films that introduced female desire for the
“feminine” or “sensitive” man into popular culture; the article then discusses French
parity—bureaucratically enforced gender equity in the French government—and moves
into the deeply felt frustration of French women who fall in love with gay men. 12 Paris is
overemphasized and women are presented in a stereotypical French manner, cigarette
in hand wearing a beret paired with text that valorizes Paris.
The French edition of Cosmo magazine is distinctive from its transnational
counterparts in that the fashion is distinctively Couture (“high brow”), a high art form that
originated in Paris, France. The pairing of high art in Couture fashion with nude
women’s sexualized bodies is an interesting layout maneuver. This particular issue of
French Cosmo features fully nude women showering in an article discussing “webcam”
girls. Collins and Lutz in “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race
and Gender in National Geographic Magazine,” argue that “art” lends to interpretations
of images (and things) as aesthetic, which can (and often is) extended to a “potential”
interpretation of images as pornography.13 The images of women dressed in Couture
clothing are not overtly sexual, rather they depict fully dressed women in urban
environments like New York, but the articles surrounding the fashion layouts explicitly
depict sexualized nudity and discuss American sexuality (in movies and on the internet).
Thus, the imagery paired with the articles about voyeurism lends the magazine to a
pornographic interpretation.
[change slide] Cosmo UK
Unlike the French edition’s overt acknowledgement of male homosexuality in a
feature article, the September 2000 UK Cosmo contains a small advertisement (one
inch by one inch) for a lesbian magazine (found in the end of the magazine), along with
many small ads for “walk in” abortion clinics. According to The Observer UK, abortion
has been openly discussed regularly in Cosmo UK since its groundbreaking introduction
to British readers in 1972.14

11
Cosmopolitan, Russian Edition, May 2007, (see endnote ii).
12
Insights and translations of French Cosmo are from information interviews with Jordi and Anne, April
26, 2007.
13
Catherine A. Lutz and Collins, Jane L. Collins, “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of
Race and Gender in National Geographic Magazine,” in Lancaster, Roger N. and Leonardo Mcaela di
(eds) The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy. (New York: Routledge, 1997):
299.

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 The UK Cosmo, like the French edition, is arguably more “dangerous” than the
American edition. In addition to regularly and openly discussing women’s political
issues like abortion and sexually transmitted diseases and prevention it also willing to
exhibit nude women’s bodies. However, the manner in which this occurs is very
different from the French edition (and there is no nudity in the American and Russian
editions) as the images depict nude women without being sexual: the images are
medicalized.
Advertisements for cosmetic surgery are more abundant in the UK edition of
Cosmo than in the three others; the last fifteen pages contain multitudinous referrals to
clinics that fix women’s “problem areas” while photographs feature bear breasts and
buttocks. Lutz and Collins argue that while art aetheticizes, science “dissects,
fragments, and desexualizes” creating a safe distance between the viewer and the
object.15 Nude women are featured in advertisements for cosmetic surgery, thus
medicalizing their nudity and eradicating the possibility of a pornographic interpretation
of the images by women (but likely not by male readers); however, the text and articles
in the UK edition of Cosmo are more descriptively pornographic in “how to” sex feature
articles than in the other transnational versions.
One article explicitly asks women to “try the Venus Butterfly” and describes
exactly how to do it “use one hand to stroke his penis and with the other hand, rest two
fingers on his perineum—the area between his testicles and his anus”; 16 such explicit
sexual language is not present in the other three transnational versions of Cosmo
explored herein indicating, at least, linguistic and cultural differences in the countries
represented in the editions herein. Marjo Vapaakoski, in “Differences in Language in
British and American Editions of Cosmopolitan Magazine,” performed a comparative
linguistic analysis of British and American Cosmo and found that
“many distinctively British expressions are being replaced by American, or
International English. During even the short time span between 1997 and
2000 many words that have been characteristic of American English
increasingly are appearing in British articles, but never the other way
around. It would really stand out if you saw the word “telly” in an American
publication but it does not even catch your attention to see “movie” in a
British one. 17
Cosmo America
While the French and British Cosmo seems to celebrate women’s bodies, the
U.S. Cosmo treats sex and sexuality with a particular tension. The text protects overtly
sexualized language, using words like “package” instead of penis and never totally

14
The Observer UK, “Cosmo at 35 - still sexy and campaigning but now faces sharp competition:
Rebecca Seal charts the rise of the British edition of a magazine that fought for women's rights but now
faces sharp competition” February 4, 2007, accessed on the World Wide Web at
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2005648,00.html
15
Ibid.
16
Cosmopolitan, British Edition, August 2000, (see endnote ii), “Your 14 Day Sex Holiday”: 94.
17
Marjo Vapaakoski, “Differences in Language in British and American Editions of Cosmopolitan
Magazine,” The FAST Area Studies Program, Department of Translation Studies, University of Tampere,
2000, accessed on the world wide web on May 6, 2007 at: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/P1/USGB/mv-
cosmo.html

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exposes women’s bodies, but alludes to nudity instead by showing only sections of
women’s bodies out of context with the rest of the body (for example, a bare midsection
with no legs or head). At the same time the magazine is hyper-sexual with features that
expose “Naughty Sex Tricks!”18 Every claim in the U.S. edition of Cosmo is bolstered
with the authority of science. In fact, heterosexuality is legitimated through medical
language making the connection between men and women literally biological in nature.
For example, the article that correlates with the cover blurb “Naughty Sex Tricks!”
lists the stages of the (hetero)sexual relationship beginning with the first six months—
when sex is characterized by chemical responses caused by adrenaline—and ending
with “two years or more,” when a “chemical called oxytocin (known as the cuddle
hormone) [is released] more than adrenaline,” thus, indicating the necessity of keeping
“things” interesting in the bedroom: these claims are all bolstered by medical fact by
author and clinical psychologist Linda Mona, Ph.D., “director of research at
MyPleasure.com.” 19 What is perhaps most striking about the U.S. edition of Cosmo
though—in addition to the scientific legitimization of heterosexuality—is the depiction of
African American women against their Caucasian counterparts in the advertising.
Cosmo South Africa [slide]
The May 2008 issue features a story “What Makes Us Different from Other
Guys?” about two UK transmen Jay McNeil and Lee Gale living in South Africa. (119).
The feature is describes how the two transmen dealt with their “Gender Identity
Disorder.” The article features the names of local transsexual organizations, including
clinics in the area, and resources about gay and lesbian community and health centers.
The feature quotes American scholar Patrick Califia, author of Sex Changes: The
Politics of Transgenderism, who discusses the difficulty of being recognized as a man
by society. However, the article also acknowledges male privilege. What might be
most radical about this piece aside from the informative information about clinics and
hormones is the information about McNeil and Gales embodiment. Both men had top
surgery only, keeping their “female” organs intact. South Africa and Spain are the only
two countries in the world that allow legal gender identity change without surgery.
Transsexual subjects of South Africa describe the pleasures and dangers of an
enlarged clitoris and an enjoyment of sexuality—a full sexual citizenship.
ARGUMENT (findings)
Locating the Cosmopolitan Subject Transnationally

How does one explain the fact that while Cosmo U.S. encourages heterosexual

sex—“How Long Should You Wait to Sleep With a Guy? Finally, a Straight Answer”

(Cosmo U.S. March 2007)—its international counterparts engage in discussions about

homosexuality? How does one make sense of seemingly conflicting values in

magazine editions, like Cosmo France, that openly promote heterosexual relationships,

18
Cosmopolitan, American Edition, March 2007, (see endnote ii), “How to Keep Sex Naughty”: 138.
19
Ibid., 138-139.

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but then work to subjugate hyper-sexuality by using “real” stories about women who

have fallen in love with homosexual men? There is an interesting disarticulation here

between what is actually going on in U.S. Cosmo, as an almost “repressed” version of

Cosmo international, versus the United State’s global reputation as the Great Nation

and “the leader” in all things. The disarticulation manifests as a result of locating

Cosmopolitan magazine within an international framework.

Internationalism is an insufficient framework for this project, due to the

insinuation of the connection between two nations and the presumably one-way flow of

information and money as with much foreign aid legislation. Further, Amanda Lock

Swarr and Richa Nagar argue that international “development theory” tends to

“simplistically equate gender with women.”20 This is a problematic correlation, however,

once one understands the nuances between the international editions of Cosmo

magazine. Because Cosmo is published in more than one hundred countries around

the world, while simultaneously demonstrating a somewhat different take on the “fun,

fearless, female” within each region, it is helpful and necessary to locate Cosmo within

the framework of transnationalism, which then allows for cultural exchange rather than a

one way flow of information. In the context of this project, transnationalism should be

understood as a form of what Grewal describes as networks of “connectivities” among

and between nations that work through capital flows. 21 Cosmo functions as a

representative artifact of a product emanating from what Saskia Sassen identifies as

“global cities.” Sassen argues that global cities are developed in an evolutionary

manner on a scale of hierarchy where certain cities “function as command points for the
20
Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar, “Dismantling Assumptions: Interrogating ‘Lesbian’ Struggles for Identity
and Survival in India and South Africa,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2003, vol. 29, no. 2, 492-
516; 494.
21
Grewal, 4.

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organization of the world economy.” 22 [flows slide?] American Cosmo is distributed from

nine U.S. cities, the top three of which are Chicago, New York and Los Angeles; as a

part of their seduction of advertisers in promotional materials called “Cosmo’s cool

Cosmillion” they claim that from these nine cities advertisements will reach 6 million

readers in America alone.23

Therefore, transnationalism should be understood in the context of this project to

indicate racialized and gendered power relationships comprised of capital and ideas

that move “across nations and national boundaries,” but that also produce subjectivities

that remain intimately “tied to national imaginaries.” 24 Thus, while Cosmo U.S. takes a

particular form within the U.S., that basic template is altered once the magazine is

produced in a different region/country/nation. The transnational version of the Cosmo

woman will demonstrate the overall ideal of the “fun, fearless, female” (as indicated

paratextually), but with a region specific flair, like the overrepresentation of Paris in

Cosmo France. Thus, the frame of transnationalism helps to explain variations in the

Cosmo template, which helps to understand that our perception of disarticulation is

actually regional variation.

Conclusions

Cosmopolitan magazine is enmeshed in this nation’s past through its roots in the

Hearst fortune, a fortune that helped build America to what it is today. Being the largest

diversified communications corporation means the Hearst name is linked to many if not
22
John Beynon and David Dunkerley (Eds.) Globalization: the Reader. New York: Routledge, 2000: 71-
72.
23
This paper can only speak to the distribution methods of HMI in America as this information is posted
on the web, whereas international methods for distribution are not listed; “Cosmo’s Cool Cosmillion,”
Hearst Corporate Site, 2007. Accessed at the world wide web on April 13, 2007 at:
http://www.hearstcorp.com/
24
Grewal, 11.

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all different forms of mass media—publishing, radio, television, movies—worldwide.

Cosmo participates in the globalization of “femaleness” through the “fun, fearless,

female” brand womanhood, where desire deployed through the branding of femininity,

earning Cosmo women citizenship in the world’s marketplace based upon their hyper-

(hetero)sexuality and consumerism. Cosmo is important because this idealized or

imaginary woman is part of an active construction of 100 and growing national

narratives for a democratic capitalistic marketplace. The Cosmo brand woman

represents sexual agency and freedom for “female,” or rather, feminine women

reminiscent of Friedan’s ideas in the Feminine Mystique. Alternatively, womanhood that

is actively constructed and perceived in newly developing democratic nations, such as

South Africa, India, Russia, and Portugal provides rhetorical freedom of sexual

expression for women. Paradoxically, advertising, which propels the Cosmo enterprise,

commodifies women’s bodies as sexual objects, thus (re)inserting the “new” Cosmo

woman into another globalized system of patriarchy.

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