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Cosmopolitan
by bringingsexyback
WHAT IS IT?
Cosmopolitan is a glossy womans magazine that is published monthly.
WHAT'S IN IT?
This is a magazine for women who like fashion and cosmetics mostly because there are a lot of fashion pages and adverts for expensive skin care and make up. There are interviews in the magazine and very often ... they are from the fashion world, if regular people are featured it is for better reasons than magazines like Take A Break and their stories hit you harder.
There are celebrity interviews but Cosmopolitan make long and in depth for one big celebrity instead of a lot of short meaningless interviews. That is better I think and shows that the magazine has got more class.
WHAT I THINK
I like to buy Cosmopolitan not for myself but for something to offer to my clients to read while I am doing their make up or hair. A lot of my ladies do not like this magazine and there is a type of lady who will read it, they are usually younger ladies with a bigger interest in clothes and beauty techniques than my older clients.
You can buy Cosmopolitan in a normal magazine size and a smaller copy that will fit better in your bag so that you can read it while you are out of the home easier. Very often they have a free gift on the cover and that is always worth more than the magazine, sometimes I have bought it just for the free gift because they are always beauty items and that is a good way to try something new.
I get very angry because there are very many adverts in this magazine and I feel sometimes that I am paying for these companies to advertise their products so the magazine should be cheaper. The adverts are all high class but there are too many, sometimes there are sachets of skin cream or foundations stuck to the adverts but that is not very often now and the expensive brands do not give these samples out in Cosmopolitan anymore.
I do not like the problem pages or the horoscopes in Cosmopolitan and some issues I do not offer to my clients if I think there is too much sexual content inside. I think Cosmopolitan has too much sex in some issues and they think that makes them modern but it makes the magazine tacky, I do not think this is required so much.
A lot of the fashion in Cosmopolitan is for ladies who have a perfect figure and that is a pity because they say this is a magazine for all women but that is not true for the fashion. I think their holiday features too much for women with no families also and the advice or destinations are not very thoughtful for people with children to think about or people who are on a budget.
3 Dooyoo Stars.
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Take A Break
by cornishchic
When I was growing up my nan would buy Take a Break on a weekly basis and I often helped her do the puzzles inside. She always sent off for the competitions and after winning a Super Ted toy set I was hooked and loved helping her. Now I'm older I've followed in her footsteps and often buy it for myself too. I'm not one for fashion ... magazines but prefer this as it is more my scene with the real life stories and puzzles to waste away 10 minutes.
Take a Break is issued every week on Thursdays. The standard issue costs 84p but they occasionally sell special seasonal editions which cost a little more. Take a Break can be found on sale from anywhere that sells magazines such as supermarkets and corner shops.
It's safe to say that reading this isn't too hard, it is written in simple English and it's really easy to read without becoming confused about words or phrases used. The majority of the stories featured in each issue are real life stories, these are usually on a variety of different subjects and create a variety of different emotions. From crazy, deranged partners, sick family members, murders and fundraising for poorly children, literally everything has been covered in their real life stories.
One of the main reasons some people buy this magazine is down to the puzzles. It features a variety of different brain teasers from a basic word search and code breaker to more complex puzzles that require more brain power such as a crossword and arrow word. The puzzles have the same format every week and are usually placed around the same page number each issue. For example, a tiny 4x4 basic arrow word type puzzle is always on the first double page spread. The prizes for the competitions are usually pretty hefty too, a brand new car and huge 4 or 5 figure cash sums are normally included with smaller prizes for some puzzles.
The magazine is definitely focused on the reader with the first double page spread containing pictures that readers have sent in, from funny moments to cute children. Readers also have the chance to send in their own savvy tips, letters and short stories. These don't feature as much as the longer real life stories but it breaks it up a little as you read through.
Towards the end of the magazine you will find a couple of pages on beauty, cooking, health, horoscopes and the like, readers can send in their questions and some get answered and published. I like these pages as the information Take a Break give is realistic and this gives readers genuine ideas for where to buy clothes and beauty products and not stupid ideas that cost a lot of money.
Take a Break definitely isn't a magazine you should read if you want to have an intellectual read. It is more suited to have a read when you're sitting down with a cup of tea, passing ten minutes. I usually read through the magazine quite quickly but then have it lying around for days as I do the different puzzles. It's one of the cheaper magazines to purchase yet it's one of my favourites and something I will continue to buy in the future.
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Glamour
by scooch12
I would class myself as a regular Glamour magazine reader, although I now buy it on an 'ad hoc' basis as my subscription rate turned out to be very similar in price as buying it separately after the first year! It's usually on an offer price of £2 per issue and it's issued monthly. It's primarily aimed at women in their 20's and 30's and ... covers a variety of issues - celebrities, fashion, make up, beauty and relationships being the main topics they focus on. It's a very popular magazine and so is available in all supermarkets and newsagents - the price is set by the magazine themselves so you'll always pay the price specified on the front wherever you buy it from. Often you find a freebie on the front cover - I've had all sorts of free things in the past included in the £2 price - benefit cream and nails inc nail polish are two that immediately come to mind. The nail polish was a full sized bottle and individually would have cost a lot more than the magazine itself! The magazine comes in a travel size issue, there is no full size edition. It fits nicely into your bag as it's only A5 size. There's around 300 pages in each edition.
I personally find it a good read for the articles. I used to read Cosmopolitan a few years ago but felt I grew out of it as a lot of articles just seemed too young for me. Glamour feels much more appropriate for my age range (I'm nearly 30). But, another reason I don't buy it as often nowadays was because I started to get quite annoyed by the sheer number of adverts. I assume this is how the price of the magazine to consumers is kept quite low but it is frustrating when you open the first page, then the second and third - looking at the issue I have here with me for example, apart from a contents page, the first 'article' is a letter from the editor on page 11! The adverts are for a variety of things but mainly perfumes and make up and to be fair the odd time there's a sample to be tried. I'm not interested though in a two page picture of someone wearing Next's latest outfits or Julia Roberts smiling advertising a perfume for Lancôme - I don't even particularly like adverts anyway but I've paid to see these ones! The adverts really ruin the flow of the magazine. When you read an article in there (after finally reaching one), you turn over and there's another advert or two before the next small piece. This goes on and on throughout. I would say at least a third of the magazine pages have adverts emblazoned all over. There's also usually a 'promotional' article where a piece is written around say a 4 page advert - at least you get something to read with it but alongside that is the fact that the advertised product is mentioned time and time again in the piece.
Adverts aside, the regular pages include a letters page that shows readers letters about articles in previous magazines and a few do's and don't pages usually based on a fashion that's doing the rounds - they say what they think works and what doesn't with celebrity outfits. They usually have a celebrity interview each month - the most recent one being Jessica Alba. Sometimes though, it can be someone I've never heard of, usually because they're in a programme I've never watched. Sometimes they have male celebrity interviews too, but these aren't very often. The front cover usually has the celebrity image on the front, presumably to attract readers. There's a 'Hey It's Ok' page that I find quite amusing - they start every sentence with those words and then finish it with something that some readers secretly do - eg 'Hey it's ok to organise a night out just because you want to wear your new pair of shoes'. There are often articles on some serious real life adult issues, a lot of which include readers experiences too. For this reason, I would definitely only recommend this magazine to adult women and not to teenagers. There's a health and diet section, a small travel section and horoscopes too amongst other things. It's hard to mention any other sections as they tend to change fairly often but their are many other 'one off' articles included too.
I would like to recommend this magazine for the articles, but if you don't like looking at adverts, then I really wouldn't buy it because the magazine is littered with them! I rate it 3 stars overall - I think it's earned those as the articles are enjoyable and it covers quite a broad range of female issues.
Thanks for reading :o)
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