'Wired' Mag's Chesty Cover Not Feeling Great for All Women
Now that the December Wired is hitting inboxes, some women are noticing that the cover image, which is breasts, seems to them like an extension of the magazines use of women as rare decorative objects. (Even while the issue does address advances in tissue reconstruction.) Since in particular women don't make the cover this decade on their Wiredey merits. Fortunately Wired editor Chris Anderson is listening!
@anildash I hope your 2nd reaction was to read the article, on the science of breast tissue engineering. Make sense now?
Chris Anderson
chr1sa
Or not. But did you read it ladies?
The ladies did! Also.
@chr1sa @anildash Alt cover for female Wired readers: re-engineered extra-ocular tissue strained from eye-rolling.
Elizabeth Spiers
espiers
I had a similar quandary as I was reading the Highlights article on school uniforms in the dentist's office the other day.
Of course, I wouldn't have even started on the piece had it not been for the upskirt cover.
That's what they get for making Goofus art director.
Hence all the dildoes in Hidden Pictures.
You have to admit that Chris Anderson's constant pushing to be one of the worst people ever is pretty impressive!
He's got my vote.
At the newsstand it's impossible to distinguish what magazine is about what because they all, no matter what the subject matter, feature female flesh on the cover. So I'm guessing it has something to do with surviving as a publication, not an easy thing. So that may very well be the choice: covers like this, or no magazine.
But aren't newsstand sales a low percentage of overall sales for most magazines (save maybe the tabloids or ones like People)? I mean, I know they're one of the few places where a reader pays the cover-advertised fare for an issue, but I was on a panel a few weeks back with an editor at Spin who said that he thought relying so much on newsstand sales as an indicator for whether or not a publication was performing well was a sign of a broken model and ultimately led to poor editorial decisions.
That said, the only thing surprising about this particular Wired cover is that it didn't go further as far as showing nipple. Any publication that pitches itself to geeks has to have a fair amount of embedded sexism in order to cater to its target demo.
So that's what SPIN blames for its editorial decisions…
I you check their “jobs” listings on their site it seems like SPIN is filled with one or two paid staffers and an army of interns.
Just sayin’
WIRED
Inside: Worst Beach Bodies Eva.
Well, the thing is—if it isn’t obvious already—but print is dying and dead and subscriber numbers being an indicator of readership to this degree is only a recent phenomena. In the 1970s & 1980s, newsstand sales meant something. Heck, finding the one or two “cool” newsstands that dealt with unique publications was like manna from heaven.
Then the decline began in the 1990s and got worse in the 2000s thanks to the Interwebs. I literally cannot remember the last time I purchased a magazine for my own personal use outside of a work request. Maybe 1995?
Whatever.
The boom is over. The boobs are the indicator.
To be fair, even the men on the covers are usually from the Entertainment industry and not some nerdy techies (most of the covers are just pretty illustrations), with the exception of 1 or 2 per year – which, of course, is infinitely more than the number of techie women (0)… so, yeah, down with Wired.
(although I haven't read it in years)
Wired's circulation is circa 700,000. Their newsstand has been about 80,000 an issue each year.
(And also one thing to remember about circ v single copy sales is that, single copy sales are like cold hard cash. Circ is important for ad base, but single copy is dollas.)
I went to a magazine store to pick up Wired for a work project. And with that cover, I couldn't find the magazine. It was camouflaged.
Because it was being demoed by strippers?
Dear Wired,
I never thought I would be writing you but recently at a technology convention a G-4 OS X (10.5.3) IMAP protocol specialist suggested I join her in the exhibit booth and take off my pants while she flicked her tongue in my 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip. While her friend grabbed me from behind I exploded all over a 768 pixel dock Connector with a VGA Adapter. Needless to say I would like to hear from other readers with similar experiences.
Name withheld on request
At least they're vaguely realistic-looking boobs?
At least Wired isn't even pretending to write about technology anymore. And they've been pretending for a very long time now.
Hey, why didn't you tell me the new issue of Weird was here? I love their hilarious send-ups of hit movies.
I have a hard time believing that if Wired mag's featured article were to be about something like testicle implants that there would be a giant nutsack on it.
Chris Anderson can spin it however he wants but it's still just sexist and uncreative.