The star that Cosmopolitan Magazine refused to put on its cover
A FORMER Associate Editor at Cosmopolitan has revealed the behind the scenes secrets you never knew upon its closure.
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EARLIER this week, Bauer Media announced the December issue of Cosmopolitan would be its last.
After 45 years of publishing in Australia, Cosmopolitan — a magazine run by young women, for young women — is no more.
I have a love for Cosmo that runs deep. I worked there for six years, in two separate stints, and was in the running to become editor-in-chief following the departure of my old editor, Bronwyn McCahon. I wrote countless features, interviewed hundreds of “real women” — magazine speak for non-celebrities (and then spoke with actual celebrities).
I helped to invent thousands of headlines and cover lines, I tested sex toys and fitness gadgets and weird skincare products. Best of all, I had the pleasure and privilege of working with some of the most talented, hardworking women I know to this day. I had a ball, in short, working for Cosmo.
We all did. Its mission, to be a straight-talking best mate, the kind you go to when you need outfit appraisal or to figure out what to say in a job interview or to get advice on your new boyfriend, was something we lived and breathed in our office.
But over the course of my years there, I heard so many times, in varying forms, that Cosmo was a magazine for silly young girls whose interests ran from having a good hair day to having a great hair day. I heard it from my own friends, from my family, from people I barely knew. I used to laugh it off, which is basically tacit agreement, but over the years I developed a way to show these detractors that they were wrong.
But with the death of Cosmo this week, I think it’s time we finally saw it for the groundbreaking feminist magazine it was — and reflected on exactly what it could have (should have) done to stay relevant in the digital age.
Labelling women’s magazines silly and saying that they lack substance is reductive, incorrect and sexist (I wonder if anyone, anywhere has ever said that about GQ or Esquire, with their similar mix of content?).
This kind of labelling reinforces the tired idea that women’s interests just aren’t as important as men’s, and shouldn’t be taken seriously (see also: chick lit, the appalling pay gap in women’s and men’s sports, the derisive term “mumpreneur”).
The truth is that Cosmopolitan was born breaking new ground; its failing was not doing that at the end. Helen Gurley Brown, who transformed Cosmopolitan from an ailing literary journal (yes, really) to the must-read bible for young women, was feminist in her own way (though it should be said that some of her views, namely about the LGBTQI community and her lax attitude to sexual harassment, would be seen as pretty horrific today).
She championed working women at a time when many women simply did not work, or stopped working when they got married. She showed women it was a perfectly valid choice to not have children. And of course, she helped usher in the sexual revolution, telling readers their sexual pleasure was their right, not an optional extra on a menu designed by and for men.
Many of Gurley Brown’s ideas — about independence and freedom of choice and women’s rights — were still intrinsic to Cosmo right to the end. I wrote about everything from the pay gap to abortion rights to domestic violence and its bitter sister, emotional abuse.
One of my favourite interviews from that time was with Syl Freedman, a young woman who took on pharmaceutical giant Bayer and got them to stock the medicine she needed for her endometriosis treatment in Australia. We ran stories on finance, career, sexual health and politics.
But while Cosmo championed concepts like body positivity (they’ve been running models of different sizes since 1997), there were so many other things the brand could have done to stay relevant today.
Looking back, through today’s lens, we were too white, too hetero, for way too long. While we did a good thing by showing women that beauty comes in many shapes and sizes, we weren’t so forthcoming when it came to skin colour. Indeed, I remember a particularly awkward meeting when higher powers told our editors we couldn’t run Beyonce — who is, I should remind you, Beyonce — on the cover.
And while we ran thousands of sex-positive stories, I could probably count on one hand the ones that mentioned lesbian women.
It’s shameful stuff, and when you look at the ways millennial brands like Junkee and Buzzfeed have included all audiences right from the start, it seems crazy that Cosmo didn’t take its initial ethos of fun, freedom and feminism and adapt to these ways of thinking. Those publications should have shown us how far behind the times we were.
But about that sex positivity stuff: it matters.
We had so much fun writing about sex in a way that felt cheeky and girl-positive. (My headline “Game of Moans: Winter is coming … and so will you” remains a career high point. We also did a sex toy special called “Sex Toy Story: Starring Your Old Mates Buzz and Woody” that Disney really should have sued us over.)
Yes, we did write about how to please your partner — but there were many more stories about how to make sure you got what you wanted from sex. It was great content, and I stand behind it. But it wasn’t enough to sustain Cosmo through the digital age.
Last year’s September issue of Cosmo featured three social media stars — Lauren Curtis, Kayla Itsines and Pia Muehlenbeck — with the headline “We are the future”. Looking back, it seemed like a death knell for the once iconic brand.
Both Bauer and ACP (the company that owned Cosmo before Bauer) were too late to embrace digital, and when they did, they did so half-heartedly, never giving the resources, time or attention that the brand needed to compete online properly, against native, digital-first brands. When I rejoined Bauer earlier this year, on a different title, I asked a senior exec, whether Bauer would be making podcasts any time soon. He replied, “You know what? I think there might be a future in podcasting. We’ll see.”
I was agog. How could the senior execs of a media company not be in touch with what was happening in media?
Much has been made of why exactly Cosmo is shutting its doors — from Bauer’s mismanagement to the lack of inclusivity to the power of the digital age — but I wonder if part of the reason is simply that Cosmo had done its job. Maybe young women don’t need a straight-talking best friend anymore; maybe they are their own best friend. Maybe they have learned the lessons espoused by Cosmo for so many years — that their bodies are just fine the way they are, that they deserve to have a good sex life, that having a vocation is important, that good friends are so much better than sh**ty boys, that if you like lipstick and heels you are not a bad feminist — you are simply someone who likes lipstick and heels.
Maybe, when it all comes down to it, Cosmo did a pretty good job of showing women how great they are. Maybe that’s why we don’t need it anymore: because it did exactly what it set out to do.
- Lauren Sams is a former Cosmo Associate Editor and Features Writer. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenSSams
Originally published as The star that Cosmopolitan Magazine refused to put on its cover