Today, Cosmopolitan is the magazine that women turn face down when they slip it into the supermarket checkout, faithfully trying to hide their interest in getting the “deepest” orgasm, burning more carbs, or answering the eternally asked but unanswerable question: why do men act the way they do?
But the magazine that so many women place on their list of guilty pleasures didn’t begin as the cleavage laden, sex advice bible it is today. It’s editorial content has gone through several drastic shifts in order to hold readership-each period very different from the last.
Cosmopolitan’s audience when it was launched in 1886 by publishers Schlicht & Field as The Cosmopolitan was pretty much the opposite of what it is today- a periodical aimed towards families, with a smaller section for women’s interests.
That’s right, a family magazine! The Cosmopolitan continued this format for two years until the original publishers passed along the editorship to E.D. Walker, who had worked for Harper’s Weekly. Besides giving the magazine a snazzier look with color illustrations, Walker started running serial fiction and book reviews, successfully tripling circulation.
The Cosmopolitan changed its editorial content again in 1886 when John Brisben Walker bought the magazine. Under this ownership Cosmopolitan featured first rate and popular writers of the time, such as Jack London and Edith Wharton, and even serialized H.G. Well’s novel War of the Worlds.
Cosmopolitan shifted editorially yet again when publishing giant William Randolph Hearst bought it in 1905. Whereas Cosmopolitan had focused more on literary criticism and fictional writing, under Hearst the magazine hired investigative journalists like Charles Edward Russell, and had features by muckrakers such as Ida B. Wells and Upton Sinclair, who critiqued and brought attention to various social injustices in America.
As for the Cosmo of today, we have Helen Gurly Brown to hold responsible. Readership declined in the 1950s, and when Brown became editor-in-chief in 1965 she reconstructed the magazine with the aim to affirm and advise what has become known as the “Cosmo Girl”-single women who engage in pre-marital sex.
Much of the guidance offered by Cosmo magazine and other literature produced by Cosmo of the 1960s directly reflects the same values it projects today. While Cosmo embraced and embraces the independent and self-sufficient working girl, the sex advice given is often meant to please the man rather than to fulfill or satisfy the needs of the woman. For example, while the 1969 book The Cosmo Girl’s Guide to the New Etiquette gave liberal suggestions on how to tactfully cheat on one’s husband, the tips given for behaving in the bedroom are contradictary because they are very centered around female submission to the male libido: “Faking an orgasm is right, proper, considerate, prudent…if making love and orgasm mean absolutely nothing to you, but you love this man and want to keep him happy.”
While the wording of this statement may seem a little dated, the semantics of it really isn’t different from any coverline which graces Cosmo today-“How to be a Total Man-Magnet,” “Make Him Crave You,”-the list goes on.
Cosmopolitan magazine has historically changed its editorial agenda to stay marketable, and although readership is currently high according to their circulation information in their media kit, it could still change. The name Cosmopolitan has represented different things since it was launched, and just because the Helen Gurly Brown version of Cosmo has endured for the last 40 years doesn’t mean it always will- the diverse history of this magazine’s content shows it is capable to turn a corner if its audience does as well.
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