Cosmo On Campus

By: Lizzie Dearden

Last week, glossy magazine giant Cosmopolitan invaded our campus with its free spin-off magazine: Cosmo on Campus. I discovered it in Vanburgh stalls and intrigued by the lurid pink and yellow front page featuring a horrified-looking Fearne Cotton, I picked up a copy. Although the cover brands the magazine as ‘New!’, this is the publication’s second issue. It was launched last October and timed to appear shortly after freshers’ week. But why is it here? Cosmopolitan publishing director Julie Southall described the magazine’s aim: ‘bringing content that is relevant at that stage of life to build loyalty to Cosmo and recruit new readers.’

I find this justification confusing. The need to ‘recruit new readers’ surely can’t be a priority for the biggest selling young woman’s magazine in the world. In my experience, students who want to read Cosmo already buy it. In fact, when I brought Cosmo on Campus home, the regular edition of Cosmopolitan was sitting on the kitchen table.

And what is ‘relevant’ to students that can’t be found in the regular magazine? Ostensibly, Cosmo on Campus is merely a slimmer, less shiny edition of regular Cosmopolitan, featuring fashion, beauty, careers, sex and the obligatory insight into ‘what goes through men’s minds.’ The articles relating to specifically student issues in the magazine feel more relevant for sixth form students applying to university. A feature entitled ‘Uni wars!’ compares four universities based on the opinions of current students. The introduction’s acknowledgement that ‘now you’re there’ highlights its fatal flaw: the article is redundant. Comparisons between universities serve to make readers feel either glad of their choice or bitterly jealous. Either way, it’s too late to do anything about it.

There is also a wealth of articles on university life, which according to Cosmo, constitutes drinking, partying, having sex, losing friends and buying lots and lots of clothes. Undeniably all of these things are part of some students’ lives, but isn’t there more? Is this all female students are interested in? The magazine’s reductive portrayal of university life only serves to patronizingly inform current students of what they already know. The front page blares: ‘Students spill all on…One-night stands! Spending diaries! Partying hard!’, describing three aspects of university life that will have been experienced directly or indirectly by readers by the time they encounter Cosmo on Campus. They do not need to be informed of the everyday by a magazine.

But maybe I’m being too harsh, there is career advice after all. The magazine helpfully gives female students ‘5 Tip Tips’ from industry experts, including ‘Build up your makeup kit to take to each job’ and ‘do everything with a smile on your face.’ The experts were chosen from women’s ‘top five choice of careers’: makeup artist, TV producer, fashion designer, reporter and retail buyer. Of course. At points, Cosmo on Campus feels like a literary Tardis, taking us back to the time where wearing a lot of make-up and a nice big smile was the key to a woman’s career (if not a career in itself). In fact, such women appear frequently in the magazine. As with most women’s magazines, unrealistically thin and beautiful women stare vapidly from every page. On seeing the photograph of twin models wearing corresponding corset and fishnet combos, I wondered if the graphic designers of Cosmo and Maxim had somehow been confused.

The editors of the magazine invite readers to ’email your rant on absolutely any topic’ to them. I think I know what mine will be about.