Class Response: The Importance of Magazines to Our National Identity

    Today, when most people think of magazines we think of glossy volumes full of fashion, beauty, scantily-clad women, cars, or anything else that stereotypical audiences would enjoy.

    I refuse to add the Swimsuit addition of Sports Illustrated for obvious reasons, but I'm sure you can grasp what I'm talking about without having it displayed along with the women's parts that are normally covered up with clothing. I refuse to participate in the sexualization of women.

    Anyways, before magazines were demassified they had everything in them, and they rose in popularity to become the first national medium. Magazines contained something for everyone: sports, fashion, literature, comics, puzzles, recipes, and in-depth investigative reporting.

     Now, some people might say that because magazines ended up being demassified courtesy of television anyways, we might not have needed magazines to have our own national identity. We would have used some other medium, like newspapers. I disagree.

    Magazines had something for everyone, so everyone wanted something from the magazine. This boosted literacy rates in the United States as reading became instrumental in keeping up with this new trend. Also, because the majority of Americans were reading the same or similar recipes, fashion advice, regular advice, literature, and whatnot they began acting a certain way as a nation. That's right, they no longer were a collection of people from various different countries but Americans. They had American fashion trends, cooked American foods, and read stories from American authors posted monthly or bi-monthly in magazines.

      Which brings me to my next point: magazines kick-started American literature. Authors were able to send their stories in by chapters to be published in the magazines. The use of publishing houses to publish full-lengthed novels was an oddity among emerging authors. Magazines became a discovery tool much like YouTube is today for upcoming musical artists.

        Magazines were an irreplaceable part of the development of the United States of America as a country.