Leaving it up to God...and magazine editors

Interesting study in Science Daily:

African-American women's magazines are more likely to encourage fad diets and reliance on faith to lose weight, while mainstream women's magazines focus more on evidence-based diet strategies, according to the study by UI researcher Shelly Campo, published in a recent issue of the journal Health Communication.

Not really sure if I have a comment about that study, I always find discrepancies among magazines so interesting. Another that comes to mind is how during Breast Cancer Awareness Month last fall, almost all the women's magazine suggest that people buy things in support of the disease, as opposed to actually testing themselves or other potentially life-saving tips:

Marshall surveyed 9 magazines from a grocery store rack --Essence, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, Women's World, Ladies Home Journal, Glamour, Vogue and Beyond Breast Cancer -- and found that all of them trumpted breast cancer articles on the covers of their October issues, but only two also covered domestic violence. What's worse, she writes, "of the coverage dedicated to breast cancer, much of it was offensive, superficial, misleading, or flat-out wrong."

Consumerism at its finest.

Also, this seems as good of a time as any to bring up something I look forward to each month: The MagHag Black Model count. The blog has taken it upon itself to point out how few minority models appear in both editorial and advertising pages of women's magazines, and follow it up every month with a tally of all the magazines.

Two interesting points: first, they distinguish between celebrities and other models...always good to know that without the feature article on Rhianna and other celebrities in January's Allure, you'd be left with 2 non-celebrity black models, 1 asian and one 'ambiguous' race girl.

Second, January is apparently the unofficial 'minority' cover month for a lot of magazines. They suggest the low ad pages in the month correspond with the minorities on the cover. Not sure if this is directly related, but interesting nontheless.