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The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
Fashion magazine is an important issue in culture studies and feminist studies. To
disseminate whole fashion products, advices, and living attitudes, fashion magazine
both are media and living guidebook to women. But there are many critics to these
fashion magazines, such as those female models shape some stereotypes about women,
or their innocent face, white skin and thin body make most female under an
unnecessary pressure. Recently, based on the globalization context, there are many
studies concern about how indigenous interpret those international fashion magazines
(Hung, Li, & Belk,2007; Morimoto & Chang,2009; Wolf, 2004).
There are over 30 different magazines published in Japan, Western and local in
Taiwan’s market. Some Japanese and Western magazines translated into Chinese (for
example: ‘Ray’, ‘With’, ‘ELLE’, ‘VOGUE’ et al.), and some are in the original text
(such as ’Cancam’, ‘MORE’ et al.). The readership of fashion magazine usually is
ahead of all kinds of magazine, so that researchers can’t ignore the influence of this
media culture in Taiwan. The targets of most of these fashion magazines are 16 to 30
years old women, and there are different segment strategies for these magazines to
satisfy all readers. Besides separating the young readers (under 24- year-old) and the
mature women (generally over 25-year-old), there are various style of clothing to
discriminate, such as OL(office lady) style, sexy-look style, or nature-look (austere)
style and so on.
Western fashion magazines usually use large scope images to represent a model and
the cloth she dress. The columnists publish and advocate some living attitude to
women, as ‘Happy New You’, ‘Glow Time’, ‘Cool, Classic, Modern’ and so forth.
Unlike the above, Japanese fashion magazines tend to trivialize the layout, and
emphasis more clothing outfit and beauty salon. There is a unit as ‘one month
clothing guideline’. The editors choose around 20 pieces of clothes, and try to fit
women’s monthly living by creatively collocating. Not like beauty salon in Western
fashion magazines usually introduce YOGA, SPA salon, Japanese fashion magazines
more often teach readers some tips that women can DIY in the house or in the office.
Fashion magazines published in Taiwan are more like Japanese fashion magazines.
Different sources of fashion magazines represent various fashion and female culture.
To be a ‘beauty’ seems like an international appeal, and there are a lot of global
power to influence women’s imagination and opinion to beauty images. This paper
tries to examine how the local women in Taiwan think about those all kinds of fashion
magazines and those models in the fashion media text. According to their responses,
this paper attempts to clarify the factors behind of women’s needs, wants and
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