Marie Claire: My Favorite Magazine!

Marie Claire is my very favorite magazine, and from one who is addicted to magazines of all varieties this is pretty high praise. I have received probably 30 different magazines and Marie Claire is one of the few that consistently stays on my subscription list. I find it a delightful mix of fluffy stuff and serious issues for perfect reading on the treadmill, at the airport, or wherever else I decide to indulge.

General Information
Marie Claire’s slogan is “for women of the world” and it is targeted, obviously, primarily at a female audience. I think it would be enjoyable for women of all ages but most of the women featured in the articles are in their twenties and thirties. Marie Claire comes out once a month. I have a subscription as part of a 5 magazines for $30 deal from bigmags.com. The cost advertised in the magazine for a subscription is $15.00 for a 12 issue, one year subscription. A single issue on sale at a news stand costs $3.50. Marie Claire is a publication of Hearst Magazines which also publishes Cosmopolitan and a variety of other popular magazines.

Marie Claire Content
I enjoy Marie Claire a lot because it has a little more depth and international focus than a typical woman’s magazine. This is not to say fashion is ignored, of course! The following are some of the features found in a typical issue of Marie Claire.
Regular Columns - The standard letters column is featured at the front of each issue and readers can write in via email. There are also giveaways each month for beauty products, clothing, and perfume. One of my favorite segments is the You and Your World column which examines a common item such as an overnight bag or night stand belonging to women from three different countries. It is very interesting to see what a average lady from Indonesia carries in her back pack.

Fashion and Beauty - Like any other women’s magazine, Marie Clare devotes many of its pages to the latest trends. Most of the articles are focused on making the most of the body you have within your financial means. A recent issue featured an article called Sexy Jeans for Your Size, Shape, and Budget. Jeans in this spread started at $40 in price for a pair of Levis and went up above $200. This means I could actually afford some of the clothing pictured unlike in other fashion magazines like In Style.

Current Events - Marie Claire takes on topics that are much edgier and more controversial than most other women’s magazines. These pieces almost always focus on the situations of women living in difficult conditions. One recent article was an expose on sex tours in Thailand and the U.S. tourists who support the industry. My husband picked up the article and was shocked how interesting it was, seeing as it was in a girly magazine and all. This month’s topic was a look at the women of the Middle East and their fight for a more powerful role in society. A powerful piece on meth abuse and addiction was also worth reading.

Entertainment - Every issue of Marie Claire has a 㥶 Best to Do” section with
movies, books, and music coming out that month. There are celebrity interviews with whichever star is on the cover of the magazine for that particular month. Recent articles detailed the lives of Jessica Alba and Cameron Diaz.

Love and Sex - Of course, this wouldn’t be a woman’s magazine without the obligatory eligible bachelors. Obviously I skim through these. There are usually one or two sex articles with thrilling topics like "Sex Lies You Must Know!" or whatever but generally the sex content is lower than, say, Cosmopolitan.

What I Like
Obviously, I really like this magazine. I try to stay up on current events pertaining to women’s rights through other media, but I know a lot of women don’t. Marie Claire tackles the tough issues both in the U.S. and other countries that many women might not think about otherwise. It isn’t pleasant to read articles about poverty in Africa or female genital mutilation, but awareness is the first step to taking action to solve these problems. I love the international focus the magazine has taken and it is moving more and more in that direction.

I also like the body-friendly focus the magazine takes. There are occasional articles on healthy eating or exercise but generally the emphasis is to make the most of the body you have when shopping for clothing. The emphasis is more on health and well-being than looking really hot all the time. Marie Claire usually has great coverage of important health issues and events such as Breast Cancer Awareness month or Little Red Dress Day to prevent heart disease.

As far as clothing goes the fashions are realistic for a real woman instead of a celebrity or a runway model and there are usually options shown for several different body types since the same article of clothing rarely looks good on all of us. The celebrities on the cover are always wearing something fabulous I love and usually you can enter a contest to win it. I haven’t won yet, but one of these days…

What I Don’t
I think this magazine is primarily targeted at single women since there aren’t a lot of articles on being married or aimed at women with children. I’m a pretty hip married person but I certainly have no use for articles on eligible bachelors, dating, etc. The magazine doesn’t focus too much on this stuff but there is usually one article in each issue that I just kind of skip over. While this is a negative for me, it may be a positive for any single ladies looking for an eligible bachelor so I guess you can’t please everybody!

As with many of my other magazines, I am constantly annoyed by the stupid new subscription cards falling out of the thing while I work out on the treadmill. Why not attach it to the inner spine? And why do I need 47 offers to resubscribe in every issue? Not to mention those perfume samples, they totally make it hard to keep my page open when I’m working out on the treadmill.

Overall…
Of course I would not want the whole magazine to be deep and intellectual because then it wouldn’t be a fun, fluffy, girly magazine. At the same time, Marie Claire does challenge me and expose me to some situations women around the world are battling that I might not otherwise be aware of. It’s the perfect mix of lipstick, shoes, movies, and current events and I don’t see myself canceling my subscription any time soon.