Research Paper on:
Consumer Culture and British Fashion Magazine Influence

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
influences, consumerism and the projected images of women and men in todays society has led to a great deal of research in the fields of sociology, psychology and economics. While  fashion magazines have changed their format a great deal in the past century as today their pages contain over one third in advertisements, their content has also changed a great  deal. While researching the development of British fashion magazines within the last century, magazines such as Vogue, Elle and InStyle, initially showed that the focus of fashion magazines was womens  clothing and the models were portrayed as older elite women who replaced the dolls previously used. Although women models replaced the dolls, there was no emphasis on the body of  the woman. Men did not appear in advertisements and no close-ups were taken of the models. The influence of the fashion magazine on the female consumer at the beginning of  the 20th century reflected the expectations of society in regards to conservative or opulent looks depending on the decade. Today, British fashion magazines tend to reflect the standards, or lack  of standards, as now seen in the music and media industries. Models within fashions magazines, both men and women, are seen as the disturbingly images that continuously reflect not necessarily  the expectations of society but the unreal and artificial world of the media. A recent study of focus groups opinions of images found in Vogue magazine found that most women  and men feel that they can discern from the images presented in fashion magazines those images which are more "realistic" than others. In addition, it appears that in regards to  consumer choice, fashion magazines are considered one of the less reliable sources available to consumers who prefer peer, family and local store recommendations over that of fashion magazines which appear