First, you’re assuming that it’s the same readership from year to year. There’s no problem with repetition if you have a high readership turnover. Look at the extreme cases – magazines targeting brides or first-time parents. Would anyone see any problems with them recycling articles every few months? Of course not, most of the readership would have either moved on or would be focusing on a different set of articles.

Second, you’re assuming that there’s no value in repeating articles as reminders. Again, look at the extreme cases – the year-end financial planning articles, the late winter tax preparation articles, the articles on how to help your kid apply to college (and financial aid!), etc. There is a bit of seasonality to fitness, e.g., how to prepare for winter sports (or social expectations at the beach), but a lot of it is just a reminder.

BTW Runner’s World also has a lot of repetition. But again there’s a lot of turnover (people starting to run recreationally) and seasonality (many people have an easy winter and run progressively longer races during the warm months). Why wasn’t it mentioned as an example of reselling the same story?

In all of these cases there’s a lot of new material that just isn’t mentioned on the cover. Columnists, healthy recipes, interviews, product (or fashion) reviews, etc.

I think a lot of this reaction is because of our own expectation that fitness magazines will be shallow and the readers a bit challenged. I don’t think either is true, although I will admit that the only fitness magazine I consistently read is the one targetting personal trainer, not the ones you can find in the airport magazine store.

Even the magazins title is misleading, branding a six-pack as a health issue and not a fashion issue. Unfortunatly, the six-pack is a phenomenon that requires unhealthily low levels of body fat. In addition, for many humans it is unattainable due to their genetic dispositions.

A product that fulfills a need permanently makes no economic sense. A product that fulfills needs temporarily is far better.
But the best product are those that are believed to fulfill needs that have been fabricated and can in fact not be fulfilled. After all, once you have a flat stomach, you need a six-pack. Once you have a six-pack you need an eight-pack. And if thats achieved, there are all other body parts, skin issues, your hair, your nails, yor breath and so on.

My approach currently is to achieve a body that can easily cope with every day tasks and for the rest I try to build my self-esteem instead of my body.

I agree with the rest of the post, but this is an extremely strong claim about the economics of magazine publication! Do you have any evidence for it that tends to exclude alternative hypotheses?

Here’s one: men mostly get their ideas about what constitutes an attractive male body from sources other than “health” and “fitness” magazines aimed at men. Men’s Health keeps writing the same article and reproducing the same cover design because men have absorbed the thin-and-firm waistline message from other sources. Advertisers choose to advertise in Men’s Health because they want to target men who are interested in a thinner waistline.

Would Men’s Health sell as many magazines if they wrote articles about how to lower your cholesterol level and lower the risk of heart attack? Are there no advertisers who would be interested in promoting the low-cholesterol, no-heart-attack message?

This hypothesis doesn’t deny that magazines like Men’s Health have an impact on male appearance norms and cultural ideas about what “health” is: by trying to appeal to men’s desire for a thinner waistline, the magazines end up perpetuating the thin-waistline norm.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Men’s Health is picking the thin-waistline stories rather than the low-cholesterol stories because that’s what the advertisers want rather than because that’s what sells magazines, but you haven’t provided any evidence for your hypothesis, which strikes me as extremely implausible. Of course, the hypotheses aren’t mutually exclusive, but you’ve pretty clearly decided that one of them is much more important. What’s your evidence.

Apparently these desperate-for-abs “bottoms” also have goldfish memories, to need the same instructions repeated on a monthly basis. :p

Offering a well-reasoned critique of some cultural phenomenon does not indicate shock, outrage, or even offense.

I do know that some of the strongest, fittest, most kick-ass men I know do *not* have washboard abs…not even close. The whole 6-pac thing is just as must about vanity as, say, women’s obsession with “perfect” boobs and butts. It’s not about functionality at all.