{"id":32134,"date":"2011-01-11T10:27:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T15:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=32134"},"modified":"2012-06-14T01:23:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T06:23:53","slug":"guest-post-cosmos-fake-cover-hides-orgasms-from-advertisers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/01\/11\/guest-post-cosmos-fake-cover-hides-orgasms-from-advertisers\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmo’s Fake Cover Hides Orgasms From Advertisers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cosmo's<\/a><\/p>\n

The cover of January\u00a0Cosmo<\/em> is as sexed-up as ever \u2014 on newsstands at least. But we got a copy of the version the mag sends to advertisers, and it’s\u00a0significantly<\/em> more chaste. What’s going on here?<\/p>\n

Note the miraculous disappearance of “60\u00a0Sex Tips<\/a>” and “Orgasm Virgins” \u2014 suddenly,\u00a0Cosmo<\/em>‘s appropriate for your grandma! Or your grandma’s favorite retailer \u2014 a tipster suggests that the cleaned-up cover is meant to be “more appropriate for conservative [advertising] clients, which the ad sales team is hoping to fool.” If so, they’re not doing a very good job \u2014 the table of contents in the ad-friendly version still lists both the sex tips and the orgasm piece as cover stories.<\/p>\n

\"Cosmo's<\/a><\/p>\n

A spokesperson for\u00a0Cosmo<\/em> offered this terse comment in response to our queries: “It is common for magazines to have different versions of the cover.” \u00a0We decided to see if this was indeed common at other publications. Caroline Nuckolls at\u00a0Teen Vogue<\/em> told us the magazine usually has just one version of the cover \u2014 but of course,\u00a0Teen Vogue<\/em> has a cleaner image to start out with, and less to hide. So we called\u00a0Maxim<\/em>, known for its lad-mag raunch \u2014 a source there told us they too produce just one cover, which goes out to newsstands, subscribers, and advertisers alike. This isn’t to say that\u00a0no<\/em> magazine does what\u00a0Cosmo<\/em>‘s done, but it’s not an industry-wide standard.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not a surprise that a publication feels it needs to put its best foot forward to attract ad dollars \u2014 still, creating whole new cover lines is a pretty big step. Which coveted advertising account merited such a drastic cleanup? Some high-fashion brand? (Current\u00a0Cosmo<\/em> advertisers include Dior and Chanel.) Mainstream car or consumer products companies? (January’s issue includes an ad for Chevrolet.) Maybe they’re gunning for that\u00a0Candie’s<\/a> account? Whatever the brand,\u00a0Cosmo<\/em> assumes the ad buyers don’t read very carefully, and don’t know that the mag’s been providing sex advice and orgasm pointers to eager middle-schoolers for\u00a0decades.<\/em><\/p>\n

Send an email to Anna North at\u00a0annanorth@jezebel.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cover of January\u00a0Cosmo is as sexed-up as ever \u2014 on newsstands at least. But we got a copy of the version the mag sends to advertisers, and it’s\u00a0significantly more chaste. What’s going on here? Note the miraculous disappearance of “60\u00a0Sex Tips” and “Orgasm Virgins” \u2014 suddenly,\u00a0Cosmo‘s appropriate for your grandma! Or your grandma’s favorite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,129,23703,120],"class_list":["post-32134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32134"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32140,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134\/revisions\/32140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}