According to websites for women, you are normal if you follow fashion, slave over your make-up daily, worry about dieting, enjoy psycho babble quizzes, and so on. I was browsing some this weekend and found them more than irritating, irrelevent and unoriginal. For me, that is. Which makes me wonder if I'm normal.
I must admit, I never buy magazines although I'll read them whilst waiting to see the doctor or dentist, but I never come away wishing to subscribe to one immediately. I don't often go into the women's pages of the online papers I read and when I do, don't stay long.
What I am interested in, as a female, is not the tra la la of the sort of thing I'm supposed to like, but the more nitty gritty of how women interact and network. Sharing information, tips, secrets, ideas and spreading the word. That sort of ambiance is missing from websites for women. They are too commercial, blatant, individual, unsubtle and obvious. It seems there is a 'formula' when designing magazines, websites etc., for women which I'm sure must be pretty successful as sales are good and the sites get many visitors, but there must be a collection of women who are not satisfied by the offerings available and find them as boring as I do.
Women are more than a collection of pots and potions, wardrobes full of clothes they never wear and 50 pairs of shoes. We value relationships built on sharing, trust and empathy, and I believe this is an area not yet catered to on the internet. Hopefully this will be rectified in the coming months as I have a new project to work on...
you do realise you are advocating a non dumbing down approach? I would have thought in this day and age your target audience would as such make it harder to sustain?
ReplyDeleteWeight-loss: no thanks, I weigh 52kg.
ReplyDeleteZak - yes, I know, but I'm just hoping that even though our target audience might not run into millions, at least I'll enjoy working on it and discover some interesting stuff from the contributers.
Bravo for your reactions! This is exactly why reading other women's blogs is so satisfying to me.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Antipo. Women who actually write about who they are and what they do seem to bear little resemblance to the 'target audiences' of women's magazines.
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