Magazines in the checkout line: Airbrush much?

When you look at magazines while going through the check-out line, you mostly find pictures of celebrities at their worst. This is what some people thrive on and what they want to see. They want to see stars exposed to either make themselves feel better or just to see that they can make mistakes as well. If celebs are not on the cover showing their flaws, they are using sex appeal. Whether the cover shows a male or female, the cover still portrays the same image, such as men without a shirt showing off their six-pack or women with hardly anything on. This makes people think that this is an ideal image of how a person should look, when really this is far from reality. The wealthy can afford to blow their money and drop thousands on any kind of body enhancement method. So when people see this they ask themselves, how can I be like that. In this case, when a person sees a magazine headline that says that you can lose 5 pounds in a week, it draws them in. Magazine buyers want to be entertained and informed to escape their own lives and to relate it to their own personal lives. According to Kristina Joukhadar, the cover is about 75 percent on why people actually buy a magazine off a stand. Even though magazine sells are declining, the value of the magazine is more important to the person rather than the price of it because it is what he or she wants to see or read about.

Reference: Koukhadar, Kristina. "Changing Rules of Newsstand Sales". PBAA.

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