Women On Top – First Issue Report
Following in the wake of a successful launch of For Women comes Women On Top, published by the same company, Northern & Shell, and available on newsstands from this week.
Women on Top is of a different nature than that of its bedfellow, this being evident both editorially and visually. For Women is a “women’s magazine”, looking and reading like a cross between Company magazine and a raunchy version of Hello. Women on Top is much more along the lines of the Sport, with front page headlines such as “Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon” and “Tom’s Cruise Missile”. The first issue sets the mould, displaying a total unknown on the cover, following in the path of certain male porn magazines perhaps, where a ‘face’ is not used to sell the magazine, rather the enticement of what is inside. The cover of this magazine does not entice. It does not even tickle. It certainly does not look like a magazine one would read on a train.
Once past the first hurdle things slump rapidly. ‘For Women’ has on average 14 pages out of 100 displaying naked men. It has interviews, fashion, letters pages, advice and the usual features of a womens’ magazine. Women on Top dedicates approximately half of its space to the nude shots and the remainder to “stimulating articles” which could very well have been written by Fiesta readers’ wives.
One failing of both magazines is that they hold promises that they do not fulfil. WoT boasts the inclusion of stars like Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and Kurt Russell “provocatively posed.” If one can count a seven year-old photograph of George Michael posing for a Wham video, complete with swimming cossie, then perhaps the boast is justified. Women on Top is not up to the standard of Northern & Shell’s former launch. Too many contradictions exist within the concept of the magazine. On the one hand they are trying to slant more towards “top shelf” type material, discarding the usual frivolity of womens’ magazines, but on the other they are trying to attract a specifically female readership, who might actually like such frivolity. The contradiction could cause problems.
Advertising in the magazine is much the same as that in For Women – sex aids, phone lines and supervirilty videos, with no mainstream ads whatsoever. The editorial/advertising ratio is also the same, standing at around 90/10.
Northern & Shell is planning the launch of yet another womens’ soft porn magazine, Women Only, due to be released in September. Galaxy Public is introducing Ludus – Women and Sex Today, at the beginning of October and X5 Publishing will launch the European edition of Playgirl at the end of this month.
It is difficult to judge whether these magazines are merely jumping on the For Women bandwagon or whether research has shown that there is a desperate gap in the market for women’s pornography magazines. Surely this is a case of “too many cooks”. Although For Women has accumulated a circulation of 360,000 it is unlikely that the other launches will have such an impact. The market is bound to reach saturation point before too long. Women on Top may have reached the newsstands just in time, before saturation sets in.
Page Mono: £2500 Page Colour: £3000
Women On Top: 071 538 8969