LONDON, NOV 24: Selfish, superficial and obsessed with sex that's the unflattering image of British women that emerges from a survey by leading female magazines.``Today's British woman has no children, cares or responsibilities. Her life is a round of tawdry indulgences. She rarely thinks, except of sex,'' concluded a survey of Britain's 11 top-selling women's magazines.``She enjoys drunken pranks once associated with adolescent boys and calls this `girl power'. Her only moral value is being non-judgemental; counselling is the solution to every problem. She is reluctant to make an effort in any cause except the gym,'' said the survey by the Social Affairs Unit, an independent research and educational trust.The Social Affairs Unit looked in detail at 11 magazines aimed at 20-40 year old women with a combined circulation of more than 3.7 million.It found the picture that women portrayed of themselves was unflattering, trivial and amoral. Children are hardly mentioned in some magazines, personal tragedy is treated as entertainment and relationships appear to be purely about sex.``Given that when to have children and how to balance them with work is probably the issue that worries most women, it struck me as an odd absence,'' said researcher Ann Applebaum.The survey found that for so-called `magazine woman' sex has no meaning apart from transient pleasure and no consequence apart from disease and abortion.``In short she is as crude, offensive and unpleasant as the most obnoxious of men,'' the survey said. Life for magazine woman is principally about self-indulgence with little need for hard work or effort ``save in that temple of self-adoration, the gym''.The researchers were particularly horrified at the magazines' treatment of personal tragedy. ``Turning the bizarre or horrific misfortunes of others into a distasteful freak is a fairly common practice,'' the report said.The researchers acknowledged that there were differences between the magazines but said the composite picture of the British woman of today was one of sex, triviality and self-indulgence. ``They may of course be wrong about her.But their judgement should not be dismissed too readily,'' the survey said.``To be read regularly by so many readers is some kind of vote of approval. Are the readers also endorsing this portrait of modern women; have the magazines indeed got modern British women right?'' the survey asked.
