Numbers

The Seven Sisters Women’s Magazines

NOTE: McCall's changed name to "Rosie" in 2001, but ceased publication at the end of 2002.

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations

How It's Used

"A similar reinvention is in the works for Ms., which effectively folded its glossy, mass-market self a few months ago, having lost its original soul years ago. Ms. ultimately became the victim of its success. Service articles and feminist journalism that used to be unique to Ms. are now staples of all the Seven Sisters magazines, not to mention a host of working-woman-type second-generation magazines."

"He also points out that the total number of readers for National Enquirer and Star is about 27 million an issue, better than large women's magazines such as Woman's Day and Family Circle. The tabs' median age of 39 is a few years younger than that for readers of most of the so-called Seven Sisters magazines."

“Redbook wants to cut the apron strings and get out of the band of women’s magazines collectively known as the Seven Sisters…

“‘Of the Seven Sisters, it [Redbook] is the one that has been least well defined,’ says Roberta Garfinkle, senior vice president, print media, at Interpublic Group’s McCann-Erickson Worldwide.  Once positioned as a bridge between ‘women’s service’ and ‘beauty/fashion,’ the magazine really was ‘neither fish nor fowl.’”

"She may make a few new friends among conservatives who find something naughtily transgressive in her suggestion that most leading women's magazines have insinuated progressive politics into their messages. These include the so-called Seven Sisters, magazines like Good Housekeeping and Women's Day along with racier publications like Cosmopolitan and Glamour. For good measure she also folds television newswomen like Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer into the liberal group that she says speaks to women as if their sex were political destiny.

"Ms. Blyth contends that women's magazines use over-the-top cover headlines to compete on the newsstand and to create insecurity that makes women the willing consumers that advertisers crave. Articles about stress, a hardy perennial, are mostly conjured, she argues.

"When the deal closes, about June 30, Meredith will own three of the six remaining so-called Seven Sisters magazines. Meredith publishes Ladies' Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens and is adding Family Circle. Hearst owns Redbook and Good Housekeeping, while Hachette Filipacchi Media owns Woman's Day. The seventh, McCall's, was transformed by Gruner & Jahr into Rosie, named after Ms. O'Donnell, in 2001 and shut down the next year."

Also Known As (AKA)

The Seven Sisters Magazines

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