Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 18

16 Popular Culture Review appearance, "LEAR'S magazine," as the subscription insert in the March 1992 issue declares, "is much more than just fashion and cosmetics. In fact, we designed this magazine with you, the complete woman, in mind." The needs of the complete woman are met in the magazine's several more or less regular, although not rigidly distinct, departments: "Features," which are articles of general interest, often including a personal profile of the person pictured on the cover, or short fiction by such writers as Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kate Braverman; "Style," articles on beauty and fashion; "Money & Worth," articles on business and personal finance; "Self Center," articles on health and personal development; "Addiction," articles on dependencies of every description; "Editorial," commonly written by Lear; "Visiting Space," a guest editorial; and, every month, "Lunch," an interview by Lear; "Celestial Fine-Tuning," an astrology column; "Letters," from readers; and "A Woman for Lear’s,” a personal profile, commonly a post-divorce, financial success story. Lear’s has the look and the feel of a fashion magazine after the pattern of Vogue, Elle, and Mademoiselle, but it offers substantially more copy and, after the pattern of Mirabella, is generally very well written. While the Lear’s staples are photo-illustrated "style" pieces and personal profiles of successful women over 40, the articles also routinely address, in a very serious manner, personal, political, and social issues. Conspicuously absent are articles on the preparation and consumption of food and drink, as are pieces on small children; motherhood is infrequently dealt with, and almost exclusively with reference to adult children. Lear’s, as a consequence, is also a magazine directed toward working women, principally professionals and business people or those aspiring to that status. Unlike Working Woman, however, Lear’s stakes a specific claim to the older woman of stylishly sophisticated and unabashedly expensive tastes. "Mature," not incidentally, is a term conspicuous by its absence in the columns of L ear’s, perhaps lest there be any confusion with Modern Maturity, the organ of the American Association of Retired Persons which is donainated by the themes of a thirty-million member political lobby and the practical realties of women and men who weren't bom the day before yesterday. And unlike Cosmopolitan, Lear’s seeks to take a (not the) high road with respect to feminism without becoming a "feminist" magazine after the pattern established by Ms.