Cover connection

What is it about the face beaming up from a magazine rack that makes you want to buy a magazine?

Article: Charlene Rolls

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You've never had this many choices before. With new titles launching, all competing for some space in your trolley, a magazine's cover should grab you, interest you, excite you, stop you in your tracks and promise to deliver something that'll hold your interest for more than five minutes. Whether it's the goings-on in Wisteria Lane or Angelina's latest UN mission, there's something about the person on the cover that interests you. Maybe it's simply because the person is a celebrity, and we love to read about them, but there's always the indefinable X-factor, something else that compels you to pick it up and read it.

Researchers at the universities of Regensburg and Rostock in Germany found that many of us have a similar idea of what is beautiful. Among the 500 or so people who participated, many showed a preference for women with "babyface" attributes. In other words, women who had large, round eyes; small, short noses and chins; round cheeks; and a large, curved forehead were considered to be more beautiful than others who didn't have these characteristics.

Consider some of the stars who have the "babyface" factor and who often grace magazine covers – Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz and Kate Hudson – and the researchers seem to be on the right track.

Does this mean that any woman who has beautiful features and an arresting smile, and who has done something worth reading about, can sell a magazine?

South Africans don't necessarily subscribe to overseas formulae. Fairlady, in particular, doesn't have to bow to the pressure international titles here face in terms of following a set formula for the type of person or the type of pose, gesture or posture of their cover model. In a relatively small pond, Fairlady has the autonomy to do things differently every time, seeing what readers like and want.

Looking at past covers gives clues to what readers respond to. Noeleen Maholwana-Sanqu, local television personality, and Natalie du Toit, Olympic swimmer, sold more copies than Juliette Binoche and Victoria Beckham did. Basetsana Kumalo sold more than Catherine Zeta-Jones did; Tanya Fourie more than Renée Zellweger and Jennifer Lopez, and Josie Borain more than Victoria Beckham. Maybe this means that South African women want more than just the usual celeb fodder. Perhaps they do want to read about local role models, their lives and what they have achieved.

Although a familiar face definitely draws the eye to the cover, to warrant space on a magazine cover they should at least be doing something interesting or have accomplished something fascinating.

They shouldn't just be there because everyone knows who they are (a little like Paris Hilton – everyone knows who she is, but who knows what she does?!) or because they now have a new beau. Angelina Jolie, for example, is not just the woman believed to have broken up Brad and Jen – she has also adopted a Cambodian boy and an Ethiopian girl, is a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency, and is currently starring in the highly rated Mr & Mrs Smith.

Fergie isn't just a former royal, she's the spokesperson for Weight Watchers, the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society, and she's spoken of her daughter being dyslexic. There are those, it seems, who have a lot more than just perfect hair and teeth and very full bank accounts.

The US market differs from ours in that magazines sell a large percentage of their issues by subscription. The cover adds that little extra on the news-stand. Magazines such as Time, The Economist, Life and Newsweek are able to experiment with images, graphics and words. The covers challenge the reader, while still giving them something to look at, to admire, to like. These magazines aren't driven by the celeb machine. In the last 10 years, Time magazine has featured a celebrity on one or two covers every year. The articles that accompanied these covers spoke not only of the stars but also of things happening in the world, in science, in the film industry.

An Ellen Degeneres cover dealt with issues of homosexuality; an Amber Valletta cover story spoke of how science can help us to look younger. Other covers speak of ideas, of concepts, of things inside the magazine. This wouldn't work for a women's glossy, because the nature and environment in which you read your favourite women's magazine is so different from the way you read a news magazine.

The faces on the covers of women's magazines speak to us. They're the ones that invite us in, make us want to see what's inside. They have to be warm, friendly and attractive. They have to be our friends. And the image on the cover of that magazine has to convey all of that in one single polished package.

And it helps if the cover model is beautiful. Why? Because we're attracted to beautiful things. Exquisite clothing, stunning decor, attractive people and other aesthetically pleasing things.

"We are always sizing up other people's looks," writes Nancy Etcoff in her book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty. "Our beauty detectors never close shop and call it a day. We notice the attractiveness of each face we see as automatically as we register whether or not they look familiar. Beauty detectors can scan the environment like radar... Long after we forget many important details about a person, our initial response stays in our memory."

In the few seconds that the magazine has to capture a reader while it sits on the shelves next to its equally glossy sisters, that sense of beauty has to be conveyed to the reader. It certainly helps if the face is both pretty and familiar, as in the case of many Hollywood stars, and perhaps this – more than a desire to see what the latest gossip is – drives us to choose one magazine over the other.

Often, one sees three or four magazine titles carrying the same person on their cover, not because of inter-magazine espionage, but because there is something about their life or work at that time that makes them a hot topic. Yet we still choose one magazine over another, so there has to be something about a particular image that would make you decide on one of them. The tilt of her chin perhaps, or the way her hair's been styled. It could be one of so many things, and the ever-present, indefinable X-factor.