"Less Than a Wife”: Content on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Teen and Women's Digital Magazines

"Less Than A Wife”: Content on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in

Teen and Women's Digital Magazines

Background and Purpose:

In the U.S., there is a need to increase awareness and management of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a metabolic and endocrine condition the National Institutes of Health has described as a major public health problem for women that the public is largely unaware of.  PCOS is a highly prevalent chronic condition associated with irregular or no menstrual periods, excessive body hair, acne, infertility, obesity, anxiety and depression, and poor health-related quality of life. 

Teen and women’s magazines are a type of entertainment-education that publish health content alongside beauty, fashion, and entertainment content, and have the potential to expose primarily female readers to content on PCOS.  This study is the first to explore how digital (web-based) teen and women’s magazines portray women with PCOS to understand messages of health and gender readers are exposed to. 

Methods:

The Alliance for Audited Media was used to identify teen and women's magazines with circulation rates of 1,000,001 and greater.  Magazines with circulation rates 100,001-1,000,000 were also selected to include magazines directed toward racial and ethnic minority readers that may not have had the highest circulation rates. 

Two researchers independently searched each of the magazine websites over a one month periods in 2015 and identified articles containing keywords "PCOS" and "polycystic ovary syndrome".  This yielded a total of 21 magazines (e.g. Glamour, Cosmopolitan en Español, O' The Oprah Magazine, and Essence) and 155 articles containing the keywords.  Magazine media kits were retrieved from publisher's websites to obtain readership demographics.  

Two coders used a grounded-theory approach to coding using an open coding of magazine articles to identify themes.  Articles were read repeatedly and inductively and new themes were noted when observed.  The units of analysis were the magazine article, title, caption, and user comments.  Peer debriefings were held to discuss and reconcile themes. 

Findings:

Adolescents and women with PCOS were depicted as feeling ignored and dismissed by health care providers.  Articles largely placed personal responsibility on women to improve their health through self-efficacy and control of lifestyle choices. Shame and embarrassment associated with PCOS symptoms like excessive facial hair led women to hide symptoms to conform to social ideals of beauty and femininity.  PCOS-related infertility hindered and interrupted women’s social roles and responsibilities as wives and mothers (e.g. childbearing).  To a lesser extent, articles portrayed women as using their personal experiences with PCOS to advocate for women’s health. 

Conclusions and Implications:

The absence of discourse on race and ethnicity in popular magazines, and the absence of PCOS content in magazines directed toward Latinas and African American women, suggests that portrayals of women with PCOS largely focus on the White body.  The findings can advance transdisciplinary research that incorporates media in health education to promote women’s health, particularly for racial and ethnic minority women at greatest risk for PCOS due to high rates of obesity and metabolic problems (e.g. insulin resistance, hypertension) among these groups.