How to: Become a Victim, According to Cosmopolitan Magazine

BACKGROUND & PURPOSE:

Estimates suggest that 30% percent of women have endured physical abuse within the context of an intimate relationship, and young women ages 16-24 endure the highest rates of sexual assault. Furthermore, members of the general population often subscribe to beliefs that attribute responsibility to Teen Dating Violence (TDV) victims for leaving abusive relationships and tend to focus on the behavior of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) victims in relationships rather than perpetrators. The media has long been implicated as an important driver of the cultural attitudes, norms, and beliefs about the acceptability of using violence to resolve conflicts in romantic relationships. Cosmopolitan, the highest read women’s magazine in the United States, provides a critical lens to analyze the representation and cultural narratives surrounding IPV. Building off of Social Learning and Media Framing Theories, the purpose of this study is to critically examine the depiction and framing of IPV victimization and perpetration in Cosmopolitan magazine.

METHODS

Data & Sample: Data includes all Cosmopolitan US articles (n=12) that have been published since 2005. Using the Factiva database, we employed the following search terms: Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, and Domestic Abuse. Analysis: Articles were systematically analyzed using thematic content analysis methods, which involved multiple rounds of inductive coding. Matrices were used to compare codes and themes both within and across the articles. All articles were analyzed by two different coders to solicit a diversity of interpretive viewpoints.

RESULTS:

Across the articles, the following themes were detected: a predominant focus on the strategies women could employ to avoid entry into abusive relationships, attributing perpetrator’s behaviors to mental instability or early childhood trauma, a focus on victim’s early life and personal experiences and poor decision making that predisposed her to abuse, and limit reference to systems or societal level determinants of IPV.

DISCUSSION & IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE:

These findings underscore the various ways that Cosmopolitan magazine messages and depicts IPV. Noteworthy, are the various ways that victims of IPV are held responsible for their abuse (i.e., victim-blaming), while there is limited emphasis on perpetrator accountability. These narrow portrayals of IPV coupled with a lack of critical systemic analysis, emphasize the media’s individual-level focus of multifaceted social issues such as IPV. Given the high rates that women consume magazines such as Cosmopolitan, it is imperative to understand the social scripts that are being perpetuated in this media genre, especially since much of this messaging runs counter to IPV prevention programming. Further implications for IPV prevention programming, including the importance of incorporating media literacy, will be discussed.