'POP' FICTION S1R,—Victor Anant's article "Pop" Fiction' prompts
me to wonder just what is the enormous appeal of women's magazines to almost all women, including myself. The only women of my acquaintance who profess not to read women's magazines have intel- lectual pretensions considerably in excess of their intellectual attainments, and I much suspect that even they pick up Woman's Own in preference to, say, the Spectator when they are alone in their dentist's waiting room. Other women I know, from office cleaners to women dons, including contented spinsters and the happily married, all read every woman's magazine they can get their hands on. Professional women and women of the middle classes often prefer to be given or to borrow. these magazines rather than actually to buy them, but they still read them.
For myself they are my 'aspirin reading,' as efficacious as cups of tea or a hot bath.• Like most of my friends I am, however, well aware that the magazines are an appalling waste of time. I know all the story plots, the contents of the beauty articles, and the answers to the human problems on the back page. I can even fake my answers to the quizzes on my personality so as to make myself desirable, un- temperamental, humorous and 'an outdoor girl' Yet I continue to read every magazine I feel I can decently allow myself to buy.
I wonder why? There are, so far as I know, no magazines which are read by such socially different and differently educated groups of men. Are social and educational differences less important for women than for men? Do all women have basically the same daydreams and the same things they want . . . and do we find them in the innocent, moral social scene Mr. Anant has described in the magazines we read?— Yours faithfully, LOIS MITCHISON 2 Harcourt Buildings, Temple, EC4
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