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POSTFEMINIST FORTUNE COOKIES  

What happens when the beauty standards set by health and beauty magazines are taken out of context? To find out I baked magazine headlines into fortune cookies and served them at social gatherings.

We all know that fortune cookies don’t really hold truths, but yet we still try to find a piece of ourselves in their sayings. The same holds true for the microaggressions found between the covers of women’s health magazines work. We turn to them for validation, or a way to fit in, when we feel vulnerable.

Women’s magazines are unlike any other form of pop media communication. By focusing on two connected facets of female lives, body image and relationships, they offer road maps of how to achieve happiness by improving these areas. Whether it is 40 ways to blow your guys mind or eight excuses for a better butt, they list the specific steps that aim to help women find success and value in society. 

These magazines follow us. They are in the waiting room at the doctor's office, the check out lines at grocery stores and in our mailboxes. What they don’t mention is that their health information is rarely written by a doctor or nutritionist. The women in the photos are not only Photoshopped, but often suffer from anorexia nervosa. The repetition of the unrealistic ideal body normalizes it. When girls, whose value in society is directly linked to their appearance, fail to meet these ‘easy’ beauty standards, they feel there must be something wrong with them. The effects can be seen long before puberty. Fifty percent of nine-year-old girls have dieted. The age that eating disorders begin to effect girls has dropped from adolescence to now being seen in girls as young as seven. 

I have served these cookies in a number of social gatherings and parties including to a group of women I worked with in the advertising industry. I chose this particular group of women strategically. Each women I invited to participate had reason to be confident. They all had successful careers and closely conformed to traditional beauty standards. All were outspoken. All but two were Caucasian. None were obese. 

After dinner, we sat in a circle, passed around the cookies and took turns reading the fortunes out loud. Most women were visibly uncomfortable reading the slip of paper. Most diverted the attention from themselves. The few that didn’t, commented about needing to exercise, their weight or expressed shame about consuming the calories that were in the small cookie. Only one woman sounded confident after reading her fortune, ‘Crazy hot sex, you’ll find bliss tonight.” 

After everyone finished their cookies the group asked about the project. I explained that the fortunes came directly off the covers of magazines. Everyone agreed with the woman that said, “Oh, that is really sad.” The test concluded with a final woman saying, “but if these were headlines on the Internet I would click on all of them.”