When I was in middle school, I was subscribed to teen magazines like M and J-14 which told me all about the hottest Disney Channel stars and which Jonas Brother I would marry. Then as I got into high school I switched to subscriptions to Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and Glamour.

Women’s magazines are stereotyped as shallow and are “known” to tell you how to dress and act on one page and then how to be yourself on the next. Even after reading them for years, that is still my initial thought about them.

However, after coming home to a stack of magazines during my winter break, I’m here to break that stereo type. Women’s magazines are empowering, diverse, and wonderful and that is how they should be thought of. Women should not be viewed as shallow and be ashamed for reading them, but proud to be associated with such work.

I noticed within my stack of magazines, right off the bat female are set up for empowerment with titles on the covers such as “self-care secrets”, “mega confidence”, and “This is how you get a salary bump”. The covers don’t just feature expected “perfect” white female models but real, powerful, diverse, role model women such as Zendaya, Michelle Obama, Demi Lovato, and more.

The magazine I picked up and flipped through had articles all about bettering yourself for you, investing in your career, and real relevant news stories. In the 200 pages I flipped through of the December issue of Glamour I saw titles for articles such as “20 Reasons It’s Damn Good to Be a Women in 2017”, “How to Reset Your Money Brain”, and “We Should all stop trying to look like someone else”.

I don’t have a ton of time to leisurely read every article in a magazine, so I usually flip through and fold down corners of pages of the articles I want to read. By the time I was done flipping through this magazine it looked like the whole top corner of the magazine was missing.

Women’s magazines are known to include fashion, beauty, and relationship advice which is something that often gets the most heat of criticism. These articles are known to be the problem spots in which the authors are telling women to spent hundreds to dress and look a certain way and act a certain way to impress a man; but no such articles are seen in these magazines.

The only dating article I could find in this magazine were encouraging women to find healthy, fulfilling, successful relationships. My favorite headings were “Date Whoever the Eff You Want, However the Eff You Want” and “Know When to DTMFA [Dump the mother*cker already]”. The articles all advised women to be sex positive and to date how they wanted not about “trapping” a man.

The fashion and beauty articles were a whole new level of impressive. Not only did they include a price range of products from expensive dream items to affordable products, but they promoted things that women would actually want and use in their daily life. There is really no need to review an $800 diamond incrusted facemask when most women are not willing to spend more than $20 on a face mask. These magazines realize this and actually write for their readers.

Even the advertisements included in the magazines were promoting confident living for women. Not one ad I saw was telling women to do or purchase something for anyone other than herself. Even the condom ad, a product which heavily relies on a man for use, did not include a man in the ad.

However, in all this, the best part was the diversity. The photographs spread throughout were of women of all kinds: different races, lifestyles, and body types. The articles were written by people from all different backgrounds with an array of different opinions.

Literary media gets a lot of crap nowadays and I think one of the worse reputations goes to women’s magazines. The magazines are stereotyped as judgey, shallow, and ultimately just a push for a set of products. However, these magazines are so much more than that. Women’s magazines are empowering women, setting examples, reporting news, and ultimately doing something right.