Mental Chocolate or Walls and veils?

Pakistani Womens Magazines

Nadia Siddiqui, University of Birmingham

Findings and implications of the study

Readers appear to use the digests for entertainment, in the same way as television soap operas and Bollywood movies. Therefore, the digests appear to be mental chocolate for women, with no evidence of influence from the conservative portrayal of Muslim women. If so, editors and publishers can afford to offer their readers a greater variety of flavours, particularly by adding a more rounded liberal view of Pakistani women. Would readers and their families be happy with this new blend of chocolate? This study differs from the established wisdom largely because it compares readers with non-readers and content with response.

Readers views
We are mature and we are not taking it as it is, but this we consider wrong for others. I read it myself but I dont like that my sister who is just a second year student should also read it. I get pleasure in reading. There are so many things in the digests that have no relation with ones real life. But you feel very good. You feel as if you are living in another environment which is better.
(Visual from Khawateen Digest)

Editors views
We dont want that they (readers) should adopt western immorality. So our fundamental aim is that we will go along with traditions and religion and we dont want to go beyond our social values. As I told you that for an ordinary woman a digest provides entertainment and also does their training. It trains them how to live life. You just dont see that we just publish romantic stories we also make them aware of harsh realities of life as well.

Methods
Content analysis of 30 digests for the past 7 years. Thematic analysis of interviews with 5 editors and 21 readers Comparative and binary logistic regression of survey results of 308 readers and non-readers