Media Diary Entry 2 - Media Text Evaluation

The text I am evaluating is the cover of In Touch magazine; a story about how Kim Kardashian's pregnancy has lead to her 'over-eating' and losing shape.

I found this media text on Facebook; this was a suggested post on my news-feed from the brand In Touch magazine itself. The purpose of this article, of course, is an attempt to win over consumers with the idea of celebrity status. The mainstream audience will tend to indulge heavily in the lives of their celebrity role models, and so most news stories and magazines will jump at the opportunity to frame or shame a celebrity for something, blowing it way out of proportion for the means of entertainment.

This article made the front cover because Kim Kardashian is globally famous. She has become a point of human interest on the internet recently, for no apparent reason whatsoever.
However, as ridiculous to me as that seems, I still find this media text quite disgusting, and a prime example of how the media will kick dignity to the dust in order to make money.

Here, we have a picture of the pregnant Kim Kardashian, seemingly minding her own business, but portrayed to look different than how she usually does due to her sudden increase of weight. Now, a sudden increase in weight is to be expected when you become pregnant. But, since she is famous, it is now being portrayed as something wrong, and as something she could control.

The headline is "I can't stop eating!", followed by the anchorage text "bingeing on waffle cones and fries". The specific lexical choices made by the author is used to make out her actions as being disgraceful, as opposed to natural. It ignores the fact that any pregnant woman will go through cravings and acting on such impulses, and ignores that a person with a following isn't anything other than a person.

What's more disgusting than the initial posting of this article is that other people will see this magazine, and be on the side of the authors, in that she is somehow wrong for eating more after pregnancy. A lot of people in the mainstream audience will be too passive to argue against what the article is saying, or how the article is conveying her as a person, and will blindly point fingers along side the institution. This is the goal of the article, and it seems to have been attained.