Up on the soap box
Saw Mad Hot Ballroom after work (delightful) and bought Lucky on the way home. This is a magazine I purchase about twice a year at the start of fall and spring, when I'm doing a lot of clothes-buying. The rest of the year my shopping spree instincts tend to lie dormant.
Things not to say to the newsstand guy: "Can I get Lucky?" Whoops. But he was very nice about it.
Read Elizabeth Spiers' article on mediabistro today about the banality of women's magazines. Agreed. I do buy and read women's magazines fairly regularly, but certainly not to be intellectually stimulated, and that's sad. Sad that there are so many of them out there, doing fairly well, and they're all essentially carbon copies of one another. It's a little surprising to me that so many similar products are able to survive in the marketplace.
And why, then, do I continue to buy them? For the record, it's almost always Glamour that I buy, unless someone I really like is on the cover of another one. My reasons for this preference are fuzzy even to me. I guess I'm just more drawn to their layout, the script-y typeface they've chosen to put over their pretty pictures of makeup, their version of fashion spreads, the Do's and Don'ts that are their particular way of filling the back page (hmm, it's like they know that I usually read it back to front!). But these are basically my reasons for choosing to read any women's mag at any given time. They're a chance to allow my brain to check out from the more intellectual pursuits of my day and look at pretty pictures and read charticles that offer advice I can't ever remember taking. I read them for the same reason I'd watch anything on MTV -- can't really identify, but eye candy enough to happily pass a stray hour or two. And while I might one day stop being a cheapskate and spring for cable, I have never subscribed to a women's mag, nor do I forsee doing so in the near future. Like Lucky, they're for once or twice a year.
I suppose it's reassuring to know that there are still outfits that can take a working woman from day to night, that no one has come up with some brand new way to please a man (despite claims to the contrary), that people are still making eye shadow. But I'd love to see one of them turn into something that I'd actually subscribe to -- not just purchase to pass time in an airport.
Things not to say to the newsstand guy: "Can I get Lucky?" Whoops. But he was very nice about it.
Read Elizabeth Spiers' article on mediabistro today about the banality of women's magazines. Agreed. I do buy and read women's magazines fairly regularly, but certainly not to be intellectually stimulated, and that's sad. Sad that there are so many of them out there, doing fairly well, and they're all essentially carbon copies of one another. It's a little surprising to me that so many similar products are able to survive in the marketplace.
And why, then, do I continue to buy them? For the record, it's almost always Glamour that I buy, unless someone I really like is on the cover of another one. My reasons for this preference are fuzzy even to me. I guess I'm just more drawn to their layout, the script-y typeface they've chosen to put over their pretty pictures of makeup, their version of fashion spreads, the Do's and Don'ts that are their particular way of filling the back page (hmm, it's like they know that I usually read it back to front!). But these are basically my reasons for choosing to read any women's mag at any given time. They're a chance to allow my brain to check out from the more intellectual pursuits of my day and look at pretty pictures and read charticles that offer advice I can't ever remember taking. I read them for the same reason I'd watch anything on MTV -- can't really identify, but eye candy enough to happily pass a stray hour or two. And while I might one day stop being a cheapskate and spring for cable, I have never subscribed to a women's mag, nor do I forsee doing so in the near future. Like Lucky, they're for once or twice a year.
I suppose it's reassuring to know that there are still outfits that can take a working woman from day to night, that no one has come up with some brand new way to please a man (despite claims to the contrary), that people are still making eye shadow. But I'd love to see one of them turn into something that I'd actually subscribe to -- not just purchase to pass time in an airport.
posted by MTL at 1:59 AM
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