Newsstand by Me

What should a woman’s day consist of? More importantly, what is a woman’s true essence? According to magazines, we should aim for glamour and allure, as these are what will offer us the most value in life. Psychology today tries to put us in touch with the self. It tells us that we’re wired to look to our parents and our family circles for details about navigating the world, or simply our town and country. They teach us that being a woman requires us to look pretty and have good housekeeping skills. If our mothers jones for cellulite prevention and physical perfection, chances are that we will too. They ready us for the beauty and fashion magazines to reinforce this notion by taking over as both car and driver. They make our vanity fair game.

Magazines offer highlights into how our lives can be lucky as long as we take the right road and track. To them, this means being in style, in vogue, much like a cosmopolitan New Yorker would be. It means being in shape like Ms. Muscle and Fitness and perpetually seventeen years old. It means being a sassy mademoiselle. It means being thin and beautiful enough to deserve a playboy* who will offer us food and wine, travel and leisure, better homes and gardens, and the big O in his penthouse* – maybe even turn us into brides. This is supposedly the dream written about in each Saturday evening post in any ladies’ home journal and every wish upon a star.

But it’s all a mirage. Magazines waste so much of our time with mindless entertainment weekly, monthly, and daily. The popular science of marketing ensures they make smart money with the advertising age, striving for consumer reports that signify people are letting the ads in magazines and TV guide them in their purchases. And we readers digest it all.

The maxim* that you can’t believe everything you see is true. It’s real simple – magazines offer spin. From across the nation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there are thousands of women who are mad about the endless pressure to look perfect. We need to stand up and bitch, to say it’s not OK, because seriously, the stuff* we put up with is just bazaar.

(* Don't worry -- these link to Wikipedia pages, so they're SFW.)