It's mandatory you know?
Reading women's magazines that is.
Thrilling Work
My theory is based on the female gender but I suspect that men read them too. Since my teens I have been flicking through their glossy pages, be it a Marie Claire or a Cosmopolitan, Woman & Home or Good Housekeeping, or even an OK (which I never buy, but always look at when someone else does). Such publications have been on the newspaper stands for decades and I imagine, like Ugly Betty, that their offices are crammed full of people who are busily involved in putting them together every month. It must be thrilling to get a story together, arrange the photograph shoot, make appointments with tall moody models and sintilatingly exciting celebrities for interview?
Or is it...
After extensive research into the subject I find that they are a series of repeated material because month after month they base their substantial pages on:-
a) extensive advertising, but that goes without saying
b) pages of fatuously useles advice about hair products thinly veiled as advertising for hair products
c) losing weight, thinly veiled messages to all readers that they are too fat
d) photographs of thin models to make all readers feel depressed see point c).
As we all clearly understand the only single reason for purchasing a magazine is the problem page. As a Jackie reading teenager me and friend Debbie would read the letters to Aunty Agony and laugh out loud (note how I wrote that in full) but never ever would we even consider reading the answer. They were all totally obvious problems about complextion (spots) or boyfriends (has he noticed me yet) or girlfriends (he has noticed her not me).
Stuff you Can't Afford
As I grew I progressed to Cosmopolitan or even Marie Claire, the situation remained the same, as in the articles are the same every month, hair, diet, and pictures of stuff you can't afford. Don't get me started on articles about the perfect bra...
The problem page has always remained the most interesting and I have to admit to still never reading the answers. Cosmopolitan
Recently in Cosmo we have this question:-
Have We Drifted Apart?
I have a best friend of four years. She was there for me in a bad time when nobody else was. Now I am at college miles away and I have a job with some really great people. When I ask if she wants to visit and come out with us she never does. I feel like I've moved on but she hasn't. What do I do?
Obviously I'm not going to tell you what Irma said in reply because its up to you to fill in that part yourself given your vast life experience and intelligence. And also because it is a vacuous letter that doesn't warrant an answer.
However, I have now discovered MEN's magazines and in particular Esquire where I find that A.A.Gill is the Agony Aunt under the pen name of Uncle Dysfunctional and find his responses to be most satisfying and I hope you do too? Uncle Dysfunctional
Dear Uncle,
It’s spring-ish. Please, what’s the definitive rule on shorts?
Edgar, Soho
I’m so pleased you asked me, Ed. It’s never after 12. Years, not o’clock.
No 13-year-old or over should ever be seen in trousers that finish above the ankle. It doesn’t matter how good your legs are, or if you’re on a beach in Bermuda where they invented the things.
This isn’t about tan or temperature. This is about dignity. It is impossible to be taken seriously in shorts. No one has ever cared about anything said by a man in shorts.
You can propose marriage naked or in handcuffs, but no one is going to agree to forsake all others for a man in shorts. You can’t declare war in shorts or deliver a eulogy in shorts.
Shorts are silly. Men in shorts are silly men. And silly is the very worst thing a man can be.
So my research I recommend Men's Magazines over Women's Magazines given that this advice is so much more practical, honest and worth reading.
RT @adamsjaken: I nominate a committee led by Archie Manning and Mike Glen to select the next President.
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lightsmade.com
Posted by: troneeamasout | November 21, 2012 at 05:12 PM
No-one (apart from the truly, eagerly snoopy -and that's a form of depravity as far as I'm concerned) really wants to know whether X made it up to Y in the guilty, angst-ridden, girly 'let's-be-friends' story.
Men need solutions to stuff and if they ask a question they expect a straight answer.
Unfortunately, straight answers are by their definition, ultimately final. Yes, there are arguments about the best way to drill into tiling, but in the end someone will decide to take the plunge and it's done. End of story.
The ends of stories are never as interesting as the reasons the stories came about in the first place. That's why the problem pages of women's magazines are interesting. And then two thoughts arise; how on earth did the writer allow these guilty, angst-ridden, girly problems to arise in the first place, and why would they then think it a good idea to broadcast them in a magazine for other snoopy women to grimace at?
You don't get advice columns in Exchange & Mart...
Posted by: Richard Peters | April 18, 2012 at 04:14 PM