Women’s Interests: According to Your Local Bookstore’s Magazine Section

I am 28.  My life, as they say, is “in flux”.  I am not where I want to be.  My career plans have stalled.  I am not married (in fact I just recently broke up with my boyfriend of three years).  I have no children.  I still live with my mother.

As most people do, I love I good escape from the major and minor disappointments of my life.  And sometimes, I want that journey to be taken in the glossy pages of a magazine.

I subscribe to health magazines (I am overweight and hoping to succeed on my now 27th diet), but, the other day, I wanted a change.  So, I went to my local book store and walked directly to the “Women’s Interest” section of the magazine rack.  More dismayed I could not have been.

So, women – all women- evidently these are your only interests:

Weight Loss

Are you fat?  Or, do you think you are fat?  Or, are you afraid to be fat?  Well, the whole top row is dedicated to you!  Here you will find all of the weight loss tips you will ever need.  Buy any of these different magazines and you will find:

  • Boy shaped female models who promote the requirements of what it is to be “attractive”.
  • Then, on the very next page, an article about how magazine models promote the wrong body image.  This article will slam magazines for encouraging unhealthy weight loss and an unrealistic body image.
  • The page after this article?  A model.  I can see her rib cage.  And, I weep.
  • Weight loss tips.  The very same tips that you have been told time and time again.  Only re-worded.  Or, in some cases, you are told that those old tips are making you fat, and you need to do the opposite.  This is especially confusing if you have two different magazines telling you two different tips that are complete opposites of one another.
  • Exercise charts, moves, etc.  You tear them out with the intention of trying them.  But, they only collect dust underneath your ab rocker.

Rocking His World

Whatever you are doing in bed…you are evidently doing it wrong.  And, he is going to leave you if you don’t fix it…now!  Your only concerns should be about pleasing him.  Because, evidently we are all sex obsessed, men pleasing zombies that have nothing better to do but learn how to “blow his top off” in 127 different ways.  This must be important, because there are at least five articles on this topic alone…in the same magazine.

Being a Great Mom and Keeping up the House

Well, not only do we have to please our men, but we also have to please the little ones.  I guess it makes sense.  With all that sex we’ve been having from the article on page 42, the odds are we have no less than 20 children.  This math has to be right, because according to these magazines, we are going at it like rabbits!

So, we must all have children.  And boy, are we swamped!  We need a lot of advice on how to clean our homes, be supportive wives and mothers, do arts and crafts, attend PTA meetings, and go to the Little League game.  Wait!  When will I have time to “give him the sex he craves”?  Oh wait…there is an article on time management on page 73!  Thank God!

Weddings

I don’t know if you know it yet.  But, most likely you have no idea how to plan a wedding and have no original thought of your own.  Well, here are 57 magazines to help you out!  Good luck!

Fashion and Makeup

You know that $40,000 paycheck you got last week?  Well, here are the clothes you just simply must purchase with all that money you are rolling in!  Those socks on page 12 are $125, but it is okay … you can afford it!

Don’t worry that these clothes aren’t affordable, comfortable, or practical!  This slinky red dress, and this caked on makeup will be the thing that gets him, and keeps him in bed!  And, it all looks so natural.  Like you just got out of bed and tousled your hair!  They’ll never know it only took you three hours! *wink*

I know that when I’m luring a man into my sex chamber (swing included!), he just goes crazy when I’m wearing my feather boa and my body glitter!  It really turns him on when he chokes on the sequins as well!  And, I know for a fact that when I fell off of my 50 inch stilettos, he was really impressed when I flashed him my landing strip that I perfected thanks to page 92.  Dress to impress, right?!

Celebrities

So, our lives aren’t perfect (because according to page 29, my skin isn’t dewy enough).  So, how do we ease our aches for perfection?  Compare our lives to celebrities!  Duh!  So, here are our favorite celebs eating food and pumping gas (just like me!).  Here are their fancy houses, summer houses, and winter houses.  Here they are doing something, that a close source to these golden-gods tells us, is very important and will rock the face of the nation!  Wait, it doesn’t stop there!  We also have pictures of them when they are leaning over, so it makes them look 50 pounds heavier!  We don’t like them now!  Lose the baby weight already!  Your little girl was born last week, why haven’t you announced your world tour yet!  How dare a celebrity be fat, don’t they read our magazine!  We give out tips on how to fight the baby bulge!

***

So, women can be summed up with all of these magazines.  No room for women who are a) single, b) don’t have children, c) don’t want to be constantly reminded of their physical shortcomings, d) and don’t care what a Kardashian had for brunch.

I think we are more complex than this.  I think women don’t fit into all of these categories.  We want to not be told how to be, but to be told that we are okay being who we are.  We don’t have to please every man, woman or child to be a good, attractive, nice, and caring person.

Where are the magazines that celebrate all women?  That celebrates the quirky, the intelligent, the well-read, the artsy, the adventurous, and everything about every woman?  Yes, I like and read, most of these magazines that I’m bashing.  But, every now and then, you need a change.  And, I really don’t like being boiled down to these “interests”.

I want a magazine that speaks to me and to the wonderful, funny, smart ladies that I know.  But, until then, I’ll just read about how to “be a natural summer beauty”.

By Sarah Rudolph.

Featured image via.

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