by Natalie Lynn Borton
Sometimes a topic gets in your head and you just can’t escape it. You know? Last week I posted an article on my personal blog about Seventeen Magazine, and the very next day I found an article on lifestyle magazines that resonated with me to the core.
Perhaps it’s the upcoming print version of Darling Magazine—one that seeks to redefine femininity and beauty, as well as inspire, revive, and restore women by helping them find their true purpose and worth—that has my mind wrapped up in all that’s wrong with women’s magazines these days. Regardless, what I’m about to share with you is something I’ll bet every single one of you can relate to.
Below, contributor Sarah Turley from The Conversation shares her raw, honest thoughts on women’s lifestyle magazines. The title is a bit of a giveaway of her feelings, but like I said, I think you’ll all relate…
Women’s Lifestyle Magazines Make My Head Spin
by Sarah Turley
Will you do something for me? Think back to when you last read a women’s lifestyle magazine. Perhaps you were in the bath, soaking its pages to crinkled as you supped on a glass of woozy warm red wine. Or on the bus home from work, gripping it three centimetres from your face because you were rammed up against a hundred other commuters like a tin soldier in a child’s overflowing toy box. Wherever you were, think back. And tell me: how did you feel when you put it down?
Informed? Inspired? Empowered, maybe? Or perhaps simply entertained? Those are certainly the words the editors of these magazines might hope you’d say. But let me tell you a secret: the words I’d use are more along the lines of inadequate. Overwhelmed. Self-loathing.
Some background: I’ve been away from home (that’s London) for the past three months and in that time, I haven’t read one women’s magazine. Then my sister came to visit, armed with precious gifts from England including teabags and two fat and juicy women’s magazines. I thought it would be heaven flicking through those glossy pages. But in fact, they caused my head to spin uncontrollably – very like the way the back wheel on my bike spun when I hit a rogue paving stone and was catapulted over my handlebars wondering why I am cursed with the balance of a three-legged donkey. [continue reading here…]
Can you relate to Sarah? How so?
