I, like most other people in this country, occasionally go to the grocery store. I stand in line at the checkout counter, surrounded by candy bars and magazines. I'm not sure which one is worse. Well, okay, the magazines are worse. I'm not condemning candy as the evil that others claim it to be; I'm just allergic to peanuts, and it's aggravating to know that most of the things I liked in that section will now kill me. Darn it.
So, if I look away from the (to me) poisonous Snickers and Reese's, I am faced with a mosaic of media, which, while marketed directly to my gender, is also very hateful and destructive to women as well.
Celebrity mags focus on berating female actors for being sleazy, making a half-assed at best mention of the males. Brad Pitt? Can do no wrong. Jennifer Aniston? She's a stupid girl for losing Brad with her selfish not-wanting-a-baby-right-now behavior. Angelina Jolie is a multicultural madonna whose good behavior got her The Man. Why can't people just be respectful of others' reproductive choices? Why can't we just say that neither person's at fault when an irreconcilable difference like that crops up? I somewhat believe that the gossip rags have tapped into and furthered the vicious, bitter competition that women have with one another over the affections of a man.
Most of the other magazines perpetuate this competition. We are instructed that we must paint our faces the right way, exercise our pelvic muscles properly, learn the best sex positions (I can't wait to see what Google Ads comes up with when it latches onto that phrase), have the tightest abs, and cook the best meal. If you fail to do these things (as well as keep your house in perfect order and raise your children to be angels), then you don't deserve a faithful, loving relationship. How can a man be expected to stay with a woman who neglected to do her Kegel exercises twice a day, when he's got a tight, willing coworker waiting to snatch* him away?
Half the magazines have photos of incredible desserts on the covers, with "LOSE WEIGHT WITH OUR SECRET SHEEP EYEBALL AND ORCHID BARK DIET!!" plastered in 72-point font right next to it. Oh no, honey, that lucious cake isn't for you, it's for the husband and kids to enjoy while you nibble on bamboo leaves and laxatives. And if you don't like it, you're going to be SINGLE AND LONELY AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT YOU DISGUSTING SLOB!
Are you kidding me? Why do we lap it up when this kind of insulting crap is thrown at us? Why don't we show those magazines our middle fingers and spend our money on more interesting material? And do you really believe that Cosmo's claim that they've found a spectacular new way of having sex is true (it never is; they're just renaming impossible kama sutra positions and rehashing well-known erogenous zones)? I'm not saying we all need to subscribe to Ms., but it wouldn't hurt to resist the urge to find out what "new diet" or "secret way to stick your finger up your man's you-know-what" they're teasing you with. Note, by the way, that the second "secret" accounts for about 30-40% of Cosmo's "new sex tips!" that you see in every issue. Yes, I looked.
For what it's worth, if I actually had money to subscribe to or purchase magazines, I would want one of the aquarium magazines, Reptiles Magazine, and possibly Consumer Reports. I'm not a big magazine fan, though; I'm more of a book nut.
* no pun intended, honest
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I've been saying for years that we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We are bombarded with commercials about food and bombarded with images of thin. Eat this, but you better stay thin while you do that. You're not a real woman unless you have curves, but you better wear a size 0 while you have those curves. Be a wife, mother, and have a career, but you better be thin while you're doing all that. What?! You don't want to be a mother (or you don't want to have as many kids as your significant other thinks you should? You're not a real woman (I was told this when I went to get my tubes tied at age 25. I was single, raising my son alone, and no form of birth control worked for me). I was asked "What if you decide to get married and your husband wants kids of his own?" I told them I had enough trouble raising my son, and if I found a man, he would know right off the bat I didn't want more kids, refused to have more kids. If he couldn't accept that, he could hit the road, Jack. My mother is one of those women who should never have had kids, but when she got married in 1952, there was no effective form of birth control and women were expected to marry and have children (I suffered for that expectation). The choices any one person make are theirs and theirs alone. No one has the right to tell anyone how to live their life or to make judgments on how that life is lived.
Oh no, honey, that lucious cake isn't for you, it's for the husband and kids to enjoy while you nibble on bamboo leaves and laxatives.
Right, and they had better not get fat from it either, or your girl part license will get taken away.
Post a Comment