Does anyone else find reading women's interest magazines depressing?

[JoshandJamie]

I'm thinking things like Eve, SHE, Red, Easy Living etc.

The stuff where they tell you what's fashionable and how with just a £250 pair of new shoes you can make an old outfit look new. And how you have to try THE LATEST beauty product. And then they feature some over-achieving woman in her early thirties who seems to have it all. Followed by the latest diet, health scares and somewhere exotic you can't possibly travel to because it's too expensive and not in the least child friendly. Not to mention how you can be more evironmentally friendly and how you can transform a room into a show home simply by hand painting some ancient jelly moulds.

They're supposed to be aspirational right? So why do they make me feel like the most unfit, unglamorous, unsophisticated idiot out there?

Does anyone really read them and think: right, time to start buying jumpsuits because they're 'on trend' and I must organise an 'elegant midweek dinner party that looks like it took no effort'?

Honestly, when you read them to you come away inspired or deflated. I'm most certainly the latter. I guess the answer is not to read them. But I might them become a complete social disaster.

Remember - the whole point of those magazines is to sell advertising, the point of which is to make people buy more stuff.

Most people don't need more stuff but more knowledge so that they can make better judgements in life.

at Hecate

But you see, those magazines leave me feeling depressed about large swathes of society so ultimately am still not uplifted. Although I do feel happy knowing that my DH isn't having an affair with the cat.

So if the point is to make people buy more - and so far everyone here has alluded that they don't - who is buying the stuff featured?

stopped buying them over a dedade ago. Had some bloody woman doing a promotion in the supermarket last month. She looked at me with this bereft expression on her face, as though I was stupid when I said I wasn't interested and hadn't bought one since 1995. She actually looked me up and down and asked "but don't you think you would find them useful" CHEEKY COW.

i give them a swerve and bring my iPod to waiting rooms and chill out with some good music instead.

they're really, really expensive, too.

for £3 i'd rather have a good cup of coffee in a cafe.

hecate

Joash

I presume you floored her with a witty yet cutting response...? No? Then perhaps you're not ready the right magazines!

for ready you may want to mentally insert reading...

Walnutshell I simply couldn't be arsed (which basically means she got me on a crappy day and I just shuffled off like the dishevelled old hag she obviously thought I was .

that would be me. cutting remarks only come to me after the event.

PMSL Hecate, I was going to suggest reading Take a Break too

The features in there make me realise my life is incredibly glamorous and blessed.

Finally! A use for salmon paste!

Not one I can ever use, mind, but still.

Oh God, they're complete tosh, aren't they? Grazia in particular makes me want to barf.

thats what they are meant to do unfortunatly - for us anyway. If everyone was happy with themselves they wouldn't buy all that useless crap - especially the cheaper versions of tthm.

Inadequacy drives consumerism

Interesting thread, especially as there are quite a few MNers who work on these magazines... makes me wonder whether publishers are missing a trick. Is there something those of you who have given up on the glossies would read? (Disclaimer - I am a journalist and have been known to write for the glossies although more on factual stuff, not beauty or recycling press releases.)

I have just cancelled my subscriptions to 3 mags I had delivered.

I was fed up with all the 'stuff' i was told I should be buying, wearing, decorating my house in, saying to my husband, children etc etc. they are just too goddamn bossy!

I will miss the pretty pictures...but def. not the words.

I flicked through a copy of Grazia the other day in the doctor's waiting room and I wondered who on earth it was aimed at, because I'm sure as hell wasn't me. Obssessing about handbags and botox and fawning over Agnes fucking Deyn. As if.

Edam - I have tried to submit stuff about the relationship between consumersim and depression, especially the effect pictures of touched up beautiful women have on the psychologies of many women - this in Psychology magazine. The ad/editorial link even in there was such that they couldn;t afford to bite the hand that fed them. It really has no right calling itself 'Psycholgies' looking at the really weal content.

There lies a big waekness I think

I completely agree. Sort of things that would interest me are:- some decent book reviews, thoughtful health articles, thoughtful current affairs articles, and travel articles that were realistic and paid more attention to the destination and it's history/culture than the hotel facilities.

enraged - interesting you say that, the one time I read psychologies magazine I was very disappointed, I imagined it would have some incisive writing about mental health, but it seemed extremely waffly and self-help booky.

The only womens magazine that I make any effort to read is Ms - no commercial advertising, no consumer push, just good thoughful, writing about interesting subjects.
Occasionally I do buy a glossy (when at an airport and I realise that I am short of reading matter), and feel the brain cells dying as I flick the pages of stuff that I don't want or need.

Their purpose is to make you feel inadequate so you buy more stuff to make yourself feel better. Just read Affluenza by Oliver James which explains all this very well.

Plus you are essentially paying to look at a load of adverts. Avoid!

To be honest, I find those types of women's mags tedious and boring. Most women are not in the least like those portrayed in the articles, and I say thank God for that! I'd rather read something real and relevant to the world.

Is Ms still going?

I did an essay about Gloria Steinam trying to get advertisers into the magazine in the 70s and them all refusing as they didn?t see the women's market as lucrative enough. How things change...

Just found it online.

Just a quick question, if it doesnt have ad's how is it funded?

They are absolute shite.
I read them in horror/amazement in doctors and dentists waiting rooms....although now I generally put a paperback book in my handbag.
They are SO the same:
"I am inadequate and sad"
"I was inadequate but found clothes and now I love my life"
"My man did X!" or "my best friend did X"
Celeb crap 95% of which is probably untrue
Dresses that don't suit you or, if you visited the shop, they will not have in stock
How to lose weight and start hamster breeding in West Sussex
I was inspired by a cornflake packet I saw lying on the ground in my local park...arg!

I read Gardeners World.

Although I think these hack rags are being caught up in the BLEUGH! stakes by the teenage girl magazines:
"I found enlightenment through sex with a boy who is so clumsy the cat would stimulate me better and be more interested in my emotional wellbeing" OR "how not to mind your boyfriends pimples" OR "him two timing you just means he is more potent!"
etc etc