I don't know if this belongs here or in Site Stuff but I just want to say how disappointed I am that Mumsnet more and more resembles a so-called Womens Magazine ...

[Mintyy]

Is it just me or is there a definite creeping-in of the sort of features I used to read in Marie Claire when I was in my 20s?

How to get a nice tan, how to do a perfect manicure, how to get a beach-ready body. Louise Mensch and her friffing fashion blog. That awful campaign from Boots last year. And now we have someone promoting their diet book saying that it is a kick-start to the big "reveal" in the summer (she means getting into your swimming costume).

Don't like.

but goblin there is a big difference between random every day posters chatting shit and MNHQ promoting it

I dont visit the homepage but ikwym op, and if they are the sorts of things then it's disappointing. Can we put sgbin charge of the home page?
Why has there been a sudden surge in sahm bashing? Ivenoticed I all over in the last couple of days

It really us like Take a Break

AIBU is the online Jeremy Kyle

So why bother with the home page?
I go straight to active convos.
MN is free, so they have to get the revenue from somewhere, and that might well mean naff and sexist adverts with ridiculous opinions on shaving and age-imparing procedures and cosmetics. Along with all the celebrity squeeing over Z list individuals.
If we reduced that, then perhaps we'd end up paying to post?

MN is free ..so is twitter so why don't we have annoying ads etc on twitter

I think the site is supposed to be for the genuine benefit of parents, rather than for the genuine benefit of women, but that's a bit nit-picky of me.

I'm an old timer and I never read women's mags any more (not even at the hairdressers, I take a book - get me!) so its something of a pita to have to wade through the "how to look more appealing" waffle when I come to my social media platform of choice.

Perhaps there is another one out there somewhere??

I'll concede that one, I admit I was just being lazy in my use of the word women, but to be fair we do comprise the main demographic, and in addition roughly 50% of the children of the parents using the site will be female and likely to be harmed by objectification and the pressures of the beauty industry, so I don't think wanting a genuinely female-friendly ethos is asking for something completely unreasonable.

Not unreasonable, no. I agree, but was being pedantic. And to be fair to the men who do use this site, I am very certain they are not interested in Mimi Spencer's Fast Beach diet book either.

Don't stop being pedantic on my account; I would be very hypocritical if I pulled you up on that .

The average IQ is 100 and most people are not very bright. They have to appeal to most people. You can just ignore what you don't like.

I'm fed up too.

I don't get how they can promote a blog about someone protesting against pressure to diet/be slim (which they are), and also promote a really unhealthy fad diet. I'm not wild about threads that look like normal ones but turn out to be HQ threads, either - it feels like trying to fly under the rader.

At the moment, my mate who is a long-term MNer is trying very hard to get a kickstarter project shared, to fund the magazine she runs (this is Jump! mag btw, I've banged on about it before, and it's here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jumpmag/jump-mag-online-magazine-for-connected-kids. This is a project that started out from MN. And they've barely done a thing to support it. Sure, I know they don't have to and they couldn't possibly support everything each one of us does, but I'm just so fed up they are going for guest posts from someone who clearly just wants to sell a diet book, and won't support something that is positive and in keeping with MN's ethos.

jane, what does IQ - or being bright - have to do with it?

You don't have to be bright to dislike the diet industry. Besides which plenty of bright women do get sucked in. I know a couple of very bright women who have had eating disorders in the past and they can really do without this stuff - but it would suck them in, because that's what it's designed to do.

Nowt wrong with the 5:2 diet for people who need to lose weight, (or even people who want to maintain their existing weight as they get older). A lot of solid science behind it. But I do think the Bikini Diet angle is pretty crap, and crosses a line from a feminist POV for MNHQ to promote it.

The only women's magazine I read is Stylist, and although they are in many ways deeply shallow and looks obsessed, I admire the way they've stuck to three basic principles:
No diets
No ads for cosmetic surgery (or content promoting it)
No slagging off women, any women.

100% disagree that I can ignore what I don't like - on Mumsnet or in rl.

I can see there may be 'nowt wrong' in that it will make you lose weight, or help you maintain weight perhaps. But it is a fad diet. It's not the sort of healthy eating you'd promote to a child, is it? Eating 500 calories a couple of days and more on other days? So in that sense, it's not great because it's not promoting a particularly healthy relationship with food.

I don't challenge friends and colleagues on their diets, their botox, their hair dye and high heels and their fondness for painful and continuous hair removal, it is a choice they make as adults. A bizarre one, but a product of free choice.
I may think it stupid, and vain, and tedious in conversation, but I can ignore it. That's not the same as condoning promotion of eating disorders or the rest of the package, is it?
I'd happily see the disappearance of every glossy women's magazine, the majority of the contents of the local chemist from cosmetics to dyes and all advertising and material that has used photoshop and airbrushing. I wouldn't miss them, would you?

Actually I think eating the same amount every single day is not necessarily natural or right, we're just conditioned into it. Feast or famine (within reasonable limits) feels healthy for lots of people. And there is some evidence that it's better for you.

Won't work for everyone of course but it does work well for a lot of people who have problems losing weight (and actually need to) or can't stick to the ludicrously small number of calories needed for a small middle aged woman to maintain a stable weight day after sodding day.

I really don't agree. Feast or famine is what killed, and still kills, people. Sure, I take your point that eating a bit less or a bit more is fine, but 500 calories? That seems really dodgy to me.

I do get that lots of us turn to diets like this because we know we can't stick to the small number of calories we really should be eating, or because we have a rubbish relationship with food anyway. But we could make those choices without it being promoted on this site, couldn't we? I feel as if, by promoting it, they're acting as if it's healthy and great. The best it can possibly be is a diet that's better than some other diets.

What I mean is, if someone gave you the choice and said 'ok, I could change the way you think about food so you find it easy to eat normal, balanced meals with the right quantities of everything, or you can do this diet,' you'd obviously choose the first one.

I'm with you. I actually have a nasty little eating disorder (not full-blown, but persistent and anxiety-related). And it's only reading this thread that I realise why my eating has been so fucked up today, it's because I read that damn 5:2 thing this morning.

I don't think we're going to reach agreement on whether 5:2 is a reasonable healthy way for people to lose / maintain weight when they need to.

But as I see it the point of the thread is whether it's reasonable for MNHQ to promote it as a quick fix way for size 10 women to get down to a size 8 in a hurry because they perceive it necessary to look perfect in a bikini on the beach. And I think we're unanimous on that.

YY, absolutely.

I agree with Mintyy. And I think you've articulated what has been registering as a feeling of unease within me.

MNHQ endorsed bollocks is not really in the ethos of the site. Or at least it didn't use to be.

I never read the home page. A lot of men and women are interested in losing weight and eating better as 60% of British people are over weight. Eating a bit less and having periods of famine is what man had for a million years so it's like keto/paleo - it can be part of healthy eating.

I think we need to remember this site set up without any feminism boards at all! That was the amazing thing - that women actually thought feminism was not one naturally to include.

I am always disappointed by lack of business threads which proves how much little girls are brought up to be pretty, please men and keep house and that most of them are utterly uninterested in business, money, pensions, tax and all the stuff I find fascinating.

I don't read the home page either.

For a million years, many people died. That's not healthy. Honestly.

I wasn't here when FWR was set up, but wasn't it because initially, the founders saw no reason feminism needed to be separate from anything else? It happened because people started disagreeing, not because Justine doesn't think feminism isn't natural.

I'd be really interested to see your new thread, though - I don't think you can prove that little girls aren't interested in business etc., but it'd be a good one to debate.