Jezebel: O Magazine

How Queer Is Oprah?

Audrey Bilger — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EDT

While flipping through the latest issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, I had what I've come to think of as an "O double-take." More »

Is The Story Of Columbine A Story Of Suicide?

Anna North — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:20:00 EDT

In her essay in O Magazine, the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold offers advice to people who "have lost someone to suicide." But is she the right person to speak for suicide victims and their families? More »

Jessica Travels, Kimora Cuts Back, Jen Wants A Beauty Deal

Sadie Stein — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:30:00 EST

Jessica Simpson is launching a line of luggage. Because that's the image of America we want to project when we travel abroad! [People]

Fired? Dumped? Oprah Says "Self-Distance" Instead Of Sobbing!

Jessica G. — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EDT

I like O: the Oprah Magazine. It's consistently the least condescending, most reasonable women's magazine around ("most reasonable women's magazine" is sort of like "nicest Nazi," but I digress). O editors feature meaty articles and contributions from an incredibly diverse and impressive group of writers — Mary Gaitskill, Susan Choi, and Sharon Olds among them. All of which is to say, I realized what continues to bother me deeply about the magazine yesterday, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the prose. It has to do with Oprah's obsession with self-actualization and the idea that emotional messiness is akin to failure. In the October issue, Tim Jarvis writes about a new "technique" called self-distancing. Apparently when you get horrible news (examples given include being fired, being dumped, and hearing a loved one has been in an accident) you're supposed to take a "mental step back" and process the information "from a distance" instead of reacting to it. And to that I say: fuck off. More »

Oprah Winfrey: One Thing American And Saudi Women Have In Common

Jessica G. — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:00:00 EDT

Oprah Winfrey "struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from a childhood marked by poverty and abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here," Riyadh spa owner Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud tells the New York Times in an article about Oprah's very devoted Saudi fan base. Socioeconomically diverse Saudi women are so enamored with Winfrey that they pass around dog-eared copies of O: the Oprah Magazine brought back from Western sojourns and watch Oprah's show religiously. What's interesting is not only that Oprah is insanely popular in Saudi Arabia, but also that she's popular for the same reason she's popular in the U.S.: she serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration for many women who feel trapped. More »

Living Oprah

Maria — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:30:00 EDT

This past weekend, our own Jessica Grose explored (again!) the world of consumer brand dedication with Living Oprah blogger Robyn Okrant. Though Okrant seems aware of the absurdity of her experiment, she does eventually fall prey to the seductive world of O's special type of branding. Okrant's husband observes that she has started to compare herself to people on TV and has started to worry about being "shlumpy," the subject of an Oprah episode earlier this year. While Okrant may or may not be damaging her own self-confidence by following the Oprah gospel, it is an interesting exploration of what happens when we follow the advice of magazines and TV personalities. [NY Times] More »

5 Possible Reasons Why Women's Magazine Sales Are Plummeting

Dodai Stewart — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Over on Portƒolio's site today, Jeff Bercovici reports that many of the major women's magazines sales are down for the first half of the year. And not just by a little bit: We're talking double-digit numbers. The newsstand average of Glamour dropped 10%; Marie Claire fell 11%, Vogue and Teen Vogue both slumped 15% and poor O, The Oprah Magazine tumbled 16%. We can't claim to know why these publications aren't doing well and losing hundreds of thousands of readers. But we can venture an educated guess! Some theories, after the jump. More »

O Rly?

Dodai Stewart — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:40:00 EDT

A missive from our intern, Anna N.: "So I read through O magazine yesterday, and then happened to be talking to some friends about La Disparition (or A Void) the French novel written without the letter e. This gave me the idea of rewriting portions of O magazine without the letter o. It's actually pretty hard. Observe (regard): The original: "Here We Go! I think I may have mentioned this once or twice over the years, but in case you missed it, let me repeat: I like to read. I call friends for recommendations, I prowl bookstores, I go on regular hunting expeditions in search of the next wonderful story. But my best source for a delicious piece of fiction, a brilliant memoir, a gorgeous photo collection, or anything else I want to curl up with is the reading section of the magazine you're currently holding in your hands." Check out the translation by clicking on the photo. More »

Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Relaxin'?

Moe — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:00:32 EST

I usually have few objections to O. Well, there is the matter of that green jacket, but we're here to talk substance, and the cover story "5 Things Every Happy Woman Does", like all women's magazine features with numbers in the headline, is surely a thing of substance. Most of the rules are dog-themed — you can't feed a dog all it wants; work like a dog; trust like a dog — so I'm assuming the original concept for the piece was "5 Things Every Happy Bitch Knows," but there was something that hit me particularly hard. "See every effort as an opportunity to relax."

Cookie, for example, is now writhing on his back in the grass, emitting small grunts of pleasure, without the slightest hint of concern that his chubby tummy and exquisite enjoyment are on display. I know people who've spent thousands of dollars on sex therapy trying to do that...Here's one of the very few generalizations I believe unconditionally: There is not one useful thing we can do that we don't do better when we're relaxed.

Okay, but: what does a dog do that is really all that useful? More »

Is The Internet Making You Live Life Like A Drunk Driver? Take O's Quiz!

Moe — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:00:13 EDT

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Today, like every day, I began by washing down ten milligrams of Adderall with a bottle of Kombucha and about 24 ounces of Arabian Mocha Sanani. Just getting all this shit together — today for some reason my pills were underneath the couch and my coffee grinder was above the fridge — is enough of a challenge; then came the thirteen-hour struggle to find the Firefox tab I was looking at before I clicked on that other tab before my little iChat icon started jumping up and down and oh shit what was I doing again... It's enough to make anyone ADD, right??? Why yes, says a story in the latest issue of O Magazine, only instead of using the term "ADD" they go with the less blatantly pharmaceutical advertiser-fellating "overwhelm." Quaint! So, not to overwhelm, but want to know if you're overwhelmed? Stop everything right now and watch this video, paying careful attention to count how many times the team in the white shirts pass the ball. More »

Science Way Less Accurate Than Astrology, O Finds

Moe — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:00:00 EDT

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Astrology has a scientific basis in FACT! That's what a story in the November O: The Oprah Magazine claims anyway. Basically the way you are can maybe kind of be explained by the amount of sunlight to which you were exposed in the womb, in addition to three trillion other variables they learned about from watching rats. The story explains that if you were born in spring and early summer you are more likely to be dyslexic, suicidal and anorexic whereas you're more likely to be schizophrenic if you're born in the late winter, which jives with "think-outside-the-box" Aquarius and "foot-fixated Taurus." Okay, but let's get to the important part i.e. how this affects us.

People born in the fall have been found to be more likely to develop panic disorder and/or drug abuse problems.

Which sounds kind of enlightening, though it fails to explain why Virgos get all the panic attacks and Libras get all the liver disease, but we found a fatal flaw to the underlying logic at play here! More »

Simply Vera Leaves Us Simply, Um, Excited? About Fashion?

Moe — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:30:19 EDT

This we'll say for wedding dresses: they're predictable, monochromatic garments you buy more on the basis of quality and craftsmanship than fads and brand names — all traits we look for on the rare occasion we buy clothes. Maybe that's why we keep marveling every time we catch a glimpse of one of the hundreds of September magazine pages devoted to Vera Wang's cheapo collection for Kohl's. Or maybe it's because her philosophy, as she told O Magazine, can be summed up thusly: "Let's not kid around —dark colors always take off ten pounds." Or maybe it's because we have never seen, like, texture in one of these big-designer-for-crap-discount-chain lines. Anyway, we have never been to Kohl's, but we totally checked out its store locator today — and that's a step for us! After the jump, some pretty pictures from the O spread. More »

Suzy Welch Dispenses Female Career Advice In 'O' Magazine; Somehow Forgets Part About "Seducing Billionaires"

Moe — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:20:23 EDT

In the latest issue of O former General Electric CEO Jack Welch's latest wife Suzy diagnoses the five types of hateful co-workers — the Star, the Slider, the Self-Promoter, the Boss Hater and the Pity Party — in what would be a decent column if any space were given to the different ways men and women assume these roles, like how sometimes women become cloying, ubersexualized versions of themselves when they're around powerful men and that's how they get ahead in their careers (And hello: break up marriages! Not that Jack probably needed help in the infidelity department.) You know those women? They're a "type". The ladies who make their gender, like, the central focus of their corporate identities. More »

Sweatshops? Don't Sweat 'Em! NY Times Columnist Tells 'O' Magazine Readers

Moe — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:30:30 EDT

We were totally down with the message of the O magazine August cover story "Chill: 21 Things You Should Stop Worrying About Right Now" (Sample entry: 'Worry Lines — stop worrying about 'em!' LOLZ.) But we really related to the question, "When I buy clothing made in Third World countries, am I exploiting the poor?" We sort of worry about that too! And boy did the O Magazine editors bring in the big guns to get us to convince us to just chill out about it. Wrote Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nick Kristof in the mag:

Buying cheap clothes from foreign factories actually helps the workers.

How to say funnily, "Well yeah but kinda not that simple??" Mercifully, WWD's annual "Where The Money Is" survey of the salaries of the guys who get to buy Italian couture thanks to the fruits of sweatshop labor came out today. And yeah, Wal-Mart and Target executives did well, but those companies are actually kinda hard to run. Here are our favorites: More »

Protesting just a little too much.

eurotrash — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:19:32 EDT

What is it with Oprah Winfrey? Anyone who witnessed the flamingly heterosexual Tom Cruise pounce on her couches ranting of his love for poor dear Katie Homes must have wanted to wack Oprah round the head with a copy of A Million Little Pieces, when she went on to crucify James Frey. Is there an in-crowd and an out-crowd for liars? Tom - have a couch and bounce, bounce, bounce for your fake love. James, screw you, you lying little bastard. More »