She's just challenging American female readers. For my own part I have always accepted this challenge--I have never purchased a women's fashion or 'health' magazine.
I like buying magazines and I like getting them in the mail, but I've canceled the subscriptions I had and I rarely buy them off the rack anymore because of the sorry content and the obsession with unreal thinness. Most of them are the same shit, month after month.
So, since women's magazines are struggling with readership across the board, why don't editors conclude that we ARE voting with our dollars for less lies and less bullshit? #maghag
I don't buy these pathetic magazines, and I haven't since my new year's resolution made when I was 15. I am STILL waiting for everyone to catch up with me! #maghag
Edited by sydbarrettsaves, emissary of hell at 10/20/09 4:19 PM
sydbarrettsaves, emissary of hell was starred
sydbarrettsaves, emissary of hell was unstarred
"There is no mainstream American women's magazine that features un-Photoshopped models of all shapes and sizes."
I picked up a copy of Oprah's magazine last week and was pleasantly surprised at the women modeling some of the clothes - they were all shapes, sizes, races - and included a woman with a prosthetic leg, which I have NEVER seen before in a mainstream mag. Yeaaaa for Oprah. #maghag
@SanFranLefty: It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I've actually bought O Mag. It tends to have some pretty good articles and book reviews, and doesn't generally have too many dieting stories, except for a few token Dr. Oz blurbs which I ignore. Not bad for a womens mag. #maghag
@BetteD: That's not embarrassing. My caving in and buying US Weekly is embarrassing. O has well-written articles, and I feel like it's the only integrated magazine around. #maghag
@BetteD: I buy O when I buy magazines. It has good articles, practical advice, bookreviews, and it assumes intelligence on the part of its readers. #maghag
@BetteD: I buy O when I buy magazines. It has good articles, practical advice, bookreviews, and it assumes intelligence on the part of its readers. #maghag
@BetteD: Funny thing is that I de-tanned her, de-Crest-stripped her teeth, browned out the blonde highlights and blotched her skin. I almost didn't throw in the Jack Daniels dress...
I think women have to protest - and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks.
Help me out here, Kate White, because I'm pretty confused. The magazine industry is hurting. Magazines are laying off members of their staff and folding left and right. People just aren't buying that many magazines anymore. Glamour is cutting its staff. Women's magazines are cutting their teen titles. Jane is gone. Many smaller women's magazines have folded. Yet, you say that women need to back up their actions with their pocketbooks. Kate, let me spell this out for you: women are acting with their pocketbooks. They aren't buying your magazine as much anymore. #maghag
@Sputnik_Sweetheart: That's the bigger picture I think they're really pretending doesn't exist. It's not a gigantic portion of their subscriber base writing in angry letters and canceling on the spot. It's a much longer-term decline of interested readers, who are neither subscribing nor buying from the newsstand. They're fed up with the whole product, and possibly in financial trouble, and they're saying the hell with it, I don't need this. And they don't. Nobody needs magazines except the people who work on them. That's why it's so infuriating when they act as though they're indispensable. In these economic times? Forget it! #maghag
@TheFormerJuneBronson: SO true. I've occasionally bought Self -- as well as Fitness and Shape. Sometimes, when I'm in for a long flight or when I'm feeling down on my body, I've bought all three.
Fitness was the easiest to stop purchasing: it has so little content, and most of it is along the lines of, "Hey, you can save calories by replacing your low-carb rice cakes with aged cardboard! You'll find cardboard more chewable if you moisten it with your tears."
Self and Shape are a bit better, but I gradually realised I didn't like "the product" there either. They have fashion and makeup spreads which are completely pointless, the exercises are repetitive... and, more importantly, I realised that they made me feel worse, not better. And they almost never motivated me to exercise. They just made me feel like shit about myself, because here were all these things I could be doing, things I could be doing tomorrow, but I wasn't. And I knew I wasn't going to do them tomorrow either.
The thing is, these magazines make their money from making you feel bad. I bought them because I felt bad, and I wanted to feel better about my body. The mags made me feel worse, and so I bought more of them. Until, one day, I saw that they didn't help me feel better or lose weight, but that packing my lunch did. So now I buy food magazines (for packed lunch and cooked-dinner inspiration), and Harper's Bazaar to be inspired by the outfits. #maghag
@TheFormerJuneBronson: But, yeah, to come back to your point -- I didn't cancel a subscription or write these mags a letter. I just didn't buy them anymore. I had the money for it, I just decided that they make me feel like shit. #maghag
@Sputnik_Sweetheart: Yup. I don't think she gets it. I don't know if these people exist in a universe where everyone around them thinks it's OK to airbrush a photo of yourself after you've just run a marathon or what.
I'm 90 percent sure I'm going to let my Vogue subscription die when it runs out in January. I'm just tired of it. And the Nine cover just doesn't look right, like they all smashed them together randomly and didn't even try to make it look cohesive. I'm tired of the snobbery and the "little houses" remarks, and I'm really tired of all the "We're going to make a composite photo!" stuff. #maghag
I think she should have argued that due to the economic situation, the magazine couldn't afford to print all of the pixels designated for Kelly's body. I would have accepted that answer much better. #maghag
They should do an experiment. Take two areas with similar purchasing trends and demographics. Put a magazine with a photoshopped cover in one, the same magazine with the same image, only NOT photoshopped, in the other.
We could debate this all day. Or we could just find out the answer already. #maghag
@braak: Marie-Claire in the UK, tried this, (sortof) in 2000. 2 covers were published - one with Pamela Anderson and one with Sophie Dahl. Sophie Dahl outsold by a mile, but it would have been a more meaningful test to choose a 'thin' actress whose work is more enjoyed by women.
The editor of M-C then? Liz Jones. And she wrote an excellent piece about this decision and her subsequent resignation from the magazine, in the Daily Fail. [www.dailymail.co.uk]#maghag
I really think Self magazine is in a whole different category than something like Vogue or Cosmo. The latter two magazines concentrate on fashion and style. The women wearing them are somewhat secondary.
Self magazine, however, advertises itself as a provider of content for and about women. The dishonesty in photoshopping women's bodies just seems more blatant and damaging in this case, although I abhor it in any situation. #maghag
@Island of Misfit Toys: I think you've hit the nail on the head. That's why the uproar with Self was so much more intense in comparison to the loathing directed at magazines like Cosmo and Vogue. It's doubly insulting to women, because not only are they presenting an unattainable ideal, but they are using every inch of their print to argue that these images are in fact attainable, and that we should be busting our asses to attain them. #maghag
@Island of Misfit Toys: See, I think Self wants us to think it's in a whole different category from Vogue or Cosmo -- and it does have some different content. But the focus on a thin body is the same. As much as they talk about health and self-esteem, a lot of it is about slimming this or that or trimming calories here or there. #maghag
For some reason this pains me. She's an editor? Shouldn't it be "it won't be purchased"? (I really hate people who seem to be inventing their own grammar rules on the spot, especially when they are in charge of a print publication) #maghag
Lol at "if women didn't like these images they wouldn't buy them." Um...has she been living under a rock? We aren't. That's why half the magazine industry is folding and/or getting massively laid-off. Check yo'self before you wreck yo'self, Danzinger.
PS--It is not fair that someone so un-awesome can have a last name so very close to my fave metal band. #maghag
"the reason some of these magazines get bought by people is because they want to see that image. It is a consumer-driven market. If you put something on the newsstand and they don't like it, it won't get bought."
This is untrue in the case of Self. I understand why fashion magazines say this. I don't like it, but I understand it. Fashion mags like Vogue are supposed to be a fantasy. No one can afford the clothes, and no one could wear them in real life (ostrich feathers don't hold up well on the subway). No one reads them for practical advice.
But Self is not a fashion magazine. It's a self-help magazine. It gives exercise plans and diets. It has tips for handling stress. If you do all of the things it recommends, it implies you can be like the woman on the magazine. Putting a woman on the cover who is airbrushed is a contradictory. #maghag
It just doesn't make sense to me that a magazine that is supposed to be about improving your body naturally - by exercise, good diet, meditation and what-have-you - feels the imperative to edit their models to airbrushed fakeness oblivion. The only message it sends is Your Best isn't Good Enough Until You've Been Wrung Through Adobe Photoshop.
Self magazine using outrageous amounts of Photoshop on their cover is sort of like a fitness instructor who constantly gets secret plastic surgery. They may as well write "Full of Tricks That Won't Work!" on the cover. #maghag
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So, since women's magazines are struggling with readership across the board, why don't editors conclude that we ARE voting with our dollars for less lies and less bullshit? #maghag
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I picked up a copy of Oprah's magazine last week and was pleasantly surprised at the women modeling some of the clothes - they were all shapes, sizes, races - and included a woman with a prosthetic leg, which I have NEVER seen before in a mainstream mag. Yeaaaa for Oprah. #maghag
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Well, of course she prefers photoshop. The picture above this post is actually the AFTER photo. She had her staff originally work on this one:
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Help me out here, Kate White, because I'm pretty confused. The magazine industry is hurting. Magazines are laying off members of their staff and folding left and right. People just aren't buying that many magazines anymore. Glamour is cutting its staff. Women's magazines are cutting their teen titles. Jane is gone. Many smaller women's magazines have folded. Yet, you say that women need to back up their actions with their pocketbooks. Kate, let me spell this out for you: women are acting with their pocketbooks. They aren't buying your magazine as much anymore. #maghag
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Fitness was the easiest to stop purchasing: it has so little content, and most of it is along the lines of, "Hey, you can save calories by replacing your low-carb rice cakes with aged cardboard! You'll find cardboard more chewable if you moisten it with your tears."
Self and Shape are a bit better, but I gradually realised I didn't like "the product" there either. They have fashion and makeup spreads which are completely pointless, the exercises are repetitive... and, more importantly, I realised that they made me feel worse, not better. And they almost never motivated me to exercise. They just made me feel like shit about myself, because here were all these things I could be doing, things I could be doing tomorrow, but I wasn't. And I knew I wasn't going to do them tomorrow either.
The thing is, these magazines make their money from making you feel bad. I bought them because I felt bad, and I wanted to feel better about my body. The mags made me feel worse, and so I bought more of them. Until, one day, I saw that they didn't help me feel better or lose weight, but that packing my lunch did. So now I buy food magazines (for packed lunch and cooked-dinner inspiration), and Harper's Bazaar to be inspired by the outfits. #maghag
10/20/09
10/20/09
I'm 90 percent sure I'm going to let my Vogue subscription die when it runs out in January. I'm just tired of it. And the Nine cover just doesn't look right, like they all smashed them together randomly and didn't even try to make it look cohesive. I'm tired of the snobbery and the "little houses" remarks, and I'm really tired of all the "We're going to make a composite photo!" stuff. #maghag
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We could debate this all day. Or we could just find out the answer already. #maghag
10/20/09
The editor of M-C then? Liz Jones. And she wrote an excellent piece about this decision and her subsequent resignation from the magazine, in the Daily Fail. [www.dailymail.co.uk] #maghag
10/20/09
Still, initial inquiries into the matter suggest that Lucy Danziger's pants may, indeed, by a little on fire. #maghag
10/20/09
Self magazine, however, advertises itself as a provider of content for and about women. The dishonesty in photoshopping women's bodies just seems more blatant and damaging in this case, although I abhor it in any situation. #maghag
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For some reason this pains me. She's an editor? Shouldn't it be "it won't be purchased"? (I really hate people who seem to be inventing their own grammar rules on the spot, especially when they are in charge of a print publication) #maghag
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PS--It is not fair that someone so un-awesome can have a last name so very close to my fave metal band. #maghag
10/20/09
This is untrue in the case of Self. I understand why fashion magazines say this. I don't like it, but I understand it. Fashion mags like Vogue are supposed to be a fantasy. No one can afford the clothes, and no one could wear them in real life (ostrich feathers don't hold up well on the subway). No one reads them for practical advice.
But Self is not a fashion magazine. It's a self-help magazine. It gives exercise plans and diets. It has tips for handling stress. If you do all of the things it recommends, it implies you can be like the woman on the magazine. Putting a woman on the cover who is airbrushed is a contradictory. #maghag
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"I was getting...liposuction."
"what! no!"
"Yes! I'm a fraud, but it's not like normal women could have this ass!" #maghag
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