Thoughts on magazines

 

As a child I loved my mother's Ladies Home Journal. I devoured the article "Can This Marriage Be Saved," the cooking, and I even enjoyed articles on telling your children the facts of life stories, although my mother had done a pretty good job of that. (We won't add that when I was about to marry she said, "If he respects you, he won't ask you to very often"--fortunately my then husband didn't respect me in that regard). 

Years later, a friend and I would do the Cosmopolitan Quiz. We were still young and single and loved comparing the results.

The Boston Public Library had archives of magazines. I loved looking through old Time and Newsweek copies from WWII happy that I knew the ending.

The same friend who shared the Cosmo quizzes did a paper for a woman's studies class on how during the war all the magazines extolled the virtues of women working. Immediately after when they were no longer needed in the work force, it changed to the joys of being a housewife. Social engineering by the media???
Never...can you hear me laughing?

I still love thumbing through a woman's magazine. Now they have them for the working woman, the aging woman, the sporty woman.

But still there is a sameness. When the first magazines came out, they were (and still are) an advertising tool. The original sales pitch to build circulation included telling husbands that the magazine would help their mates be better wives.

I suspect I could take a magazine from any era and could use the same article in next month's issue with only minor adjustments; recipes, decorating, budgeting, kids, etc.

What bothers me is so many have numbers on how to be better, happier, thinner, healthier. 10 ways to a neater closet articles abound. The numbers thingie has been identified by anthropologists as an American trait.

One, I think it was Hall, but I can't guarantee it, gave an example--I misquote only slightly--a German, French and American were asked to write about an elephant.

• German: The history of the Burmese elephant in society 1200-1300 Part I
• French: The Elephant and Love
• American: 10 Ways the Modern Elephant Can Improve Your Life

Okay, stereotypical, but then stereotypes do have some basis in fact.

I still like thumbing through magazines of all types. A friend contributes The Nation. I have The Economist on line, my housemate and a friend share most of the British and American and sometimes the Dubai women's magazines, which I read remembering never to lose said housemate's place. Even the National Enquirer, which writer Anne Beattie once said was a source of some of her short stories ideas, I read. Some have more advertising than content, which has to be hunted down between the glossy ads for products I have no interest in. 

Someday I may find an article "10 Ways to Break Your Magazine Habit" 

Or not...