Women's Magazines

I was recently in line at the local Food Cat (hint: that's what I call the grocery store chain Food Lion), and while I was waiting for the person in front of me to figure out how to operate the credit/debit card scanner and pay for their dozen or so boxes of Hot Pockets, Pizza Rolls and carton of Pediasure (we'll discuss why this person shouldn't have children some other time), I noticed the magazine rack. Nearly anyone who has ever been to a grocery store, supermarket or general store (hell, any kind of store really) before knows what I'm talking about. That little rack filled with stale chewing gum, lighters, candy bars and various flimsy publications.

Only the finest news about Britney Spears for our customers.

Has anyone actually ever really looked, and I mean really looked, at the magazines that are on sale there? Naturally your thoughts jump to those bastions of free press and investigatory journalism like the National Enquirer or Star Magazine. No. Those venerable publications deserve nothing less than our respect, if not admiration for their selfless investigation of the potential links between President Obama and the Lizard People, not to mention letting us know which aging celebrities had an embarrassing day at the beach.

Who are we kidding? Fox News would probably run this story.

No, dear reader. The ludicrous publications of which I speak are those magazines that masquerade as "Women's Magazines". Tripe like Seventeen, Elle and Cosmopolitan. I am unable to understand how or why these ridiculous magazines exist. Allow me to take a step back and declare that this article is not based on any sexist notion about women, or female empowerment, or the capabilities of the lady "journalists" that contribute to these publications. No, I simply cannot understand the how and why of these magazines.

Exhibit A

This is the particular magazine cover that caught my eye. It is the March, 2011 issue of Seventeen Magazine. The fairly attractive (yet still jail-bait!) young lady on the cover is one Miranda Cosgrove. She's best known for her titular (ha, ha! see what I did there?) role in the Disney series iCarly. In addition to wanting "people to see the real me", Miranda will also let you know "Who's talking behind your back?" and how to "Get silky hair and smooth skin with zero effort!" Also, "659 New Ways to Look Cute Now!"

Wait...what?

Are you fucking kidding me? Six hundred and fifty nine new ways to look cute now? Let me break this simple sentence down into three parts, each of which I have trouble believing. 659, new, and now.

First off, the numerical part of the sentence. Six hundred and fifty nine? That's a shit ton of ways! There are only three hundred and sixty five days in a standard year. This magazine promises to give you nearly two tips for every day of the year. And it's only March! God knows how many secrets the editors of Seventeen will divulge in the April publication. At this rate, there could be several thousand ways to "look cute" by the time you end the year.

I've seen how this ends. And it's not pretty.

A quick search of the interweb databases will tell you that Seventeen has been in publication since 1944. 1944? That magazine has been printed on a regular basis for nearly seven decades. It has always been a monthly periodical. Mathematically, that tells us that in some top-secret underground vault there might very well be nearly eight hundred separate issues of Seventeen, all containing numerous tips on how to look cute! This staggering, mind boggling amount of ways to look cute completely overwhelms my level of comprehension.

Also, there are six hundred and fifty nine ways. I don't know which is worse: the thought that there are actually that many ways to look cute but the editors of Seventeen simply have no standards, or that they managed to cut a few of the less fabulous tips. If these tips didn't have to pass any pretense at quality control, how useful are they going to be? If they did, then why pick 659? Why not 600 even? Why not 650? Better yet, why not 666? Because clearly the editors had to make a deal with some sort of demon in order to get access to such a plethora of new ways to look cute now.

"659 new ways to look cute, huh? I'll sign!"

Not to mention that they're all new! Am I wrong in assuming that "new" means "previously un-used"? Perhaps I am. Perhaps in this case "new" simply means that the methods are previously unknown to the girl reading this particular magazine. Because that girl has been living in a fallout shelter for the past sixty years, or has complete amnesia or some shit, and so is unaware of any potential "ways to look cute".

Okay. Even granting these most lenient of circumstances (the odds of which are nearly infinitesimal), that is still a ridiculous amount of information about how to look cute. How have the editors of Seventeen managed to compile this veritable encyclopedia of beauty tips? More importantly, how does this magazine manage to turn a profit if the only people who could realistically benefit from its wisdom are amnesiacs?

"Out of my way! I've got to go buy a new handbag!"

And they promise to work now? I don't expect "now" to mean "instantaneously", I just expect it to mean "quickly". In like a week. Tops. Not next month. Not next year. So that means that all the possible tips exclude any form of serious diet or exercise. So basically, you can't be slimmer or more toned in order to look cute. Except for perhaps getting your hair cut or your nails done, all these proposed tips will only help you out for about one day a week. Unless you're the type of girl who wears the same outfit every day.

I'm looking at you animated girls...

You can see my objections to these women's magazines. Based on these preposterous claims, I have reached two conclusions.

The least likely conclusion that I thought of is that the people who contribute to these magazines are geniuses of the highest caliber. They have not only discovered which shoes make that floral patterned sundress you bought this spring "work", they have also found a way to circumvent the known laws of of our universe. Laughing in the face of what a bunch of frumpy looking physicists think they know about the time/space continuum, the editors of Seventeen Magazine are clearly our intellectual superiors.

Like this, but with a wig. And that goblet is a margarita.

The other possibility is that they are so overtly (nay impossibly!) inane, incompetent and ill-researched (more words starting with the letter "I" that denote outright failure) as to have crossed the line from good to bad, and then back again. This possibility denotes that the people who write, distribute, purchase and read these publications are all massive idiots for believing in the words they see printed on the pages they foolishly purchased.

"So bad it's good" includes Shake Weights and nearly any Steven Seagal film.

Now, far be it for me to limit the spectrum of capability to "masterful omniscience" or "abject stupidity". You can probably decide for yourself. Perhaps you already have. But in any case, I think we can all agree that women's magazines are either falsifiers of information, have no standards, are deluded about the definition of some words, or at the very least are just really, really bad at math.

The previous sentence is not an exaggeration, nor is it a sexist remark. They are seriously just bad at math. They seem to pick numbers at random, like the editors are naturally drawn to high numbers, like a crow to shiny objects.

Allow me to present exhibits B through F. All of these are magazine covers from 2011. I didn't even have to search further back than few months to prove my point. They are listed in descending order of magnitude of numbers.

Do they give out bonuses for higher numbers?

Sometimes they have lists that are sort of believable. Sometimes they manage to create lists that don't reach triple digits. For example, did you know that there are only sixty sex tips available to the editors of Cosmo?

But I'm sure that they're worth reading. Ladies...

But they graciously share all of them with us. Since roughly 73% of the internet is porn-related, I think it is safe to say that there are more than sixty positions, techniques, fetishes, seductions, helpful exercises, dirty talk, foreplay and what have you out there. With a little bit of research, I'm certain that the editors could have given us 1,293 ways to spice up our sex lives.

But they didn't! They picked the sixty (allegedly) best tips to share. Because they care about helping their readers have fulfilling sex lives. They used a system of standards and quality control. They picked an even number. It's still not as reasonable as the "8 easy exercise tips" touted by one magazine, but it's definitely a start.

Sometimes though, they don't even actually know how many tips they have included in this month's issue. Whether that's just sloppy editing or the inability to actually count, I'll let you decide.

"There's, like, lots of tips! OMG!"

Totes.

Illiteracy

For a very intelligent person, my room mate is functionally illiterate. I don't mean that he can't read, I mean that he won't read. He says the only reason he reads at all is because Hugo the Hornet (the mascot for the Charlotte Hornets NBA team) came to his elementary school and told him to.

Not sure if he reads out of respect, or fear of a giant insect.

I can't count the times when I've begun a sentence with "Hey, have you read..." only to trail off and finish with "Never mind. Sigh." I'm not just talking about stuff like Pride and Prejudice, I mean things like Beverly Cleary books, all the way down to The Lost Little Puppy.

Pictured: A scholar and a gentleman.

If you've ever seen the show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", and are familiar with the character portrayed by Charlie Day, this next quote will hit home. "Your illiteracy has screwed us again, Charlie!" I think of that often when I try to bring up a character or plot that contributes to whatever discussion we're having. I will bring up something like Encyclopedia Brown or the differences between the movie and book version of The Da Vinci Code, and he will look at me like I'm speaking gibberish.

Paradoxically, he is an avid reader of Mark Twain's obscure short stories, books explaining theoretical physics and anything about NCSU basketball. And even though he has never read a single one of the Harry Potter series, he loves the movies. So much so that he and a friend once waited in line in full costume just because they had nothing better to do.

Not him, but you get the idea.

In order to solve this problem, I proposed that he get a Kindle 3. For those of you who don't know, the Kindle is basically a portable electronic screen that stores and presents books, cutting down on having to actually carry around books while at the same time looking like a pretentious technology snob.

Yes. I mean you Steve Jobs.

The only thing is, there is no such thing as the Kindle 3. It was a parody created by the folks at CollegeHumor. Although with a little research, it looks like Amazon is actually about to make the third installment in the product's line. The parody add shows testimonials from people who now love reading thanks to the Kindle 3.

What makes the Kindle 3 better than the previous two versions was the exciting new visual interface. One guy even read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy in nine hours. Essentially, the fictional Kindle 3 is a DVD player. And that's the best way to get my room mate to read.

Mike Myers is a terrible author...