Dances With Fat: “Fashion Magazine Freakout”
Anyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand “women’s” magazines. The models are all Photoshopped and the health/fitness info ranges from fluff to BS.
Which is why I loved this blog post, “Fashion Magazine Freakout,” by Ragen Chastain of “Dances With Fat.” It’s from a year ago, but this hardly matters… women’s mags certainly haven’t changed much in the last year.
I was standing in line at the grocery store irritated about all of the magazine covers that showed diets just like the month before that and the month before that. It hit me suddenly just how ridiculous it is to believe that these diets work if there is a new one (or three) on the cover of almost every women’s magazine every month.
I’ve done this too. In fact, when shopping with (one or both) of my kids, we make a point of getting into one of the “family hostile” lines* to pay, just so we can make fun of the magazines while we wait. I always find myself rolling my eyes at the myriad weight loss feature stories (breathlessly) advertised on the covers.
I started to wonder just how many weight loss messages I would received if (heavens forfend) I actually subscribed to one of these magazines for a year.
I chose Self magazine and a quick trip to Googleland got me all of the covers for 2010.
But I haven’t done this… it’s clever, no? Click over to check out the looooong list of different weight loss articles and tips that Ms. Chastain compiled for 2010. It’s totally ridiculous!
Her conclusions are spot on:
This is ridiculous. They’ve been publishing these same types of stories once per month since January 1979. Based on my year that means they’ve published about 1152 ways to be skinny, and they are just one of many magazines doing this.
…If this stuff actually worked then they would be out of the business of selling magazines.
Bingo.
*The store where we do most of our shopping, Fred Meyer, has “family friendly” checkout stations that are magazine-free. Thus, we’ve dubbed the normal stations, “family hostile.” 😉
January 25, 2012
My wife subscribes to a couple of these. Most have general health articles, but there is always someone on the cover who lost an ungodly amount of weight on some diet.
Men’s magazines are no better. Their “thing” is always how much muscle you can build in 4-12 weeks (you pick the number).