See Your Face in Every Magazine

First of all, let me say, I like to read magazines. I like to read books and newspapers too, but right now I’m talking about magazines, okay?

And I like to read them on paper. I like to physically turn pages and read them. My husband has one of those Kindle thingys. He loves it! He brags how he can have a million books on there. (Or some ridiculous number like that--when he starts giving me statistics I seem to get a little humming in my head that makes it impossible for me to recall the actual number later.)

But I don’t like the electronic form much. I like to hold a REAL BOOK. I like the way books smell: the brand-new book smell and the vintage-book aroma. I like a shiny new magazine sliding through my hands as I read it. I even like the black fingers you get from reading a real newspaper. It’s authentic.
But anyways, I DO like to read magazines. But I have to say there are some topics I’m getting tired of, because they are on the cover of every women’s magazine EVERY month.

#1: Losing Weight. Oh my gosh. Maybe it’s un-American of me, but I am SO SICK of all this talk about losing weight! Yeah, we’re all fat. We shouldn’t eat so much junk. WE KNOW! Let’s move on!

#2: Getting Organized. How many different ways can you say the same thing? Get rid of your extra stuff! Store the rest of it in cute little bins! Woo-hoo! That’s all there is to it. How can you keep squeezing a whole article out of this topic every month, ALL YEAR LONG?

#3: Saving Money. Okay, don’t buy so much STUFF! That’s it. Seriously. Again, not something we should be needing to keep writing new articles about, month in and month out. By the way, I notice no one suggests we should Save Money by cancelling our magazine subscriptions. Hmmm….

#4. Find the Perfect ___ To Flatter Any Body. Fill that blank in with swimsuit in the spring/summer, dress in the fall/winter. Now I like to look at clothes as much as the next girl, but I take umbrage with the Any Body. Mostly because the models are all the SAME body! Where’s the regular chicks? You can put camouflaging pleats and ruffles all over me, but I am NOT going to look like these size-zero girl on page 48. And neither is 90 percent of the population. If you say Any Body, how about let’s SEE some of them and how FLATTERING the clothes are?

#5. Healthy Meals Your Family Will Love. Just give it UP people! They won’t love it if it’s healthy, okay? You keep trying to come up with new ways to serve the same stuff. So we end up with a long list of ingredients, half of which I can’t even FIND at the store, and I spend all day making something that will make my kids go, “What did you DO to this chicken Mom?” and “Can I just have a peanut butter sandwich?”

#6: Hidden Dangers in Your ____. Just fill in the blank with ANYTHING there. There’s hidden dangers in everything, it seems. I can get skin cancer from using sunscreen? What? Oh, because then I get a false sense of security and stay in the sun too long. I can get cancer from my plastic containers? Whoops! Better check the labels and try to remember which numbers are the BAD ones. (Again, that humming noise in my brain when I try to remember the numbers.) Buying cleaners in attractive bottles could KILL me? Oh, because they look like they could be food or perfume. (Assuming I’m an IDIOT, of course.) And it goes on and on, all the products that are out to get me.

And, all right, I admit that these can all be worthy topics. The thing is, I'm just SICK of them!
Okay, so all those gripes aside, what do I LIKE to read in a magazine?

#1: Interesting Stories About People. Well, that seems like a big duh, doesn’t it? But I mean stories about regular people, not just celebrities all the time. I especially like stories about people whose problems are way worse than mine, like “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” (I also love how it always IS saved!)

Or people who write in for advice, you can’t beat that with a stick! That’s always something different! What SHOULD “In A Dilemma in D.C.” do about her wayward daughter? How about those etiquette conundrums: Should I tell my co-worker his rancid B.O. is killing us all? Inquiring minds want to know!

#2: Miniature Investigations. Recently I read an expose on how big actual ice-cream scoops were vs. how big they were supposed to be. Seriously. It was fascinating. They went to ice cream parlors and got like fifty scoops each, and then went back to the lab and weighed them. (How do you get THAT gig, I wonder?) Result: Ben and Jerry’s was shortchanging everyone, and Baskin Robbins was giving everyone about an ounce more than they should have. And, oddly enough, Coldstone was the most accurate, even though when you get ice cream there it LOOKS so imprecise, with those two metal paddles they roll up your scoop with. Now THAT’S an investigative scoop I can get into! (Pardon the pun.)

I also like when people have a problem a with a company and a magazine reporter straightens it out for them. “You will be receiving a full refund and an apology, Mrs. Chambers.” BOO-ya! That’s what I’M talking about!

#3: Blogs and Fiction. I like it when they feature a blog, perhaps like THIS one. How about it, Good Housekeeping? Ladies Home Journal? Redbook? I’m available...

.