checkout line ponderings

[anotheranon]

Due to uncertainty about the dinner menu this week, I've spent more time than usual in the grocery check out line. I'm starting to notice repeating themes in the articles in gossip/celebrity/women's magazines that always sit there. It's so regular it's astounding - I don't even have to pick them up, because it's all right there on the cover:

1) Sadistic gourmet/"housekeeping" type magazines that feature articles about "5 easy desserts your family will LOVE!" listed right next to "lose the last 5 pounds" or similar. So.... the reader of the magazine is supposed to make the 5 desserts for someone else (boyfriend/husband? Kids?) but not eat them herself because of the aforementioned 5 lbs/flabby thighs/whatever. WTF?

2) Sex tips about "how to drive him WILD in bed!!" What about how he can drive you wild in bed? Or how you can drive yourself wild in bed?

3) Articles in magazines fretting about how one celebrity or another has lost too much weight, or alternately, gained too much weight - often right next to each other in the stands. While I guess it's reassuring that they're featuring something other than models who look picture perfect all the time, it's starting to look a bit like a freak show :P

3a) Tangential to 3: Not quite sure why the obsession with celebrity goings and doings beyond the fact that lots of them are pretty and have live lives the likes of which most of us mere mortals will never see. It's not as if any of them do much beyond being aesthetically pleasing and entertaining (and when they do, charity work and the like isn't glamorous, and is hardly going to be on the cover). It's much more interesting to wonder why some people get so fascinated by lives of the rich and famous - I'm reminded of a former co worker who went off on a tangent about how terrible Prince Charles was to Diana and I was surprised at the level of her outrage about people she didn't even know....

I found a link some time ago from someone who's evidently put a lot more thought into this than I have and found patterns of her/his own - I guess I'm not the only one who thinks these things.

Comments

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

I have noticed #1 and I have wondered the same, it does seem cruel. #2 makes me wonder how many more tricks and special areas can there be?

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

What would REALLY amuse the hell out of me is if one of these mags would just print "He's not doing it for you in bed? Try your best friend instead!" :P Because if all men were as clueless as women's magazines would have us believe, all their readers would have ditched their guys long ago!

Of course, it goes without saying that all these magazines are aimed at straight women, so we'll never see that headline :P

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

No, you're definitely not alone in thinking these thoughts ... there have been BOOKS published about the covers and contents of checkout line magazines. :p The contradictions on the covers of the women's magazines are a source of morbid entertainment while waiting my turn (I don't touch them, since it might be catching ... just scanning the display and giggling to myself while waiting is enough). As for the celebrity stuff, IMHO the mere fact that these publishers stay in business is a scary indicator of the downhill trend of human intelligence/ability ... millions of people vicariously hanging on every detail of the lives of others instead of living one of their own. And then there's the invent-our-own-news-and-fake-photos tabloids ... ***shudders***

The cult of "St. Diana" is another mystery, since she was just as bad as Charles (if either partner in a "duty-and-breeding-purposes-only" marriage CAN be called "bad"). But that opinion probably comes from my having a memory that stretches back further than three weeks (I distinctly recall an interview from early in the marriage where Diana was complaining ... well, whining really ... that family gatherings at Windsor Castle were boooorrrring because there was no place to go clothes shopping ... neither the British or Canadian media were very impressed with her). :p

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Re: Diana - the large view IMHO is that there were no heroes or villians there; Charles and Di were horribly unsuited to each other and could have spared themselves a lot of pain (and magazines a lot of column inches) if they'd just quietly divorced about 1985 or so. Ultimately could have been "any couple" - marriage sucked, so she dove into her career, he into an affair.

And then I'm embarrassed that I know enough about the Charles/Di saga to even form that opinion :P

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

At least you've got a realistic view of the whole thing (and, back in the eighties, you would had to have been living at the bottom of a disused coal mine on a deserted island on another planet in another galaxy to avoid hearing anything about Charles and Diana, so there's no shame in knowing that much about them ***grin***). What scares me are the delusional "fairy tale wedding" people who've projected all kinds of imaginary saintliness onto her and demonity on him.

Actually I was quite amused that all the news stories about Camilla were practically identical to the early ones about Diana; I suspect the media just dug 'em out of the archives and changed the name ... LOL!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I see those things and just shake my head. One of these days I think Cosmo or Marie Clare is going to have "How to be like a Ho!" as a headline.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

What amuses me even more is that I get gmail ads matched to the content of my emails - and the ones attached to the LJ notification of these comments were uniformly about weight loss and celebrity gossip - it's just EVERYWHERE!

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> 2) Sex tips about "how to drive him WILD in bed!!" What about how he can drive you wild in bed?

Those articles are in the magazines aimed at men. Seriously. It seems to make sense to me, put 'em where men might read 'em.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Men might read them in women's magazines in grocery checkout? How do you figure?

Or do you mean that men's magazines have similar articles about "how to drive women wild in bed"?

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

The latter. The basic template is "You're so bad in bed your partner is about to dump you. No, really, she just emailed us! So if you learn all this stuff we're gonna tell you, she might not dump your sorry ass today. Probably tomorrow, but not today."

Women aren't the only ones who get that "You're so worthless" crap drilled into their heads by the media. See also body dysmorphic disorder.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt it. It seems that in the past 10-15 years or so the mass media has ratcheted up the pressure on guys to be physically "perfect" as well, through advertising, tighter men's fashions, etc. Sucks rocks that men now get to enjoy the deluge of obnoxious unreal body images to live up to :(

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

Those messages have been around for at least 50 years that I'm personally aware of, from the time of Charles Atlas and Steve Reeves. Perhaps they haven't been so common in mainstream media for all that time but they've certainly been present in media aimed at men and boys, and that's more than enough exposure to do terrible damage.

As far as what might have changed recently, the trend I can see (over the past 30 years) has to do with the widespread use of steroids. A normal man could get a lot closer to a Steve Reeves physique than he ever could to an Arnold physique. And Arnold, even in his heyday, looks scrawny next to modern bodybuilders.

I hear a lot of talk about how unrealistic expectations damage women, and rightfully so. I hear very little about how unrealistic expectations damage men.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I hear a lot of talk about how unrealistic expectations damage women, and rightfully so. I hear very little about how unrealistic expectations damage men.

Possibly because until fairly recently, you only saw those unrealistic standards in specific media geared towards men's health or similar. I maintain that it's only been the past 10-15 years that have seen buff guys move into the mainstream (fashion leading the way - after generations of slim women, they gave us the Calvin Klein underwear ads in Times Square).

I agree that bodybuilders look downright freakish - I have trouble imagining why any man would want to look like an inflatable pincushion, but then, those images aren't aimed at me, so it's easy for me to say.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> Possibly because until fairly recently, you only saw those unrealistic
> standards in specific media geared towards men's health or similar.

Those images have been in mainstream Hollywood action/adventure movies since at least the early 70s. They were probably around before then, but I'm not a fan of old movies.

> I maintain that it's only been the past 10-15 years that have seen buff
> guys move into the mainstream
>
> I agree that bodybuilders look downright freakish - I have trouble
> imagining why any man would want to look like an inflatable pincushion,

Perhaps this is part of our disagreement. A frequent topic of ridicule on some forums I read is the difference between what women think makes a man buff and what men think makes a man buff. It's really quite a gap. The recently-appeared ads you're thinking of do not feature men that most other men consider buff, or men that they feel insecure over. Those ads are barely, if at all, a part of the damaging imagery I'm talking about. Just as many men have been so programmed by media that they don't even recognize what's unrealistic for most women to achieve, many women don't even recognize what images are damaging to men.

re: sex tips

[zen4me.livejournal.com]

what truly cracks me up about those "how to drive your man/woman wild in bed" articles is, they never mention that good old fashion communication would make your sex life SO much better. apparently communicating your likes, dislikes, desires and fantasies to your partner is much too amazing a concept for the women who buy those garbage mags to grasp.

of course, then they wouldn't actually sell any of those magazine either.

Re: sex tips

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Well, of course not! Articles about how people should talk to each other.. well.. they just aren't as sexy, you know, as sowing dischord and describing the human body as a series of buttons to be pushed :P You'll NEVER sell magazines that way!