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

[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!