As a new feature, I will be occasioning reviewing magazines. In recent months, I have been actually surprised at the changing landscape of magazines. Old standards that formerly would have been avoided have actually turned a new page, while others have worsened over time. Stay tuned...this is going to be a fun ride.
When looking at magazines, we must understand that editors are making the key assumptions that:
- We do not like our bodies, jobs, or relationships
- Reading their magazine will answer our body woes
- No matter how hard we try, we will not attain our life goals
- Someone else has the body we want (usually the cover model)
- Our doctor is keeping secrets from us
- We have a special event which is putting pressure on us to lose weight in short order
- Our clothes do not fit
- We think that we should be having better sex
- We fear a secret disease
- Secretly we want to have our cake and eat it too.
Without making these assumptions, and turning them into declarative facts, magazines wouldn't grab our eyes and give us the urge to pick them up off the supermarket shelf. If we look back over time, magazines have left an indelible mark on society. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, from June 2008 to the end of 2008 there were over 1.8 million copies of Men's Health in circulation.
This what you think you see on first glance of the magazine...
This is what you actually see and makes you want to pick up the magazine...
If there are any chips in your armor, it may seem that buying this magazine may help to fill in what's missing in your life. But the reality is that it is fool's gold. If most magazines are followed from year to year, it will be easy to see that themes are recycled, as is advice and exercise/diet regimes. The only new thing are crops of willing people who submit themselves and their self esteems to the pages of these magazines.
Do I blame the magazines alone. No. We want to believe what they are selling us. We grow up watching Disney movies and learn that we can "just wish upon a star" and our dreams will come true. But to look at the cover articles, the pressure put on men are simply outrageous! The only thing missing is a reference to the workforce. After all, men are now seemingly expected to be the stoic "rock" of the family, be in great shape, wonderful in bed and protect the family financially and physically. No pressure.
Luckily, we know that this is all fallacy, a dream that cannot be obtained but we are trained to think that someone else is able to do this, so we want to try for it.
If you must look at those magazines, think really hard about what you are feeding your mind.
