Thursday 15 August 2013

It's Nuts!

On the left is lad's mag Nuts.



















On the right is women's magazine Pick Me Up.

One panders to the red-blooded young male's need for a sexy outlet of bags of silicone covered in skin. One panders to the female's recently discovered (and rather disturbing) need for red blood. Stories about rape, murder, incest and cannibalism among other salacious horrors are apparently what women want as a 'Pick Me Up'

And yet guess which one of this toxic twosome the Co-Operative supermarket have co-operated in removing from its shelves...?

Yes, that's right, the one featuring mock mammaries, come hither looks and articles about which Go Faster stripes boy racers should affix to their cars.

Although not a paid-up feminist by any means, I have long noticed women's magazines becoming increasingly abusive to women, as even if they don't focus on more human horror stories than True Detective magazine, they are encouraging women to believe that they are too fat, too old and not getting enough sex and of the right quality and variety with 'The One'. They seem deliberately designed to undermine the female self-esteem rather than build it as women's magazines of yesteryear believed was their benevolent duty to their readers. They have become one long fest of victimhood and not being good enough. I often wonder what kind of misogynists run these rags, and then, what kind of idiots buy them, but then that might be eroding the idiots', er, sisters' fragile sense of self-esteem, so I'd better not go there...

A male poet friend has even summed up this phenomenon in a frenzied comic poem called 'Fat Sex' which always brings the house down when he performs it.

It's a topsy turvy world we live in and no mistake. But let's not forget that perversion comes in many forms. As does the hypocrisy that invariably accompanies it. So if Nuts is covered up or suffers from premature ejection then the same should apply to other lurid publications unwholesome to the human soul.

On the plus side, Women's Realm seems to have weathered the fashion and has even been known to still give away the odd free knitting pattern. I believe a few Reader's Digest readers are still alive too, gawd bless 'em.

6 comments:

Steve said...

This is indeed a disturbing trend and for all publishers cite market forces and supply & demand, etc, I can't help wondering if sometimes (all of the time) business propagates and creates damaging markets just to shift product.

broken biro said...

I hadn't thought about those 'true life stories' type mags in that way, but this rings true - you make a really good point. *shudders*

Marginalia said...

"People's Friend" makes you believe the 50's never ended.

I'm hopeful. The women in my life tend not to have family secrets buried under the patio, or have Carrie as their mother.

Mind you I remember my step dad reading "Titbits".

Wisewebwoman said...

The patriarchy is even more alive and more pervasive than ever.

I continue to be dumbfounded at the silence of most women.

XO
WWW

Nota Bene said...

Balance and a lack of hypocrisy are rare commodities

The Poet Laura-eate said...

Thank you all for your welcome and thought-provoking comments on this. Lx