push.cx
Peter Bhat Harkins
Newsflash: You're Not Good Enough
The excellent humorist Jay Pinkerton just wrote about Men’s Health magazine. It’s a lighthearted but wholly accurate look at a common magazine formula.
The first third of Men’s Health, it turns out, is helpfully devoted to every single minor irk, itch or irritation you’ve experienced today, and why it’s cancer and is excited about killing you. Having trouble sleeping at night? Depression, and also probably diabetes. OR cancer.
The only thing Pinkerton misses is that Men’s Health isn’t an abberation or novelty, every women’s magazine has followed this formula for decades.
There are no such thing as beauty magazines. Their only goal is to make you feel insecure, jealous, and greedy so you buy more of their advertisers’ products so advertisers pay them more money. It’s really that simple. There are no mustache-twirling corporate media moguls cynically orchestrating a conspiracy to make you feel like you need to buy more crap, but that’s only because mustaches went out in the early 80’s.