Why I Don’t Read Magazines Anymore, Part II

(just arrived? read part 1 here)

In addition to finding their fashion advice inapplicable to my everyday life, I also have taken up another issue with magazines as of late. Here’s the thing: as much as magazines talk about improving body image and featuring “plus-size” models, I really believe that they all contribute to negative body image and a poor sense of self-worth. Observe:

1. I dare you to find me a women’s magazine that does not have a headline that purports to tell you a way to make yourself thinner/prettier/more desirable. Whether it’s through promoting unhealthy quick fix ways to lose weight or telling you to alter something that makes you distinctive to make you look more like other people. You’re not fine the way you are – you can always be fixed, made more socially acceptable, and, therefore, happier.

2. The majority of their advertising – hair, makeup, etc – depends on you continually feeling like there is something wrong about you that needs to be fixed. Even fitness magazines fall into this – it’s not in their best interest for you to get over your body issues, lose the weight, embrace your body and live your life. They need you hung up on yourself in order to fuel their industry.

3. I’m hesitant to give fashion magazines a major role in the development of eating disorders/disordered eating, because an ED is a serious mental health issue that has a variety of influencing factors. However, by continually showing impossibly thin women, they do contribute to the overall idea that if you are not that thin you are not normal, and that there is only one definition of healthy/normal. I’m not pushing for fashion magazine to feature overweight women – I think they should showcase healthy, strong, fit women, but those women come in a variety of sizes. Additionally, the “10 ways to lose 10 pounds this month!” mentality pushes the idea that your body is constantly in need of repair.

4. It really does reinforce the idea that your primary purpose, as a woman, is to look good for men. Don’t confuse me – I love clothes and fashion and having pretty hair and all that jazz, but I do it for myself. I dress according to how I feel, and if that makes me a Man Repeller, then so be it.

I won’t contribute to an industry built upon tearing down my fellow women. The culture of body criticism in today’s society is horrifying, and needs to be stopped.

I won’t contribute to an industry that attacks real healthy role models while promoting disordered attitudes left and right. The healthy living blogs attacked in the above-linked Marie Claire article did more to normalize my relationship with food and exercise than any magazine ever did. These blogs show normal women who eat healthy food and work towards impressive exercise goals, and they were tremendously beneficial to me when I needed to know what it was that healthy women ate. Blogs like Healthy Tipping Point call for accepting your body and celebrating it by feeding it well and helping it grow stronger. Women’s magazines with specific eating plans only ever made me feel inadequate when I couldn’t follow the plan. Bloggers like Angela openly discuss ‘shameful’ health issues such as binge eating, unhealthy binge/purge cycles, food destruction, self-hate and other non-’glamourous’ elements of disordered eating. The world of disordered eating is not confined to just bulimia and anorexia and painfully thin women, but good luck finding it represented in a women’s magazine. These blogs are real, and sometimes raw, and that’s a hell of a lot more beneficial than reading about how you should eat sucralose-sweetened Fibre 1 cereal because it’s low in calories.

I won’t support an industry that needs to convince me that my body and face and hair and whatever are inadequate in order to survive. I don’t sleep with a snake around my neck, either.

[and because I provided links last time, here are some more links:

• FitSugar - need a new yoga flow? need a weight routine? FitSugar's got your back, minus the body snark.
• Healthy Tipping Point - basically the best healthy eating blog on the internet. Caitlin spreads love and acceptance, and encourages her readers to eat a healthy, nutritious diet, love your body and appreciate what it can do, and let the little things go. I couldn't have run my 10k without this blog.
• Oh She Glows - reading Angela's Road to Health is like reading something out of my own head, and she encourages readers to treat their bodies well and show them how much they love them by eating healthful food and exercising.]

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