The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Didn’t you once write a post about the dangers of media/advertising generalization?

I think Marie Clare have just become your latest example.

What is distressing is that many people will read this and believe it because they are the same sort of people who see the before and after photos for diet medication in the back of all the US female tabloid magazines and hand over their credit card details even though the advertisement features an image that has been altered with all the photoshop skills of a young child.
Like the UK’s press coverage on Eastern Europe’s supposed immigration influx, this article will fuel the suspicions of the many people who question the values and benefit of having anyone whose ethnic origin is not white American in their community.

This article is not journalism, it’s pandering to the ‘America under attack’ fraternity, which is currently being manipulated by Sarah Palin and her ‘death committee’ lies relating to the health care reform debates.

Great to see you carrying on where you left off. I hope all went well in Australia.

Before you or Andy or anyone else states it, I appreciate the irony in starting my comment with reference to the dangers of generalization and then make some generalizations of my own. Apologies, I’ll go and apply for an internship at Marie Clare right away. 🙂

I must make sure that Bitch Magazine covers this… and your post, which is i must concede, my favourite so far

“Didn’t know Ann Coulter edited MC magazine”

Excellent comment David. And I’m glad you like it Sonal, even if it is for ‘making-your-blood-boil’ reasons. 🙂

@Andy … I’d forgotten about Nina’s comments, if you’re still in touch with her, can you point her to this so we can get her feedback. And no, it’s not my desperate attempt to get more people on this blog. Well, not the only reason, ha!

I’m so glad you wrote about this because I saw the article last week and was shocked at what they were implying.

Jacob, can you tell me what you mean when you say this situation is occurring in the US and UK because I don’t quite get your point. Are you agreeing with Marie Claire’s article?

@Age. Will try and get to NY to see you. Will let you or Rob know.

what Lauren said

I’d like to hear the Asian woman’s opinion on this.

rob, flattery will get you everywhere you know.

and you also konw that these mags are designed solely to put the boot in. there isn’t a single article in there that will ever change the status quo. no gender-based magazine will. fear is an amazing motivator and the publishers, media buyers and clients all bank on it. in fact, there are some theorists that believe that if women weren’t anxious about themselves anymore, capitalism as we know it could not exist.

in a side note, Glamour WAS suprisingly gutsy by recently running with the ‘regular’ model with a flabby tummy – and i mean properly flabby, not hello! ok! ‘flabby’. sold out in NYC on the day it hit shelves. apparently.

http://tinyurl.com/nqnqbe

although i suspect, like Vanity Fair’s Demi cover – a token gesture at best.

like i said, don’t get me started. i have plenty to say about this ‘industry’.

aspects of that are correct, mr m, but i’d also say that’s a cop out.

firstly, i don’t think mr frank a bennack jr, VC and CEO of hearst – parent to MC and a host of other ’empowering’ ‘women’s mags’ likes being called a woman? or maybe he does, who am i to say.. heh. he’s running a business and is going off P&L, supply and demand, bottom line.

and, i don’t see media buyers, planners, creatives or copywriters making much of stand against the same old messages that really fund a publication like this. like mr bennack – it’s business, right?

Trust the brazen retards at Marie Claire to take an interesting and positive phenomenon like inter-cultural relationships and turn it in to a vapid fashion trend that women should simultaneously aspire to and fear. Honestly – it kills me that “fashion” or (shudder) “women’s” writers find a need to classify everything they see according to the workings of their supremely moronic industry. You could, of course, be seeing more inter-racial Asian and Caucasian couples because of growing cultural and financial exchanges between the two communities in different parts of the world, but NO. Not if you write for a women’s magazine. Then it must be something people are doing consciously to brand themselves as “cool”.
I agree with Lauren, about media’s continuing contradictory carrot and stick approach to women (phallic symbols, anyone???) – and it kills me that women, whatever ethnicity or social background they stem from, are portrayed as being “chosen”. I mean, Al Gore’s daughter married a Chinese American dude last year, a slutty male reality TV star in the States is Eurasian and gets amazing amounts of play, but no-one thinks to write an article about how women are choosing to date Asian men.

PLUS – as the offspring of a supposedly stereotypical trophy-wife/wealthy older man relationship, I find it amazingly offensive that the writers act as if the women are somehow being conned into a relationship, rather than being active and equal partners.

http://tinyurl.com/lzmt58

i love this jingle for lightworks cosmetics from the 60’s, and i love raymond scott. but it is a little strange how it still seems to fit in today’s constructed worlds for women…

though obviously, you seem to get offered legal advice too nowadays, so you can enjoy your spa treatments forever.