If you’re in college today and you have a vagina, chances are that at some point in your newly adolescent life (say, during middle school), you’ve probably had some harrowing experience with the dreaded teen girls’ magazine.  Even if you didn’t get it sent to your own house, surely you had a friend who had the issue of YMor Seventeen lying around at some point during those awful, awkward years between 12 and 15.  The terrors of middle school behind them, in high school or college most girls graduated on to the more sophisticated tastes of Cosmo and Allure, where the central issues are not whether or not to have sex but how to make it better so your partner doesn’t leave you.

This going to be painful to hear, but someone needs to say it: women’s magazines fucking blow more dick than a starving hooker.

Here’s a breakdown of the articles in every women’s magazine in the country.  Check and see if I’m wrong.

First there will be roughly 60-80 pages of ads for various types of overpriced clothes and cosmetics with maybe a few public service announcements about teen pregnancy or AIDS or whatever thrown in to add some legitimacy for the later content.  About half the things advertised are going to be manufactured by smaller divisions of some sort of huge sneaker or lip gloss monopoly, renamed to something else so that you think you’re being indie and cool by buying it.  Also, there will be several half-naked celebrities, three quarters of which will be female.  And this is discounting the latent Sapphic message conveyed by the cover that makes you 1) feel guiltily like a lesbian and 2) erode your self esteem since you can’t pull off those Victoria secret angel poses in your own skivvies.

By the time you finally reach an article, your flippin’ finger is probably already fatigued, but it can finally have a rest while you pollute your mind with meaningless blurbs about “novel” ways to get thin and beautiful.  Never mind that these are usually comprised of things people with functioning synapses refer to as common sense, such as how eating less and exercising makes you lose weight.  No fucking way! I’ve spent years pouring over that. Thanks for finally confirming it! Where would I be without you, magazine?

Once you slog through all the colorful tables about how nuts contain more protein than synthetic ginko broth, it’s time for the fun part:  Relationship advice!  Every issue naturally has the obligatory sex column, which does vary a bit depending on the target audience.  Younger magazines address issues like how slutty is too slutty, how lesbian sex isn’t really sex because there’s no penis involved, and what a nipple is.  Adult oriented articles describe 6981 sex tips some “expert” claims your man is desperately craving that will end with him exploding his load all over the sheets, the walls, and you.  Except for that, though, the rest of the content is identical. There’s the dating tips on finding men ripped straight out of B-rated romantic comedy scripts and suggestions on how to stay in a relationship that boils down to self-defacing appeasement. Ironically, there’s usually a section that you’re instructed to “show to your guy” so that he knows how to treat you correctly (i.e. buy you lots of shoes, take you dancing, and a whole assload of other stereotypical demands).   continue >>