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Women Deserve More
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
How World Leaders Can Reverse the Financial Meltdown
Dean Baker, Mark Weisbrot
Democracy and Elections:
Memo to GOP: Minority Homeowners Did Not Cause Wall St. Meltdown
David Swanson
DrugReporter:
LSD Cured My Headache
Arran Frood
Election 2008:
Maybe Now People Will Take Their Votes More Seriously
Bob Herbert
Environment:
The Meltdown We Really Can't Afford
Kerry Trueman
ForeignPolicy:
Obama Talks Tough About Afghanistan; Here's What He's Really in For
Anand Gopal
Health and Wellness:
McCain's Erratic Health Strategy: Now He's Slashing Medicare
RJ Eskow
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
Expanding Flawed E-Verify System Will Hurt Lawful Workers
Michele Waslin
Media and Technology:
Memo to Media: The Palin Rape-Kit Story Has Not Been 'Debunked'
Eric Boehlert
Movie Mix:
The "Battle in Seattle" and Beyond
Stuart Townsend
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Our Next President Will Transform the Supreme Court
Ellen Goodman
Rights and Liberties:
From Gitmo to the U.S.: How 17 Uighur Prisoners Could Be Let Into the United States
Andy Worthington
Sex and Relationships:
Why Everyone Loves Hot, Smart Older Women
Vanessa Richmond
War on Iraq:
U.S. Needs to Take in More Iraqi Refugees
Zainab Mineeia
Water:
Can the People Who Live in Coastal Towns Ever Be Safe From Hurricanes?
Lizzy Ratner
More, the magazine that promotes itself as "the one magazine that celebrates women over 40," seems a bit ambivalent for such self-appointed trailblazing.
Occasionally -- in apparent defiance of the cosmetics advertisers that pay the way of most women's magazines -- More actually dares to depict older women, some of them larger-sized, with little or no makeup and without designer duds. Yet a few pages away, readers will readily find tips on how to disguise their true ages and slither into a size 8.
Instead of selling itself to older women, the magazine sometimes just sells them out. And in the process it risks following in the footsteps of Mirabella, another magazine that tried and ultimately failed to address itself in a consistent way to older readers. Even though More "celebrates" an older audience, its mind often seems to be on a younger demographic. Like many women's magazines, what More really celebrates is the inner teen in all of us.
Despite articles that are often appropriate to its target audience, More's cover lines are interchangeable with what you could expect to see in Seventeen or Glamour: "Beauty Secrets: Psst! 59 ways to more radiant skin;" "Style Smarts: Sexxxy Suits-The hottest shoes in town;" "Best makeup, top tricks for a flawless face;" and on and on. The "celebration" of age, with its dependence on "secrets" and "tricks," has an undercurrent of guile.
Many of More's ads, especially those for makeup, skin care, hair color, weight-loss programs and cigarettes, also appear in Self, Redbook and other magazines marketed to younger women. So even when More addresses its older audience in its editorial content, a substantial number of the ad images beam out the young-is-best message.
It's an ambivalence that hasn't escaped the notice of at least one of the magazine's own celebrated subjects. Jessica Lange, interviewed in December on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show, commented wryly about the airbrushing that her photograph on More's December-January cover received. The subtext: Yes, we celebrate your being past 40, but you shouldn't look too far past 40 to pass muster at the newsstand. Lange is 55. Her cover shot depicts a fine-looking woman who looks closer to 33 or 34 than 55.
To its credit, More also publishes true-life stories of interesting women confronting the challenges that arrive with one's fifth decade. These are accompanied by photographs of women who look a lot more like the ones I know than the celebrity cover faces and the models for Clarins, Estee Lauder and Bee-Alive products.
Articles on dating after divorce, starting a business, managing a serious health issue while maintaining high performance on the job, an end-of-year guide to female-themed philanthropic opportunities, are well done. A keeper is former Ms. magazine editor Suzanne Braun Levine's article, "No More Ms. Nice Guy," about how aging has enabled her to give up perfectionist fantasies and terminal politeness.
Perhaps its best-known feature on the reality of the over-40 female image was instigated by actor Jamie Lee Curtis. In 2002, at 43, Curtis challenged More to run a completely un-retouched photo of her. Curtis knew she no longer had the body she'd exhibited in films and wanted to make a point about that.
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Maybe Now People Will Take Their Votes More Seriously Election 2008: For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they'd most like to have over for dinner, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing. By Bob Herbert, The New York Times. October 12, 2008. |
From Gitmo to the U.S.: How 17 Uighur Prisoners Could Be Let Into the United States Rights and Liberties: The story behind last week's stunning ruling on the fate of 17 Uighur prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. By Andy Worthington, AlterNet. October 11, 2008. |
McCain's Erratic Health Strategy: Now He's Slashing Medicare Health and Wellness: When a candidate suddenly, almost whimsically changes the way he proposes to handle $1.3 trillion, it's time to get nervous. By RJ Eskow, Huffington Post. October 11, 2008. |