This Week In Grazia

I have a(nother) stinking cold, which in my house means that I have permission to buy Grazia and read celebrity stories, such as the cover headline that sensationally reveals that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are back together, although the actual story in the magazine only sensationally reveals that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are not back together. I also get to find out what I'm supposed to be wearing this season, because really, I do not know. Right now I am wearing tracksuit bottoms, a jumper and some old cashmere socks. That's another thing having a cold means in my house.

Anyway, it turns out that I am supposed to be wearing this season is: jeggings. In other words, a cross between jeans and leggings. Skinny jeans are just too baggy, apparently. What you really want is denim that looks as though it has been spray-painted on. The piece comes with the following encouraging quote:

Denim guru Donna Ida says, "Jeggings flatter as they hug you in all the right places, and the high-waisted ones suck in the tummy."

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse - *high-waisted* jeggings? Could anything promise more hideousness? Jeans that are equally tight on your belly button as on your ankles! Meanwhile, the jeggings (the word doesn't get any less stupid with repetition) themselves are photographed without actual human beings inside them, and still manage to be unflatteringly fattening when worn by air. That's right: even nothing's bum looks big in jeggings. That's because they hug you in all the right places - and all the wrong places as well. And what does denim need a guru for anyway? Ladies: just say no to jeggings.

Three pages later, Grazia, as it does, has moved on from ensuring our compliant grotesquitude, and runs a piece on a 12-year-old Indian girl who has made a stand against forced marriage. It's the thinking woman's weekly, lest we forget. Unencumbered by any apparent sense of doubt in its reporting, Grazia cheerfully tells us:

While Rekha's parents at first reacted angrily, even refusing her water and food for several days, they eventually relented and now couldn't be prouder of their campaigning daughter.

Heartwarming stuff.

I can't quite figure out whether I need to never read Grazia again or buy it obsessively every week.

Am In Shock.

There's a picture of Brad Pitt in the March 2nd issue of Grazia in which it looks a hell of a lot like he is wearing a toupee. Google appears to support my conjecture. I feel old.

I'm loving Heat's current tagline:

"Easier to carry than the internet".

The New Statesman on Strictly Come Dancing!

Seriously, I went on the New Statesman site and there it was. It was the first piece I clicked on, which tells you something about my aspirations to seriousness. And it is a pretty serious piece as it happens, or at least compared with my coverage anyway...

Hmm. (a) Send my cv to New Statesman in hope that they might like a more playful TV writer? (b) Crawl back under my rock of frivolity?

Thoughts from the Sidelines

The other day, waiting for a train, I was browsing in WHSmiths for a magazine. I'm not a big fan of women's glossies as I take little or no interest in skincare, make-up, how to improve my sex life, fashions I can't afford, celebrities I've either never heard of or wish I'd never heard of, or real life stories about women whose lives are nothing like my real life, so I was looking around to see if there were any other titles that light take my fancy; but it turns out that I'm not interested in cars, golf, mortgages, HiFis, breasts, computers, pregnancy, gadgets, weddings, heavy metal or cats either, or at least not enough to buy an entire magazine devoted to any one of them. There's no such thing as an intelligent general arts magazine, which is what I'd really like to read (Time Out comes close, but I already subscribe), so as usual I found myself looking at the current affairs mags.

Trying to get over the fact that Prince Charles was the cover star of The Economist's Intelligent Life quarterly, and David Milliband was on the front of Prospect, I did delve inside and scan the contents page of several of them, only to make the somewhat unsettling discovery that each of these magazines could essentially have been subtitled "what men think about the world". They have almost no female contributors at all. A review here and there, the odd piece, an admittedly stronger showing in short stories, but that's it. Otherwise it's male editors and male writers all the way.

I am loathe to cry sexism here, because I can't believe that intelligent male editors don't want women writing for their publications, and it's miserable to contemplate that they might be offering articles to their mates or thinking male writers bring more gravitas and ending up with a token female or two. I'm more inclined to wonder whether we women writers are sidelining ourselves. I can think of many female journalists who I admire, but when I take away the ones who are writing about lifestyle, or humourous columns about their own lives, or serious articles but that are largely about women's / gender / family issues (important as these issues are), I'm left with hardly anyone. Are women pitching stories outside these parameters and getting turned down, or are we staying within our comfort zones and leaving the "hard stuff" to the men? Or perhaps are editors of current affairs magazines comissioning articles that ony really appeal to men so they aren't getting female writers or readers? I draw your attention to the aforementioned Milliband / Prince Charles covers (though hard to believe those appeal to anybody.)

I'm guilty of this self-sidelining myself, in large part because I prefer to write humourously whether fiction or non-fiction - it's not that I can't write seriously, but when I do, I feel like I'm pretending to be someone I'm not. So I don't anticipate being given 5,000 words on the economy for Prospect any time soon. And I'm not going to stop writing about Strictly Come Dancing - quite aside from anything, that would be letting the New York Times win. And somebody needs to chronicle David Tennant's every move. But I do feel uncomfortably like I have been coccooning myself in my little world and thinking my frivolous thoughts, leaving the business of commenting on the real world to the men.

And I didn't buy any of those current affairs magazines. They just seemed like chat overheard in a gentlemen's club. So the self-sidelining continues. (I didn't buy anything and read Riddley Walker on the train instead.) I feel like I could and should do better, though whether on this blog, or by pitching my serious thoughts elsewhere, remains to be seen. (I'm sure that I have serious thoughts sometimes.)

PS can't help but notice on that IL cover the only piece by a woman is AS Byatt on... fashion.