Its been several months since Ive bought a womens fashion magazine. I had a real good stretch there -- five or six months in a row where I was faithfully buying Elle and Vogue and poring over the photo-shoots, examining the lace and jewels and using a deft mental trick to imagine what the clothing would look like on women under the height of 64. (Answer: the cardboard rolls left in toilet paper after the paper is all used up.) I think I can diagram my reactions to fashion magazines and why I just cant consume them at this point in time. Its kind of like the month I ate beets. I got so into beets that I cooked and ate them as my dinner every night for nearly a month until the night I took my first bite and it seemed repulsive to me. I nearly got a gag reflex when a bite of beet touched my taste buds. I tried to eat them two nights in a row after that, but experienced more of the same reaction. I feel that way when I am in the supermarket checkout area and my eyes pass over the magazine rack and I think Hey, right now I can afford one of the magazines, and let me tell you if you are ever in the position where you can barely afford a fashion magazine, it means you are going to be really depressed to eye the 5000 dollar price tags of the dresses and coats inside. (If the lack of discernible female body parts on the models isnt enough to make you feel inadequate because you look, well, ACTUALLY FEMALE with lumps and everything!!!!!!!) So I am checking out my cat food and Tetley tea and I glance at the magazines and my thoughts go something like this: Oh, the cover of Vogue has Zooey Deschanel on it again! Geez shes been doing that baby girl mod dress thing for the past fifteen years now; is THERE A HUMAN BEING ALIVE who doesnt know what Zooey Deschanel looks like in a poorly-tailored Dolce and Gabbana imitation of a 60s babydoll dress at this point? Oh, maybe one elderly grandmother in Paraguay, and maybe a couple of infants in one of the Northwestern provinces of China, near Kazakhstan, where the natives can do the gem-and-metal-scrap encrusted robe thing as good as Dolce and Gabbana if not better, and for a fraction of the cost! And they will tailor them to LOOK GOOD ON HUMAN BEINGS UNDER 63, yes yes yes!!! Because it is one in the morning the store is empty, I am able to stroll away from the self-checkout and leaf through the Vogue, and then the Elle, desperate to find AT LEAST ONE PHOTOSHOOT I can take home and enjoy, something baroque that might involve a chateau in Venice where all the walls look covered in frosting or one of the retro-90s-cyber shoots where the models are supposed to look like Milla Jovovitch using telepathic powers to hack something or travel to another dimension while wearing a lot of black patent leather arm-bands. See, I could GROOVE on that as I sit back and sip my tea. But I dont even see many of THOSE tropes anymore. I have a last-ditch effort to talk myself into the purchase. I say: Hey, at least Elle has E. Jean. And reading all the love-lorn letters to E. Jean is really the best feature that rag has to offer, but if there is not A SINGLE good photoshoot to go with E. Jean ----- I cant justify the purchase. So there we are. I cant even DO fashion magazines right now. I am sick of swallowing tepid overpriced fantasy through a straw that makes me feel like I must be shaped like a seven-foot Nigerian nomad with the budget of a Saudi prince to ENJOY it AT ALL. I dont know what happened. I suspect Ill be back on the mags in a few months, but right now I cant be bothered; real life seems more important.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 22:53:47 +0000