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missroseroseA friend's blog pointed me in the direction of Filament, a new independently published magazine aimed at women. Specifically, their goal is to publish intelligent, thought-provoking articles (that are not on the subjects of celebrity gossip, fashion, and dieting), as well as pictures of men tailored to research on what women think is sexy (what they refer to as "the female gaze").
I'm going to be very interested to see if they can make a go of it. Once I hit my teens, I remember being absolutely flabbergasted at how completely useless the magazines aimed at my age group were - there were maybe three decent articles interspersed among hundreds of pages of ads and "articles" that were nothing but promotions for the products mentioned in the ads. If anything, it got worse as I moved up in age - I'm not sure if the quality of writing went down or I just got pickier, but it seemed like "Elle" and "Cosmo" didn't even have the decent articles.
Reading Gloria Steinem's essay "Sex, Lies, & Advertising" in college finally answered that question. It chronicles her continued efforts and frustrations in keeping Ms., a non-traditional women's magazine, afloat in a traditional ad-supported format when every single advertiser expected a "women's magazine" to contribute "complimentary copy" (those pages of "articles" promoting their products), not put their ads opposite pages bearing "depressing" (read: intelligent or news-worthy) content, and generally treat the magazine like a glorified catalog. (None of which they expected from magazines aimed at men, of course, but that's almost a given.)
I realize that a lot's changed since the seventies and eighties, and Ms. is now apparently successfully ad-supported, but the complete barrenness of the landscape when it comes to other magazines aimed specifically at women that aren't glorified catalogs makes me wonder exactly how much has really changed in that particular world. Filament is located in the UK (although they'll ship their magazine to you anywhere in the world), and I'm not sure if the same attitudes are as prevalent there, but apparently there's the same dearth of intelligent publications for women. So I bought a subscription - the preview pages look interesting, and $15 quarterly is well worth it to me to support such a concept.
I'm going to be very interested to see if they can make a go of it. Once I hit my teens, I remember being absolutely flabbergasted at how completely useless the magazines aimed at my age group were - there were maybe three decent articles interspersed among hundreds of pages of ads and "articles" that were nothing but promotions for the products mentioned in the ads. If anything, it got worse as I moved up in age - I'm not sure if the quality of writing went down or I just got pickier, but it seemed like "Elle" and "Cosmo" didn't even have the decent articles.
Reading Gloria Steinem's essay "Sex, Lies, & Advertising" in college finally answered that question. It chronicles her continued efforts and frustrations in keeping Ms., a non-traditional women's magazine, afloat in a traditional ad-supported format when every single advertiser expected a "women's magazine" to contribute "complimentary copy" (those pages of "articles" promoting their products), not put their ads opposite pages bearing "depressing" (read: intelligent or news-worthy) content, and generally treat the magazine like a glorified catalog. (None of which they expected from magazines aimed at men, of course, but that's almost a given.)
I realize that a lot's changed since the seventies and eighties, and Ms. is now apparently successfully ad-supported, but the complete barrenness of the landscape when it comes to other magazines aimed specifically at women that aren't glorified catalogs makes me wonder exactly how much has really changed in that particular world. Filament is located in the UK (although they'll ship their magazine to you anywhere in the world), and I'm not sure if the same attitudes are as prevalent there, but apparently there's the same dearth of intelligent publications for women. So I bought a subscription - the preview pages look interesting, and $15 quarterly is well worth it to me to support such a concept.
