Bought a copy of that new magazine YOURS that's aimed at us old girls, ie anyone over 45. Luckily it was less than $4 so I can almost live with the shocking waste - almost. I should have spent it on birdseed. It's from Bauer Mediaand WHAT A LOAD OF SHITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's full of botoxed celebs - all over 45 of course and trying to looking 30 - and stories about how they found luuuuurve and lost weight and are just generally fantastic and so sexy. To cover all the "female middle-aged reader" bases there's a gardening column that features plants that can almost exclusively only be grown in the tropics, a recipe for a low-fat cheese cake, because we are all obviously still desperately trying to squeeze into size 8 sexy sacks, and a couple of stories on entrepreneurial wonders who are still out there at 68 bashing the corporate world into submission, and of course, looking STUNNING!
It's a complete load of drivel that is assuming that as women age they don't change or mature or have different challenges or interests, they just start dieting to try and keep wearing their size 8 sexy sacks and consequently start looking like they've had a sex change and are feeling very anxious about it. And that they still really care about celebrities. Really, REALLY?
It's trite, it's underdone, where it does tackle an issue it does so in a trivial and under-researched manner, they've done little but rehash the same celeb crap by simply focusing on the older and more botoxed of the banal bunch - the ones who are getting truly desperate and look it. It's not much more than a pile of puffed up cream cake masquerading as actual reading. Even the middle aged women I know who are still interested in all that rubbish are way more sophisticated than this offering and are unlikely to downgrade to this piece of piffle. They read Vogue. And of course, all the columnists are the same old bunch of horrors they always drag out - Wendy Harmer, Kerri-Anne Kennel, Deborah bloody Hutton, blah, blah, blah. As for the stories, same old, same old, how to be a millionaire, breast cancer survivor, glam gran - all OK but treated in very offhand manner. It feels about as fresh and vibey as last week's prawn shells. And of course, there's pink everywhere.
It is lightweight, patronising, not very interesting and assumes that its readers are the same. This magazine is EXACTLY why there is such a need for a decent mag aimed at middle-aged women who are a diverse bunch. My middle-aged friends are a highly talented and intelligent group of women who have lived full and challenging lives, done all sorts of interesting things, survived all sorts of shit and come out still fighting and who are likely to continue doing so for as long as they are still tottering around the planet - although most of them will most likely be wearing cute but sensible ballet flats rather than a pair of toe-removing Jimmy Choo's like the celebs in YOURS. Even the title is rubbish. Most middle aged women have spent decades constructing lives around other people, and are mostly bloody happy they have done so when they see the wreck the career treadmill has become for anyone over the age of 45, especially women. The only fucking thing missing was a story on a royal. Perhaps that will be in he next issue - which I won't be buying.
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