It's time for me to face the truth. I have a problem.
It used to be a novelty, a social activity, something to enjoy among friends.
Now I find myself doing it alone in the privacy of my own home, at all times of the day. And once I get a taste, I can't stop, I want more.
I never used to buy my own. I relied on other people's stash, or just stuff I'd find lying around. Occasionally, I'd allow myself to check out what was available. But soon, this wasn't enough.
Now I'm left with the guilt of having squandered hard-earned money to support my habit. When the financial guilt is too much, I resort to stealing to satisfy my cravings; lurking around laundromats and waiting rooms perusing the goods, slipping them under my arm and making a smooth, undetected escape.
Yes, it's true, I'm a women's magazine junkie.
Fashion mags, beauty bibles, trash, mindless drivel, whatever you want to call them, I can't get enough.
I know it's a crutch, a substitute, that I'm running away from the truth, from my real self, but I can't help it. I'm seduced by the promise of quick, easy solutions to all my inadequacies: my insensitive man, my inability to meet my potential, my inner thighs.
In my desperate search for at least one article that will tell me something I don't already know, while every all-encompassing headline seduces me with answers to all that ails me and fails me, a moment of sobriety takes hold.
Standing in the newstand, eyes as glassy as the sea of magazine covers before me, I stop and wonder what it is that makes me want to pick up Mademoiselle and not Maclean's, New Woman before Newsweek. Am I so shallow and frivolous? But I'm a feminist. How can this be?
***
I know I'm not the only one. There are more of you out there, admit it, girls. Sitting around suffering pangs of guilt for literally buying into society's expectations, meanwhile devouring them in all their contradictions. What is it we love about finding an article that promises "Knowing Yourself, a Step-by-Step Path to Inner Happiness" right next to "Thinner Thighs in 30 days (Without Dieting)"? It's funny, yeah, but, c'mon, it does tap into our psyche. Even if we hate to admit it.
Is it the wanna-be in us, that self-worth destroying, if-only-I-could-look-like-her feeling? I don't think so. I'd like to think I got over that. I don't necessarily desire cleavage I can bury my nose in, and most of the fashion looks like upscale K-Mart. (Of course, there are degrees of trash. The "good" fashion mags, especially in Milanese or Parisian, tap into a whole other contradictory fissure in my brain and would merit a separate column.)
Maybe it's my mother's fault. She raised me on Chatelaine and Women's World.
Maybe it's that they are all about us. Okay, so they're not really about us - or anyone we know for that matter - but they're the only mainstream media devoted exclusively to trying to be about us.
Then again, who can resist promises of money, perpetual happiness in life and love, and a great bod to boot? And let's talk about sex. A random sampling of one month's offerings alone includes "Kinky Things You Can Do to Make Him Last Longer in Bed," "My Night With a Gigolo," "Sexual Clues That Say He'll Commit (No Matter What He Says or Does)," "Love, Sex, and Marriage in the 90s," "Love & Temptation," "Love Slaves: When Every Romance Becomes an Obsession," "Endless Love: How You Can Make Love Last a Lifetime," and " Wives Who Cheat and Risk Their Good Marriages For Great Sex."
