So I’m bored right now and I really hate this magazine so I’m going to go through and mock it to the best of my ability (I’m not very good at insults, but I keep trying like a fool). For those of you have subscriptions for some reason, pull out the November 2001 issue and follow along. Take notes if you want. I don’t know if I’m breaking copyright laws, but I don’t really care. How many people are really reading this, anyway? You guys don’t care either. Admit it. You all have contempt for copyright laws. I defy you, RIAA. Bwa ha ha ha ha.
Flip over the cover, and there’s an ad that spans both pages. Covergirl is advertising some kind of "hypoallergenic" and "non-acnegenic" powder. Those are awfully big words considering the audience. I don't even know what "hypoallergenic is." I can surmise the meaning, but I never bothered to actually look it up because it has some loose association with make-up, therefore I care not. Note the high concentration of make-up content (ads or otherwise) in this magazine. Every other page is a cosmetics ad. I think a lot of these people live for nothing more than to find the perfect eyeshadow/lipstick combination.
Skip over the next couple of ads to the contents page, where they have a picture of some models trying to look all sultry. They’re wearing the same clothes, and there’s a caption: "Who knew that you could look so cool and feel so warm?" Do you think that these teenybopper magazines pull out random lines from a large hat that all the magazines share? Like whenever a teenybopper magazine refers to Britney Spears it’s "Oops! She did it again...." or to Christina Aguilera, "What a girl REALLY wants is....". I think all these magazines are actually the same one with different cover designs, and no one notices because most of their subscribers are airheads.
Next: "e-mail from annemarie" (in trendy lower-case letters). They’re trying to be all modern by calling it an "e-mail" instead of an "editor’s note." The heading goes: "TO: You / FROM: Me." Cute. Take a look at the upper right hand picture. The editor (I guess she’s the editor, they don’t really tell who this person is but we’re supposed to assume she’s someone important)... okay, back on track, the editor looks about forty years old and she talks like a teenager. Really. Get a load of her eighties hair (which she describes as "Wisconsin hair," and I have no idea what that’s insinuating, but I’m still insulted).
Look at the ad on the page opposite the editor’s note. The black girl is more western looking than the blonde girl. Just an observation. The blonde girl looks like her eyes are going to roll to the back of her head.
Letters page. Most of these people who write in are young girls (I know, I talk like I’m some elderly sage, but let me have my glory), so I don’t want to rip at them. Except the fifteen-year-old who thinks cheerleading is a sport. I was glad to see a letter right after that whining about how it’s not a sport. Uh.. you, uh, go girl. Pom-poms I could see an argument for (dance, yeah, that probably requires some stamina and physical talents); cheerleading, no. I don’t think golf, bowling, pool, or archery are sports, either, so all you pro-cheerleaders out there, don’t get all whiny about it. (I rather like archery, but it’s definitely not a sport. Mr. T. made us run laps for archery class just so we’d have some kind of actual exercise during gym, since archery doesn’t cut it.)
Next page, which is called "ymdiary" and subcaptioned with "no boys allowed" and then further subcaptioned with "Think skateboarding is just a guy thing? Please." (Random line #35: "We girls can do anything as well as, and usually better than, guys.") This thing looks so boring that I don’t even want to read it. So moving along....
Aha, the obligatory "embarrassing moments" section. These all have a common theme involving sports. I’ve never seen this magazine actually organize the "embarrassing moments" by theme. Kudos to the new sense of purpose. But these "moments" are all essentially the same, anyway. Three of them involve being embarrassed in front of a crush, and two of them involve butt exposure. I really wish some of these people went to my school because I’ve never seen anyone embarrass themselves like these people claim to have.
The "let’s play psychiatrist" page ("advice"). Someone wrote in, frustrated with grades and commented that reading was difficult. So of course, this person must have dyslexia. One column, one fourth of the page was devoted to explaining dyslexia. I get bored sometimes when I read which makes it kind of difficult, I wonder if I have dyslexia? Then on the bottom is my favorite, "Guy trauma." This is my favorite because it implies that a guy not only reads this magazine, but actually wrote to it for advice. Probably a guy from Horlick. "When I make out with a girl, I never know how fast I should go. How can I tell what a girl wants?" "Her body language can give you a clue. If she straddles you and wraps her arms around your neck, proceed." Yeah, it takes a real genius to come up with that. Really helpful, you stupid pseudo-psychiatrists. This magazine is so brainless.
Page 26, for some reason there is another "advice" question on here. Someone wrote in saying her friend gets on her nerves because she’s always bored, so of course, according to YM, her friend has depression. There’s also section for "reader website OF THE MONTH" (to use their capitalization) and apparently we should be impressed by the fact that this girl just made a "Best in Show-type documentary about the ‘rabbit craze.’" Whoa whoa whoa. What? What is "Best in Show"? What "rabbit craze"? What did I miss? Oh yeah, there’s also a small article on Britney Spears and how her mother is her best friend. How sweeeeet. They forgot to include the witty reference to "Oops!... She did it again." Obviously a mistake on their part which will be corrected by the next issue.
Ooh, a college page. YM is branching out into new territory to show they’re not all airheads. Okay, so on this page we learn that if you’re "the young intellect" you should consider Reed College, Swarthmore College, or St. John’s College. If you’re "the crunchy kid" (again- what?!), consider the Evergreen State College; if "the artsy one," then Bard College; if "the beach bum," then University of Hawaii-Hilo. They helpfully devoted a category to what you’d do for a first date at these colleges, which is naturally of great consideration. I’m surprised they put Swarthmore on this list (since it’s actually a good school; so are Bard and Reed, but Swarthmore is really good, from what I understand). They should have just put down UW-Madison so they could talk about what a great party school it is, since this magazine is so obsessed this being trendy and popular. They wrote a whole section on how to be popular later in this issue.
Great. A do-it-yourself enlightenment quiz. I hate these. Basically, you tell them about yourself so they can tell you about yourself. This one is "can you keep a secret?" Well, I have no idea about myself whatsoever, so I’d better take this quiz so they can tell me if I’m a blabbermouth or not. The analyses are great, too. "Your friends know their stories are safe with you, but they also trust you to step in if your instincts tell you that you could prevent a potential disaster." Not only do they tell me about myself, but they tell me about how my friends think.
Next page: a calendar. November 7th is "Hot twins Jeremy and Jason London celebrate their 29th birthday." They have a picture of them below the November 7 box. They’re not so hot. Who are they? Am I supposed to have heard of them before? If they’re going to talk about unknowns, they’d better have my birthday on next month’s calendar.
oh my God i’m only on page 34 and there are 137 pages of this stupid magazine
The next section is "beauty," so I guess all those ads don’t suffice. Isn’t this whole magazine about beauty, anyway? I think there are about five more sections just on makeup later. Well, this one is about how plum is "the" color right now, and I have to admit that those plum hair extensions look pretty cool. However, the cameras are way too close to these models’ faces. You can see up the nose on the last one. She actually has really pretty eyes. I wish I had blue eyes.
Article about how two twins dyed their hair blonde and became "famous," except I never heard of them, so I’m just going to skip this section because I don’t think anyone else heard of them either.
Aha, another makeup section. I knew it. There’ll be more.
Turn the page and find a bunch of products with the word "Princess" written on them. Remind me to go get me a "Princess" sleep mask. I’ve always wanted one of those.
Next two pages, more makeup. Including a groundbreaking, unconventional "breaking the rules" make-up tips. For example, apparently there is some "rule" to "match your eyeshadow to your outfit and your lipstick to your nails." But, hark! YM, those crazy radicals, say that "color coordinating totally restricts your choices." So keep that in mind when... uh. Doing, you know, whatever. This is boring me and it's almost 11 at night. I'm not superhuman.
And because four sections on makeup is just not enough, the next page shows a makeover session with "before" and "after" pictures. Again, with more people we don’t care about. They have one of these "before and afters" in every issue because there's only so much new crap a teenybopper magazine can come up with every month.
Oh man, this is getting painfully boring. I haven’t even gotten to the part of this magazine that pissed me off, where they use the phrase "abortion rights" approvingly, but it’s in there, page 108. Check it out. I would seriously halt my subscription just after reading that, but like I said, this magazine is free. They're not getting anything from me.