What celeb magazines really promote.
At the top of my blog you will see that this page is for my thoughts on health, nutrition and food, and… the occasional rant….so
I was doing a talk the other week to a group of young women between 30 and 40 yrs old. In the middle of the room I had laid about about thirty of these so called “celeb” magazines. The talk was meant to be an hour on weight loss. Two hours on we were still there chatting away on various topics bought to the fore by what the women were reading. It was fascinating. What they saw to their horror was that on nearly every other page there was a weight loss story, so unrealistic in its approach to be laughable or an ad for low fat sugar free food. We went through all these magazines and the messages being pushed were I believe dangerous and damaging to the health and wellbeing of young women. Everyone was shocked and sat back not realising quite how bad it has got. It is only when you take stock that you realise the messages these magazines are sending. On every cover for one month there was a celeb weight loss story, with at least one baby weight story inside and recurring images of celebs in bikinis in various states of weight gain or weight loss. In seven of the magazines the same story of how Beyonce loses weight drinking maple syrup and cayenne pepper.
At the end of a very interesting discussion these women realised that although they did not read this sorts of magazines that often, the messages were filtering into their consciousness and they recognised what that was doing to their self image.
There are some great womens mags out there, dont get me wrong – I have a subscription to Easy Living each month which is such a treat to get through the door but those mags (and you know who you are) who week in week out spill out the same toxic damaging rubbish for people to read should look to their conscience. It’s not what people want to read and the recent article in the Daily Mail saying it was good for your health to read about celebs – well to be frank… I just don’t have the words. Women need support, encouragement and strength and it is the very women who run these magazines who need to take a cold hard look at what they are doing on a day to day basis. Where is the sisterhood these days or am I just being feminist?
Next time you are in a large newsagent take a minute to count how many magazines are doing this – I think you will be shocked.
