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Spin Sisters sell stress, sob stories and diets Ever wonder why women are so liberal? Standing in the ferry bookshop last week, I found myself saying, out loud: "Where are all the grown-up magazines?" What I was staring at was the wall of mass-market glossies, almost all aimed at women, and all, over the last decade, increasingly infantile. Do any of the blond, tweaked creatures on those covers bear any individual distinguishing features? Do any of them eat? Do any of them say anything interesting? Ever? I wheeled towards the cashier, and found The Economist, Business Week and The New Yorker, which grows increasingly infantile, politically speaking, every week, but at least Jennifer Aniston is not on the cover. Spin Sisters, How The Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America by Myrna Blyth, once the long- time editor of the biggest glossy of them all, Ladies Home Journal, takes down the big-foot girl magazine world, strips it naked and spreads it out on the examining table in all its tawdry circus glory. The book, just published, is one of those hell-bent convert books, written at top speed, in the style made instantly classic by Ann Coulter. The author has had an earth-shattering series of revelations, her world-view has shifted radically, and she simply must share it with us. Which is good, because it means the book can be read in a couple of sittings. Compelling reading it makes too. Blyth has a lot to say, in many areas, but it can be reduced to the following. The Spin Sisters, the powerful editors of glossies like Vogue, Bazaar, Marie Claire, Glamour, Family Circle, and the even more powerful Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, the ladies of The View, have but one thing to teach us: Narcissism is an advanced evolutionary stage of female liberation. Or, in other words: Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. I'm finally free, free, free, free, free. And do they have power. The academy, studying something useful for once, has analyzed it. Professor Sherrie A. Inness, states that the Sisters "convince millions that the views expressed by such magazines are just, fair and truthful." Brit commentator Valery Bryson writes: "Many women who are uninterested in politics as defined by men gain political information and values not from serious newspapers and broadcasts from women's magazines and daytime television." Fifty-five million women in the States and Canada buy these magazines every month. Tens of millions more watch day-time television. More, these stories inform the background conversation of all women. For as any honest woman will tell you, when women talk, they talk about their troubles. In the absence of real trouble, we'll make some up, just to belong to the cool girls' club, just for a moment. Furthermore, trouble told in great and tragic detail is a kind of amulet against the jealousy of other women. Don't attack me, we tell each other. I'm too weak and pathetic to bother about. Men brandish their armarariums, we roll over, show our pudgy bellies and play victim. So that's what the Spin Sisters sell. Victims in Trouble. Stress, stress and more stress. Diseases and diets. Environmental scare stories. Sob stories leading inevitably to the demand for more government in every corner and hideaway of life. All this bolstered by heavily-negotiated, contracted-down-to- the-last air-brushed "revelation," cover stories about powder puffs like Renee Zellweger. The facts?Liza Featherstone of the Columbia Journalism Review quotes a fact checker from Mademoiselle saying that "these stories were so tweaked, that fact checking them was not a priority." A Glamour employee who spoke to Blyth acknowledged that quotes are routinely rewritten, anecdotes almost always exaggerated. And out of step with the real world. In Blyth's content study, she found that over the past three years there were almost 300 stories of victimized women and almost 300 more stories of women who avenge some kind of victimization, averaging two in every issue. But according to the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, crime rates in each crime category in 2001 in New York City, where apparently most of these stories originate, were the lowest they had been since 1973. In sharp contrast to the heavy breathing from magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, sold to under 25s, 31% of college seniors were found recently to be virgins. Stories like "50 Ways To Make Great Sack Session Sex-traordinary," shout from every cover, every month, promote sexual liberation. But a typical university student is likely to say what this New York University student did say: "I don't think women deal well with (hooking up) ... the next day they're upset and they regret what they did and (they ask themselves) 'Why did I do it?' " "For the last two decades, we've been told over and over again, that if we are women, we are, de facto, victims because of the stress in our lives, because of the dangers in our environment, because of our need to be attractive in order to please men, and because of the inherently dangerous, violent nature of men. We, who are certainly the most fortunate women the world has ever known, remain a victim class," says Blyth, trumpeting her main point. And what do victims need? A nice, strong government. A big government. A compassionate government. Government as good Daddy. The CBC, big government in tights and makeup, has turned all Canadians into victims needing Daddy's help, with the predictable results of an entire country underperforming, afraid of our own shadow, assigning more power to the government every day, starving the private sector, driving the most talented out. Nothing the Spin Sisters (or the CBC) puts out promotes personal responsibility, or reflects the politics and spirituality of Middle America or Canada. One comforting thing to ponder. Advertising Age reported last year that newsstand sales of women's magazines were falling. And falling dramatically. The nursery is emptying fast.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.