Life Without Glossy Magazines
I am still thinking about non-materialistic acquisitiveness, the little pieces of identity we take pride in and clutch. In a phone conversation with my best friend about what magazines we are each subscribed to (currently, only Brain, Child which I love with an evangelicizing passion, though I happily will pick up the Believer and Bitch when I feel like a treat while shopping in the local upscale, organic markets, and wouldn’t complain about a subscription to the New Yorker). But there was a time in my life I loved fashion magazines, and then weaned myself off them with Real Simple and Oprah magazines, with their cheery message of self-improvement. They all, though, whisper to me “you are not enough,” and out from their thrall I am so much happier.
Now, if I were to convey this message to the self I was ten years ago, picking up Marie Claires at Czech newsstands, bodies and worlds away from my post-partum self, I’d have heard the simple statement “I am happier without glossy magazines” defensively, it would have sounded judgemental. I’d have heard “these are for the weak-minded” or “there is no value in these” and I am so glad my friend didn’t hear me as saying that, but rather “I am too susceptible to the way advertising trades on my sense of not being enough.” Even those magazines not bearing images of skinny models sell self-improvement, which has a back-story of ‘you need improving.’ Which I won’t buy.
I don’t want to sound smug, it startles me to realize how my consumption of overt advertising has been reduced, preferring NPR and podcasts to the radio, tivoing the television I do watch so the commercials don’t get played, not reading magazines… and I won’t pretend that the messages aren’t there in other subtler forms. But you get away from it a little and realize how insidious it is: after years of not listening to commercial radio, being in a dentist’s office where it was piped in I found myself unable to ignore the radio commercials, they were so compelling, so interesting.
But I don’t take a lot of pride in the diminished place of advertising in my life, either, some of it is time and energy being reserved for things I care most about, some of it is life in Portland where individual expression and independent media seem really strong, and I don’t suspect that most of the people I encounter are all that into the latest trends and looks. So it isn’t an acquisition I can brandish — and I worry that if I write about being happier without it, it starts becoming this self-improvement narrative of its own. Which isn’t what I meant at all. No, I just wish I could flood the world with anti-advertising. You are enough. Your life is pretty good. You are lovable (and loved) just as you are. Resist the compulsion, the training you’ve gotten, to buy, to eat, to numb life however you can, because as uncomfortable as it is, there are others struggling nearby too. I don’t know — I can’t think of a catchy slogan.
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I don’t know where I picked it up, but: “You do enough…you have enough…you are enough.” Maybe it’s a (twelve-step) program slogan? Maybe it’s Cheri Huber? I love the idea of anti-advertising. “You don’t need anything new, really! Wash it and re-hem it and it’ll look great and you won’t have to take out a second mortgage for it!” Especially meaningful for me right now as I feel caught in the setting-up-a-new-house vortex of repeated trips out for utensils, lawn tools, dog and cat items, pillows to which I’m not allergic, and oh yeah we really need a step trash can for the kitchen…etc. It feels out of control and I would rather buy a goat than a weed whacker. Phoenix is ultimately, I think, not for me. Very far afield I am now…thank you for this post.
NB also that Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose can be illuminating and savagely fun on the whole women-and-body-image topic. With (between you me and the wallpaper) my best friend whose name I will not mention getting seriously skinny (BMI<19) while hollering about not having a problem (“I don’t know why I’m losing weight when I eat a ton of salad every day!”)…well, I’m starting to feel more tender toward my flubby lately. And worried as hell about her; but knowing from bitter personal experience there’s probably not a bloody thing I can do.
Hmm, listened to an NPR bit on “obesity being contagious,” that is, that ideas about food and so forth get passed on and a study involving social networks and weight showed how as one person got obese people close friends (but not neighbors) had increasing odds of becoming obese. And friends who dieted together also had an influence on each other losing weight. I suspect eating disorders on the other spectrum also get passed along. SO I am looking for a woman with really healthy self-images and ideas about food to befriend in order to bolster my own struggle to get there, I guess, only I am worried she’s already been infected by all of the craziness in our culture about food. But alone inside my head doesn’t seem like the best place to struggle with it.
oh dear, I haven’t had a chance to read much or respond for a couple of days and now I’m seriously back-logged! I actually read this post soon after you wrote it and I had all sorts of fascinating things to say about it at the time (wink) but of course I can’t remember most of them now. The one thing I remember being struck by is how the Internet seems to be based on acquisitiveness, material and non. It’s all about acquiring more and more information (and if you happen to have a Craigslist addiction like mine, other people’s used junk). It’s easy for me to start feeling completely overwhelmed by the Internet – trying to keep up with all the various trends and Web sites and blogs and tutorials and networking communities and Yahoo! groups and, well, you get my idea. I frequently have to take a step back and remind myself that the computer is a tool, the Internet a tool, to be used in a way that enhances my life, not dominates it. I am so easily sucked in, and it is so easy for me to get confused about what’s really important. Does that make sense?