AFTER 30 days of chocolate martinis, sweet potato pie, dead birds and lounging in front of the tube, it’s time to get off your behind and get down to the Newsstand. The get-in-shape magazine editors know they have a golden opportunity for new readers right now, and they aim to exploit it. They’ll use every trick in the book to coax, shame and guilt-trip us into buying their titles for “easy” home workouts and low calorie recipes.
Do they work for you? Usually not. Do they make money? Oh, yes.
Health is a pretty intelligent magazine. Can you hear the surprise in our voices? Instead of just concentrating on attaining the best bod possible, it focuses on total wellness, including mental and spiritual health, without sounding too corny. The obligatory diet features include detailed descriptions of how – or whether – each fad diet works. Another good feature explains how toning your abs does a lot more than improve your appearance in a bikini. There are also features on how to minimize the damage to kids from divorce and tips on getting your prescriptions filled for the lowest price. Good job.
Editor Emily Listfield has revamped Fitness mag with a splash of the old Oprah formula – there’s a smattering of pop psychology (sorry – “spirituality”) in among the de rigeur fab abs and beautiful butt articles. But Fitness has a ways to go before it distinguishes itself in a crowded field. “You can stick with it!” is a standard piece on what to do when your resolve fails you, but the “I Did It!” article goes all-out, featuring a woman who lost 194 pounds Check her out in her wedding dress.
The celebrity workouts are an endless source of amusement, though. The feature on how Jennifer Lopez keeps her derriere ready for its close-up is a riot. We can’t wait till they do Calista Flockhart. And don’t miss page 87 for a delightful picture of the unattainable woman. Fitness is caught on the horns of a dilemma, trying to be realistic but still tempted by fantasy. Healthy chocolate cake recipes? Hmm.
Don’t you just hate it when you can’t follow along with the exercise instructions printed in the fitness magazines? Here you are trying to do something good for your body, and instead you do harm as you contort yourself into a pretzel. Such is the problem with Self’s January get-into-shape tips. The 2-minute lower-body makeover is impossible to follow, with arrows pointing every which way. We prefer Katie Couric’s arm toning exercises, helpfully illustrated with real photos (not of Katie, unfortunately). Another third package of exercises promises you a happy “nude” year, but are, again, tough to interpret. In most of its articles, Self emphasizes that improving the body and mind is not an overnight accomplishment, good advice goes some way toward erasing the bad feelings left by hard-to-follow workout articles. Needs help.
More reality journalism: the February issue of Shape concentrates its efforts on showing how real people are attaining better – healthier, stronger – bodies. Finding out how, and what motivated, five women to get in shape is a fascinating read, however the lesson is to not wait for a life-altering occurrence to be healthy. Do it today, this magazine suggests with its “Single Best Moves for a Great Butt” and “Results You Can See in Just Two Weeks.” For the less ambitious, there’s an article on great slimming undergarments and taking care of your hands. Overall, it lacks snap, though.
Are you ready for the Recession? Time goes with a “How to Survive It” package, patiently explaining to the 49 percent of Americans who own stocks that it’s quite normal for them to go down as well as up. “Grab some bargains on cars, mortgages and new investments,” suggests the excellent spread. Time beats out the pack with the first groveling Laura Bush article (she’s not shy; she’s funny!). Great news: since she’s a librarian, she’ll have everyone’s reading scores up in no time. Kind of like Hillary and health care.
Homework aside – there’s a big section on all those old 1970s guys heading to Washington – it’s a fun issue. There’s news of the cloned gaur (an Indian ox) due to be born any day to a regular U.S. cow, Conan O’Brien lamenting the passing of Clinton, the “first cartoon president,” and Walter Kirn writing about his buddies at Inside.com. Too bad he fails to reveal how many subscribers they have.
What’s this? Newsweek has declared this “The Age of Oprah.” Heaven help us. The interviews (it took several) with the self-help queen are embarrassing puffery. Also profiled are 15 young women “who will shape America’s new century.” All but two of them have really big smiles – but they all seem pretty smart. Elsewhere there’s a good piece on the seven Texans who busted out of jail last week and are giving the Rangers the runaround. As for the half-page given to Michael McDermott, Massachusetts’ dot-com killer, either no one cares about mass shootings any more or Newsweek’s rapid response team had the week off.
We didn’t know The New Yorker’s Daphne Merkin had been in the nut house, but there you go. She tells all – with added adjectives – and even slips in that she also went to Harvard. Surely the age of the navel-gazing, listen-to-my-problems memoir is over. We’ll get you yet, Elizabeth Wurtzel.
Shouts & Murmurs has Christopher Buckley – the Dave Barry of the Upper East Side – making up 2001’s headlines. Not his best work, but still a chuckle. A dozen pages of black and white photos of New York at night should give them a thrill in fly-over country, but the best stuff this week is a profile of composer John Adams, and a short piece on how terribly inaccurate eyewitnesses usually are.