Another thing that’s wrong with women’s magazines is that the clothing is literally unwearable.  Take a look at this fashion shoot from Marie Claire:

 http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/tips/what-to-wear/desk-date?click=main_sr  Some of the day looks might work (not the lace skirt over another skirt, of course), but the night looks are insane!  Satin camisole with tweed pants?  Really?

What women in her right mind would wear this clothing?  It makes the woman look like she’s crazy.

 It’s not just the one article, of course… I could point to a lot of other examples:

Football fashion?  http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/trends/articles/football-fashion

Cheap prostitute fashion: http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/trends/articles/vanessa-paradis-chanel-photos (If whores wore Chanel)

4″ heels?  A $2,400 purse?  http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/trends/articles/vanessa-paradis-chanel-photos

It’s not just Marie Claire magazine.  Check out this photo shoot from W Magazine: don’t these women look insane?  http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2010/05/bruce_weber#slide=2.  And this: http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2010/05/bruce_weber#slide=8.  And this: http://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/2010/05/bruce_weber#slide=13

I would like a woman’s magazine to steer me to clothing I would actually wear, not something designed for a 5′10 model who weighs 106 pounds, didn’t pay for the clothing herself and has never worked on her feet all day in an office.  This clothing reminds me of a line from the Danny Kaye movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: “Why do I sew each new chapeau with a style they must look positively grim in?  Strictly between us, entrez-nous, I hate women.”

That’s the Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.

Today I’ll begin a series of blogs on what is wrong with women’s magazines.  Here’s part one.

Lung cancer kills more women in the United States than breast cancer (http://www.webmd.com/lung-cancer/guide/lung-cancer-statistics), but you wouldn’t know this from reading women’s magazines. 

Check out Cosmo magazine online: www.cosmopolitan.com.  If you search on breast cancer, you get 25 references to it.  If you search on just the word “lung” not even including cancer, you only get eight.  Of those eight, you want to know how many articles actually talk about lung cancer?  One.  The only other cancer of the lungs mentioned in Cosmo is “popcorn cancer” which Cosmo says you can get from smelling microwavable popcorn.  I’m not making this up.

The lung cancer article does mention that smoking causes lung cancer, I’ll give them credit for that.  However, since Cosmo reaches young women, it should be hammering home that message frequently.  Of course they don’t because they take cigarette ads.  So, they talk about breast cancer, which is still terrible but not as preventable as lung cancer.  80% of the women with lung cancer smoked.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Modifiable_.28.22lifestyle.22.29_risk_factors)

So, one thing I hate about women’s magazines is that they care more about their advertisers than their readers.

That’s the Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.

There’s a commercial on TV for Chase that I absolutely love.  It shows the art of storytelling in 30 seconds or less.

Perhaps you’ve seen this?  There’s a couple at a restaurant.  She’s beautiful; he looks like an average guy.  As she’s commenting on all the wonderful items on the menu, he sees the words “Cash Only.”  Panicking, he looks around and sees a Chase bank ATM out the window and across the street.  He slips away while she’s looking at the giant menu, and, with secret-agent music playing, he runs across the street, gets money, and is back before she notices.  Problem solved successfully.

Why do I love this commercial?  I love the underlying message: that Chase can’t get you the date with the beautiful girl, but it can help you not screw it up.  I also love how the casting is perfect: you can look at this poor shmoe and think, “This is the best he is ever going to do – he has now hit the peak of his dating aspirations.”  I love how I can imagine the whole plot: how did this guy get a date with this woman?  She seems nice – she’s concerned when he seems to be breathing hard because she doesn’t know he ran across the street – but she’s also a little unconscious, saying, “I’m starving, I want one of everything” in what seems to be a very expensive restaurant.  I can imagine what happened before the commercial and what might happen after.

It’s nice to see real storytelling in a commercial.  I find that there are a lot of commercials with a plot where I can’t remember what the product is.  Here, the product is tied to the plot, so I remember, “’Cash only’ – Chase ATM nearby.”  Now, it is silly too: couldn’t he just tell the girl, “Oh, hey, it says cash only, let me take a minute and run to the ATM”?  However, the casting implies that this is a first date for them, and it’s understandable that he would be embarrassed.  So, the essential message — Chase is nearby to help you – gets through in a believable way.  Congratulations to whoever made that commercial:  nice job.

That’s your thought for the day from The Dubmeister.

I wrote a nice note to the head of a TV studio.  I’ve never done it before, but I did it now.  I’m protesting the cancellation of “The Forgotten.”  I know it won’t do any good: apparently the star of the show, Christian Slater, has already been cast in another show,  which I believe will be his third in three years, but I will try anyway.

I liked The Forgotten.  It was clever and interesting and had a good message in a way that few crime-solver programs do.  It was about a group of people, misfits really, who solve cases of unidentified bodies.  They would puzzle out the person’s identity and the crime would get solved.  The good message was that individual volunteers can be of help in solving crimes and that people can work together.  Each show would point to a government website, www.namus.gov, (cleverly pronounced “Name Us”) where real bodies would be listed in the hope that some might be identified, and apparently some were because of this show.

I knew the show was cancelled when they solved the central mystery of the show, which was finding the missing daughter of the star, Christian Slater’s character.  Of course there was a happy ending: children are not usually killed off on TV.  As soon as I saw it, I thought, “Uh, oh, they didn’t milk the mystery, I’ll bet the show is cancelled.”

It’s a shame to lose a show with a positive message.  I understand that not enough people felt as I did, but it’s still a loss.  It was one of the few shows on TV that I knew when it would play and I would sit and watch it, all the way through, including commercials.  I hope that they will find a time to air the remaining shows, which were shot but not shown.  Perhaps sometime this spring?

This is where I should say something clever, like “I won’t forget The Forgotten,” but that’s too corny, even for me.

Your thought for the day, from The Dubmeister.

I know it’s hard to fathom, but for some just the title of this article could be considered fightin’ words.