Friday, October 19, 2007

Parenting Magazines?

I have an article that I'd like to sell to a parenting magazine, but I have obviously not found the right outlet.

Parenting magazines are mainly focused on new parents: diapers, midnight feedings, breast pump consumer advice and comparisons, and other such information related to babies.

I had in mind a magazine for parents of teens and tweens.

Is there any such thing?
Without naming names -there may be too many to matter anyway- I am not interested in publishing in a magazine that boasts a front cover picture of a giant chocolate cake and the headline that says something like, 'Walk it off!'
It doesn't matter if they claim to be a family magazine or not; the conflicting message may sell a lot of magazines, but the hipocrisy adds to the obesity issues in the general population and the confusion of self-image issues in girls and young women.
Unless, that is, they would allow me space in their magazine to point out their duplicity and insincerity and generally make fun of them.

While I'm on the subject of cover art: A few weeks ago, a reader directed me to this: Jezebel.com It's an eye-opening look at a real photo vs. the resulting cover photo. The difference between the two is incredible - in a bad way. They took a perfectly fine -read "Real" -picture of a famous 40-ish female country-singer and airbrushed out the wrinkles and the 'realness' of the woman and ended up with a perfect doll-like plastic likeness.
This plastic-likeness was on the cover of Redbook.
I was scandalized.
No wonder our expectation of ourselves as women is so screwed up. We are fed a steady diet of media image and expect ourselves to measure up. We know these images are touched-up, but no matter: we strive for it anyway.
But, really, even if we know these photos are photo-shopped, I don't really think we have any idea to what extreme. If Redbook, a women's mag, is this guilty, where does that put more 'stylish' magazines?
Holy crap.

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