Oh please! (Elle)

Member Name: merlina

Product:	Elle
Date:	23/08/00 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good freebies

Disadvantages: nothing else

If this is a magazine for contemporary women then I've been marooned on the planet Zarg for the past decade.
I would ask who on earth buys this - but I know. It's bought by the folks lured by the freebies on the front. I confess - I am one (the book wasn't bad either).
Such freebies are currently the subject of a publishers' inquiry - concerning whether or not magazines like Elle can claim accurate circulation figures when 'inducements beyond the incidental' (to use their words) are on offer. In other words - would we have bought it if we hadn't been bribed? I would certainly hope not.
I am sure there are women who spend hours of their day worrying themselves silly about whether pink socks with white stripes sent out a different social message to white socks with pink stripes; or whether a certain vintage of olive oil is passe this year - but I'm very fortunate not to have met one.
This magazine seems to be targetted at precisely such women, they don't care about the food at the restaurants they review (after all, they're only going to eat a lettuce leaf); but whether it's the place to be seen. Similarly who cares if the beauty product works? Heck, all the Elle reader apparently wants to know is whether there's a waiting list for it - if so it must be good!
All magazines, to some extent, work on the aspirational; selling us a lifestyle we don't actually have but would rather like to. If it thinks women really want to be this vacuous, it really does need to get back in touch

Summary: