For the insipid, insecure woman in you (Marie Claire)

Name: Emma1973

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Product:	Marie Claire
Date:	14/01/02 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: patronising, all adverts

It blazed its way across the newsagents shelf at, a stunning red glossy magazine with a picture of Naomi Campbell wearing a leopardskin top and skimpy pants on!
I sighed being of the opinion that even FHM or Loaded were struggling if they were putting pictures of old has-beens on the front of their magazine. I moved a little closer and saw that it was, disturbingly, marie claire!
marie claire was the mag of my earlier years (I'm a whole 28 now!), preferable to Cosmopolitan cos it was a bit more low brow, articles on sexual matters, dealing with men, women and careers, looking at issues that concern women such as sexual harrassment, rape, over drinking and personal success stories.
So whats happened? Well the magazine more expensive than it used to be seems to be a tad thinner as well! Its now a meagre 202 pages, now you think I may be a bit unappreciative but I counted 91 pages of direct advertising, in fact only 39 pages had articles on them and that included the regular features on horoscopes, recipes, readers letters etc. The rest was mainly things you could buy, tastefully grouped in different colors, styles, etc, but to me that is another form of advertising.

And the articles themselves....so shallow it was untrue! A six page articles on Naomi Campbell, only a page and a half of type and the rest of pictures of her, the rest is about how she calls Nelson Mandela 'Grandad', her new perfume range and how beautiful she is. A waste of space if ever there was one!
I would much rather have read more about the woman who was badly sexually abused as a child, no one believed her and she turned to concentrate on her work. At 25 and single she adopted a 3 yr old boy with extensive Cerebal Palsy, she finally met someone, She had a birth child, then adopted a child who was registered blind and deaf, then another borth child, then James her adopted son dies at the age of 10, but she went on to adopt another son with cerebal palsy and had
another birth child. They managed to cram this into just over a page, personally this is the kind of strong woman I would respect.

The other articles were about a group of group of women who decided to try different sexual practices, i.e a bit of spanking, another woman outside, etc. Yawn.......
Another too short article about women struggling to cope after an earthquake in India, as many may know, widows are looked down upon in India if they are widows and in-laws wont take responsibility for them, definately not enough info.

Predictably the articles on men were a bit longer, men who believe they are Gods gift to women (dont they all?), and another on how destructive relationships can be.

Well thats it, exciting eh?, when you read marie claire, however, rather than feel refreshed and stronger, you begin to feel a tad guiltier and insecure. Here you are paying £2.80 a month for a bunch of advertisments when in fact you could be helping some of these women in India. The amount of adverts for cosmetc surgery are huge, approx 10 pages, yet they have done articles on accepting your body image and over coming issues such as anorexia and bulimia. When faced with the pictures of the women in marie claire theres a huge temptation to go and throw up your lunch.

I cant honestly see who marie claire is directed towards, all I can see is that they do it badly. It strengthens the belief that all young women are interested in is fashion and men, I hope there are young women out there who think beyond this.

I shall be personally sending my £2.80 a month to ActionAid now on, the charity that is helping the vicims, especially the women of the earthquake in India.

Summary: