| Product: |
Scarlet Magazine |
| Date: |
21/12/05 (674 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Honest, funny, informative magazine.
Disadvantages: Some may find it offensive / too rude!
Earlier this year I was sat in my local Borders book shop drinking far too expensive coffee and having a look through the women's magazine section. It was your usual stuff, mags about hair, shoes, gossip, which celebrity has cellulite (surely not - you mean they aren't aliens??) so when I saw Scarlet I made a grab for it. I think it was the first or second edition so thankfully I hadn't missed out on anything. The title was - Scarlet - The Magazine That Turns Women On. How could I resist?
I have to admit that I was expecting something like 'For Women' the magazine that my sister bought in the early 90's (I was too young) which was basically semi naked men. As far as I remember For Women was nothing more than an attempt to make soft core porn accessible to women. It was pretty crap. Thankfully Scarlet was nothing like this. In fact the first few editions didn't really have any pictures that were there purely for women to gawp lustfully at. After a few readers wrote in and asked for this to change slightly they have now added the Gratuitous Letch section which features a different famous man each month.
Scarlet isn't a magazine that purely tries to get women turned on, it's actually a magazine that tries to get women tuned in. Yes there are one or two celeb interviews but these are written with more style than those in other mags. I've been pretty disappointed in the 'quizzes' in other mags - 'Are you wife material? - Is your relationship here to stay?' that kind of thing. I feel like I'm transported back to the 1950's! In Scarlet there was 'How kinky are you?' its not trying to diagnose your neuroses, just a light-hearted way of getting women to look at their sexual attitudes. To me this can only be a good thing.
For a long time the leading men's mags such as Loaded and FHM had their own, erm, interesting way at looking at sex and sexuality. In their own way these mags seem to make judgements on men - you should want this kind of woman, you should want sex this often, that turns you on -what's wrong with you man??! I'm so grateful that some witty, intelligent, sexually aware women (and some men) got together to create Scarlet, you can like whatever, with whoever, whenever as long as you aren't hurting anyone (unless they want you to!) or yourself. No judgments.
Scarlet's features look at the types of relationships and sex people are having, different scenes - swingers, fetish large lady lovers, in fact everyone is pretty much catered for. I don't want it to come across as though this is a magazine only for women who are into hardcore s&m or anything like that because its not. If that's not your thing you will probably still be interested to read about it and there will be articles that are more your cup of tea. All the celeb magazines look at how other people live don't they? Well this just looks at what real life non-celebs are doing but in a more intimate way. If you are into more extreme stuff then this magazine will still be interesting too, it could give you a few ideas to try or just reassure you that you are not actually in a minority.
There are articles written by men, single women and those in a relationship so we get lots of people's point of view on sex and relationships. There are obviously health related articles as you probably couldn't have a magazine in this day and age that talks about sex without being responsible and talking about the stuff that can go along with it.
Scarlet is apparently the only women's magazine which features erotic fiction. For those of you who aren't sure what erotic fiction actually is it's basically short stories that are, well, erotic. This bit is now in a sealed section, I'm not sure why, it could be that they were worried about kids having a look through at the newsagents or something. These stories are purely there to get you in the mood. These are usually quite well written too and are obviously aimed at women which again makes a nice change from the male orientated stuff out there. These stories won't be everyone's thing, some may think them too rude, some people may feel uncomfortable reading that kind of thing and for others they won't be rude enough! They are only a small part of the magazine so it doesn't really matter what category you fit in to.
There are usually two or three pages of the usual girly stuff, make-up, clothes etc. There's also book, DVD, cd and website reviews as well as a problem page and horoscopes with a difference.
So who's it for? Well it's aimed at women obviously, probably for anyone who has started being sexually active or is about to be and although any age group would probably enjoy it it's probably most suitable for those 20 - 40. It comes across as a magazine that's aimed for heterosexual women as the Gratuitous Letch is always a bloke and most of the sex is male-female although with this magazine pretty much anything goes. As for men well a couple of my male friends have read most of my copies, not least because a lot of the adverts feature women in their undies. I think it's a great idea for men to read Scarlet; they may learn something and will probably enjoy reading it at the same time. My friends were particularly interested in an article which looked at texts that men sent, what they actually meant and what we usually think they mean. One of my friends actually started sending one word texts for a few days after reading this article in case the female recipients thought he was either falling for her or that he actually couldn't stand her. I'm sorry to say that I found this all quite amusing.
I can't really think of many negative points. They try and cater for everyone so if you don't like one article you may well love the next one. It's easy to read but may be too vulgar for some. I'm not sure how they are going to keep coming up with new material to fill the magazine. Sometimes I find the humour a little bit childish (when I'm having a mature moment which is rarely) and once in a while I find myself rolling my eyes at the daft terminology they sometimes use. Oh and as much as the articles are about empowering women and are for women of all shapes and sizes most of the adverts show white, slim, gorgeous women. In some ways this kind of defeats the point!!
As far as the practical stuff goes, the December issue is issue number 14. The magazine costs £3.50 for around 100 pages (worth every penny) and isn't actually that easily available yet. As I said I first saw it in Borders and I believe it's sold in WH Smiths. It's slowly being rolled out to other newsagents but as some people wont even like the idea of this magazine it may take a while. They offer a good subscription deal which changes regularly. When I subscribed it was £39 for 12 issues and you get a free gift pack. There are three choices of gift pack and I'm not going to go into detail about what's in them! You can subscribe on the website too. I didn't find the website particularly helpful as you can't really get a good idea of what the magazine is about. I would recommend finding a copy in a newsagent, seeing if you like it and then getting yourself a subscription, or even asking Santa for one!
I've already said this magazine won't be for everyone. Some people just think things like this are personal and wouldn't enjoy reading about them. Some people may even actually find it offensive. I personally think it's about time that women have a magazine that isn't about how beautiful people are or putting people down to make us feel better. This magazine is about being you. Doing what you want to do, not being forced into anything and being feeling comfortable with yourself. You may find it an interesting read once a month but on the other hand it could really make your life a whole lot more interesting!! Either way it's definitely worth having a look at.
Summary: An intelligent, funny magazine for open minded women (or men looking for pointers!).
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