| Product: |
Shape |
| Date: |
03/07/00 (49 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Some good, informative articles
Disadvantages: Only for those really interested in fitness
Last year, I was one of the lucky people to receive three free issues of this magazine through a website promotion. I originally wrote a scathing review on dooyoo after reading the first two issues which, to be perfectly honest, didn’t impress me very much. Incidentally, the third one didn’t even arrive.
I am not into health in fitness in a big way - well not in a big enough way to buy a magazine about it although I have bought "Zest" a few times. I do the odd aerobics class, have a swim once in a while and on occasions have been known to set foot in my local gym. As a result, I found the issues of Shape unappealing as they did not have any articles which were of use to me.
My luck was in again when I received a letter (from another website) telling me that I had won a free subscription for six months to Shape magazine. At that time I couldn’t think of a worse prize as the postman refused to post the magazine through the letter box and would wake up the whole house (usually on a Saturday morning) to deliver a magazine that I didn’t want and didn’t like!
However, much to my surprise, I actually ending up reading the magazine and enjoying some of the articles in it. There are a variety of articles each month which deal with issues such as eating a balanced diet, basic (and advanced) exercises and toning up problem areas. There are also useful problem pages dealing with general health and fitness queries. They have run articles on complementary medicine, mental health and eating disorders and have a small selection of beauty reviews and advice. Some of their low fat recipes looked both simple to make and delicious but, as ever, I didn’t get around to making any.
There were other articles which didn’t offer anything new and almost seemed like a re-hash of topics written about in other magazines. As someone who doesn’t read health and fitness magazines very often, I wa
s surprised at this but have to admit that in later issues there was more diversification of topics and the magazine generally improved overall.
As with many women’s magazines around (not just health and fitness ones), there is a lot of emphasis put on the "perfect body". This was the same with Shape as on one page there would be an article about feeling good about yourself and how to get the motivation to lose weight and on the other page would be a picture of an anorexic-looking model.
To me this is nothing new and is something that probably many of you are used to in other magazines, but Shape seemed to be trying to convey the message that not everyone is stick thin and were offering practical advice on how to get fit and healthy. Perhaps the use of more "ordinary sized" models might have been an idea especially in the section about clothes to wear in the gym.
For me, as far as health and fitness magazines go, this was as good as any but, to be honest, was not my cup of tea. This is no reflection on the magazine but on myself as I don’t really have much interest in fitness publications. If, however, you regularly go to the gym and are looking for practical advice and tips then you should go and pick up a copy to see if it is something that might be able to help.
My free subscription ended a while back and, although I haven’t bought it since, I may consider getting it in the future. Especially as I need to lose a few pounds here and there before I even think about going on holiday in the summer!
Summary:
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