Yesterday I went to the hairdresser’s to get my colours sorted out and stop the roots from showing too obviously. I might have left it another week or so but the next few weeks are going to be rather busy and as I was going to be in Manchester anyway it was a perfect opportunity to sort myself out. I also had my eyebrows shaped - a perfect little bit of masochism!
In the hairdresser’s I looked at women’s magazines while various processes were worked through, all involving some waiting around. What do they give the male clients at this point? This question has just occurred to me and I must remember to observe closely next time I go.
One of the magazines offered to me was Cosmopolitan. Now, I was about to say that I remember Cosmopolitan being launched in the 1960s. But then I thought I had better get my facts straight and discovered that it has been around in one form or another for much longer than that. In fact, Cosmopolitan began as a family magazine, launched in March 1886 by Schlicht & Field of New York as The Cosmopolitan. Well, there you go!
It seemed to undergo various transformations.
I read that “Cosmo was widely known as a "bland" and boring magazine by critics. Cosmopolitan's circulation continued to decline for another decade until Helen Gurley Brown became chief editor in 1965. Helen Gurley Brown changed the entire trajectory of the magazine during her time as editor. Brown remodeled and re-invented it as a magazine for modern single career women. Completely transforming the old bland Cosmopolitan magazine into a racy, contentious and well known, successful magazine.”
That sounds like the magazine I vaguely remember; a cut above Woman’s Weekly and the like with their knitting patterns and cookery ideas. Not that I have anything against knitting patterns and recipes or even the serialised soppy romances I read in my mother’s magazines when I was a young teenager. But Cosmopolitan seemed like a more serious bit of reading matter.
The one I looked at yesterday, however, was a bit of a disappointment. It may not have had as many shots of famous people getting married, taking their offspring to school in fabulous outfits, or remodelling their fabulous houses as other magazines but it still had a large number of its pages devoted to advertisements for ridiculous and ridiculously-priced outfits!
It seemed rather too frothy for my liking.
Fancy getting nostalgic about women’s magazines!
I must say that in this age of instagram and lives lived on social media I am quite surprised that women’s magazines keep going at all. I guess it must be something to do with all that glossy advertising.
In another magazine, one whose name escapes me but which shows lots of shiny celebrities getting on with their shiny lives, I read that Ellie Goulding, singer-songwriter apparently (one problem I have nowadays is that I am unaware of who is who in the land of the rich and famous) wore four, yes FOUR different dresses on her wedding day! For those who want details of the expensive dresses, here is a link.
Since when did a bride need more than one wedding dress for her “big day”? Surely one is expensive enough! What happened to a wedding dress and than a “going away” outfit?
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