Woman's World Magazine

This magazine is a waste of money and paper. It only costs a dollar forty-nine, but it's chockfull of inspirational stories, cute kids, delicious recipes, relationship help, and diets. Lots of diets. On and off the advertisements.

My mom buys this from time to time, I always look through it, wondering what insipid thing they're saying this month.

The January 9, 2007 issue takes the cake.

Anyone with a brain that reads this issue from cover to cover will come to the conclusion that any diet besides one consisting of less food and more physical activity is a joke. However, I don't see that happening.

The main cover story shouts, "FAT? TIRED? RUNDOWN? Lose 18 pounds in 11 days! Release the toxins that cause 'chemical fat'! Get slim and energized!"

This 'article' runs on pages 20 and 21.

The problem is, on page 25, there is a decent article on how mothers can pass eating disorders onto their daughters. It's about rejecting the 'you're never too thin' for a healthy body image. One circle says "Did you know? Overweight doesn't mean unhealthy! One study showed that overweight people who are active are healthier than thin ones who are sedentary!"

The box at the bottom on safe dieting includes this gem: "Lose two pounds or less a week - more than that is muscle loss."

So, er, what's going on with the main part of this week's issue? 18 pounds dropped in less than 2 weeks! Now, doesn't this imply that the fad diets are unhealthy and dangerous, if they work at all beyond the time you're on it?

I'm reading The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf right now.

I definitely see what she was talking about. There's also an 'article' called 'Erase years from your skin!' Because age is a horrible thing, and while we can't stop ourselves from getting older, at least not yet, we can at least look younger. The older women that get plastic surgery, they look fake, they're wearing some sort of mask, can they really smile?

None of the diets profiled in magazines like this work. Not permanently, and not for everybody. And they never will, that will stop an industry, we can't have that. Same with 'anti-aging' creams and treatments. We'll always get wrinkles and gray hairs, and we'll always shell out big bucks to fix them because age is terrible, there's something wrong with you if you look your age.