Magazines - entertaining or demoralising?

Loved reading all your messages everyone! I’m definitely going to look up The Oldie as I’ve never heard of it. I don’t actually buy these but was given a pile so felt almost obliged to flick through them. I’m so pleased I’m not the only one feeling as I do. Yesterday’s stand out thing I noticed was a fashion shoot showing a ‘perfect’ woman wearing an outfit suited to tea at the Ritz costing around £700 in total, and she was pushing a wheelbarrow full of leaves!!! Don’t think anyone would photograph the clothes I would wear to do that ….

I recently discovered that I can now read over 197 different magazines via my LIBBY app. Completely free of charge including back issues and some newspapers too. I get notifications of new issues of the ones I’ve been reading like New Scientist and National Geographic. Seems amazing to me that access is free, all you need to download Libby is a library card. If you can’t download Libby I believe the same access is available via Overdrive?

Only glance at them when in a waiting room - too many adverts (I know they are necessary) clothes which are too expensive and I would never wear, so called 'celebs' boasting about latest marriage, boyfriend, baby, holidays, new 'fantastic homes', plastic surgery (Katie Price an example who is supposedly bankrupt!!). Prefer to save my money.

Loved magazine all my life but now, at 59, nothing seems to fit! I used to love GH but I’m not interested in sex toys, or cosmetic surgery or clothes at 1000’s of pounds a pop. However I’m not ready for some targeted at the ‘older’ market either. I have started to download free magazines on Prime so, if I’m not interested , I send them back, but still miss the thrill of a printed copy!

Don’t buy beauty magazines, they only make you feel ugly (said a wise man).

NotTooOld

Grandmajean

I used to like Good Housekeeping but don't buy it any more. Got really fed up with the "I love getting older" articles from famous women whose photos have so obviously been treated to wrinkle removal. I also got tired of the Christmas editions where everybody was hosting a fantastic family event . Haven;t bough a magazine for ages .

I so agree, especially about the Christmas editions, which can make one feel very depressed, and the 'getting older - how wonderful' articles which frequently feature Helen Mirren or Joanna Lumley. But my pet hate is the fashion section. Are there really people out there who pay £500 for a winter coat? What madness is this? And then there are the interior design sections 'showcasing' posh houses in the Cotswolds. And I must mention the recipes, lavishly illustrated, which have me yawning before I'm half way through reading the extremely long list of ingredients. No, women's mags are not for me. I much prefer The Oldie which contains interesting and informative articles as well as lots of humour (and ads at the back for 'discrete massages with attractive continental lady'. What's that all about? )

Don't forget Twiggy - she's always there banging on about loving being old ! Oh , yes , the fabulous Cotswold houses . The owner is usually hosting Christmas there with a lot of people staying over to frolic in the snow and drink mulled wine ! Suppose it gives me a laugh. Haven't heard of The oldie !!

I stopped buying them after I counted the pages of advertisements in a glossy mag - IIRC it was about 70% of the mag!
I’ll still read anything like GH or interiors/antiques while at the hairdresser or dentist, though.

It was ages ago, but I do remember a very funny Posy Simmonds cartoon strip about someone reading the sort of ‘perfect life’ article you mean, OP. The reader’s face became gradually more hacked off as she read the sheer gushingness - and eventually stuffed the whole thing in the bin!

I love house magazines, but they got that expensive that I could of bought a book for the same price so I cancelled my subscriptions on the both of them.

I get the Peoples Friend which has short stories, usually a knitting pattern, recipes, an article on a place and a few regular contributors. Very feel good unlike a lot of magazines which just seem to look at the seedier side of life

I think this must reflect the type of magazine you read.
If I had the spare cash I'd take Interiors, Surface, Selvedge, Dezeen, Wallpaper.... I could go on.
I don't think any of these are demoralising!
All are interesting and beautiful!

I gave up on them a long time ago - and way back when I was in my thirties probably, I realised that once had read them for a year you were on a cycle - Christmas stuff - November issue, Easter cakes - March, holiday clothes in summer, etc etc boooooring!! I agree though that less general magazines that play to your interests can be very different

I've subscribed to Good Housekeeping for many years and have kept it, mainly out of habit I think, as many of you have described exactly what irritates me - celebrities, the overcoming hardships to start a wonderful business and a new wonderful husband type articles (me? jealous?) plus the expensive and often ugly clothes, unobtainable homes and gardens, etc. GH did a survey not long ago to ask what readers liked and didn't like (I like the film, tv and book reviews plus health articles and the easier veggie recipes) but haven't seen any changes to date. I am on the GH reader panel to test products. It's hit and miss but I have had generous amounts of some products like face creams to try, which is nice but also, when I find out the price after the test period, usually makes me realise my cheaper brands are just as good!

Don't read them. At my stage of life, (63 and almost retired), I don't do anything which doesn't bring me joy. And that includes some reading experiences. I used to feel compelled, probably because of my upbringing, never to "waste" anything. So I read books to the end, and magazines from cover to cover, even if I wasn't enjoying them. I agree with others, that special interest magazines are the most satisfying to read. Magazines for women, even older women, tend to focus on looks, "fashion", makeup etc. They are all designed to make us spend money on useless things, by trying to persuade us that we are somehow missing out on some "must have" material things. In my experience, joy is rarely derived from material things..... And don't forget that all magazines are subsidised by advertising. If you removed all the ads, both obvious and covert, there would be very little of substance in any magazine. Which is why I don't read them much. And I never buy them! I read them, if I have nothing better to do, in waiting rooms! And I never buy anything because of an advertisement. If I want or need something, I do my own research first.

Both myself and my DDs were big magazine buyers all the weekly and popular monthly ones however we very rarely buy any now and prefer to read articles on the internet I occasionally buy the odd one but there is so little reading in them and the articles are as already said about super women and how we constantly need to improve ourselves

I don't buy them but my daughter occasionally treats me to Platinum or Good Housekeeping. Both have something for everyone. Magazines have changed so much over the years and become more trashy but I find Good Housekeeping still keeps to high standards.

I wrote an article many years ago and had it published in Woman magazine.They paid me £50 which was a fortune to me as a lone parent.I kept a copy and came across it in a recent house move. In 1986 Woman magazine wasn't full of celebrities or "I married my Grandfather" type of stories. It was a really interesting mature publication. Shame it couldn't have stayed that way.

I wants went to a woman and home focus group dinner. The editor was there, a very lovely lady, but the killer remark to me was that the photographs of the celebrities on the cover and inside had all without exception being touched up to make them look younger and thinner with longer legs et cetera. That absolutely killed magazine buying for me for this

inishowen

Jane Judge,she wanted magazines with sex in them?

I was wondering about that too I inshowen
Where did you find them JaneJudge? Not that I'm interested you understand!!

Jane Judge,she wanted magazines with sex in them?

I loathe most modern magazines for women, but 'Yours' is much better than most of them.

I usually read via the library app Good Housekeeping, Women & Home, several interior design mags and gardening ones.

I do sometimes buy these actual magazines as I like to flick through when I am having a coffee in the morning as opposed to doing everything through a screen.

I don't buy magazines I regard them as a waste of money. I do read them if they are available at the dentist/doctor hairdressers, un surprisingly they weren't at the latter after lockdown,

Not always so for me, I was a magazine buyer in my youth when I appreciated a diet of all things fatuous, so Petticoat, Melody Maker, NME, Rave, Nova some others, Private Eye if I wanted a laugh. Cosmopolitan even at one time but eventually all that quasi overload of sex and psycho babble was too much even back then. When I flicked through Woman's Own a while back it seemed to have gone considerably down market, sensationalism replacing stalwart articles about sensible matters such as food and the home or whatever else they wrote about, I can't really remember, but it all seemed jolly sensible stuff once.

We get three magazines with the Sunday Times, The Culture one I hang on to for the week because it has tv programmes in plus I like the tv, film and book reviews. Sometimes the main supplement has interesting articles. The Style magazine deserves to be hurled across the room and stamped on for the ridiculously priced clothes, who they are aimed at heaven knows certainly not me!

I don't feel demeaned by so called "superwomen" I'm in awe of anyone who is exceptional but just tend to conclude after reading an article along those lines "well that's them and I'm me" and anyway there may be umpteen back stories that the subject isn't going to reveal so we only see what we read.

Similarly so called C'leb magazines and those who frequent them, thereby doing a pact with the devil in what they reveal! All a load of flim flam imo!

don’t know

DillytheGardener

Country Life occasionally and the Financial Times on the weekend. My elder son and dil bought it when they lived here in pre pandemic times and I enjoyed the crosswords and recipes so kept buying it after they moved. The How To Spend it insert does make me laugh, how the other half live eh? Tbh I enjoy the catalogues from hush, Boden and next rather than the glossies. Those magazines clothing items do not cater for big chested mothers of two adult children .

My DH gets the FT and like you I browse the How to Spend it magazine. I can only think that some of the products are aimed at people who have so much money that they wouldn’t even notice the cost, or perhaps know that you can get something similar, but cheaper .
I do wonder where women wear the very fancy jewellery that’s often advertised in the first few pages.

For £1 a week (£52 pa) I get Candis magazine, light reading, practical recipes and puzzles as well as giving to a good cause. I also get the U3a mag, and the NT one, both quarterly. I subscribe to the Grauniad online. Must admit, I don't seem to have time to read all these, let alone adding to the list.

I admit to reading the people's friend magazine in the past. I always bought the hello magazine in the airport before flying on holiday. I've also bought the yours magazine.
Now I don't buy any as another poster said, they are full of celebrities I've never heard of. At Xmas I treated myself to a subscription to the readers digest monthly magazine and find the articles are interesting. A few years ago, I had a subscription to national geographic