Monday, August 5, 2013

I can actually feel my brain cells dying melodramatic little deaths...

Source
I was reading a girl's magazine the other day, one where my birth year no longer features in the surveys, and I noticed something a little disturbing ... if you judged today's women by those magazines, apparently all we're interested in is "The Perfect Way to Pluck Your Eyebrows" or "Water Retention, The Undiscussed Curse".

It's official, we've finally figured out a way to bring the human race to a crashing halt. We tried large-scale disease and pestilence, pollution, and destruction of the ozone layer, but none of them seemed to stick. So, finally, we've come up with a new approach.

We're going to dumb ourselves to death.

Personally I think it's a conspiracy.  The powers that be are hoping that if they feed us this rubbish with no intellectual content our brain size will reduce, our IQ's will decrease, and eventually we won't be able to take care of ourselves.

It's just another form of natural selection. Survival of the fittest.

I suppose it could have it's advantages. Once all those intellectually deprived people have been "disposed of", we'll be left with a population of smart, worldly, well informed human beings who don't believe a person's ability to apply mascara while driving to work is an accurate way to measure their usefulness to society.

Oh, I can hear what you're thinking. "She was reading the magazine. Isn't she talking about herself?" But I was just reading it to see how stupid and useless it was. It's not like I was really buying it to see what the latest shades of eye shadow are.

Honestly, I wasn't!

42 comments:

  1. The only magazines discussing my date of birth are made of papyrus, and luckily, harder to find. And for me, deciding what colour of Ugg I'm going to be wearing with my shell suit is less of a problem since I can't get into either.

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    1. Oh Ugg, how do I love thee. So awful looking, but so comfortable.

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  2. I love this post! There is hardly a day that I don't have a head shake or an eye-roll as I see a magazine, Internet story or such of some idiot blabbering on about the importance of wearing the new "it" color or how spandex built into clothing makes you look 10 pounds lighter and 15 years younger. PULLLLEEEEZZZZZ save me from this descent into frivolousness.

    As to the effect these fluff pieces have on our intellect...that's another matter. Is the person that can apply mascara and drive simultaneously more or less equipped to survive an Armageddon? Will there come a time that not looking young and stylish result in the fact, I won't get a seat in the life raft to safety over the much clearer thinking woman that was smart enough to put on the cool jeans and wear some Spanx for good measure.

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    1. Hmm, I hadn't thought of it from that perspective. Perhaps I should stock up on eyeshadow, just incase I need to be included on the last bus going to the secret bunker.

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  3. But if you do all those things the magazines tell you, it will change your life! You'll be happy, confident, popular, thin, have great hair and lots of boyfriends, and no odor.

    Kellie, have you seen the video Bodyform (sanitary pads) produced in reply to a Facebook joke rant? I'm sure if you Google Bodyform Facebook video you'll get it. It's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, besides your blog, of course!

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  4. I was sitting at the hairdressers waiting my turn and leafing through a stack of those 'girl' magazines.....page after page of ads......I ended up reading Field and Stream lol.

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  5. But if we don't read these magazines, how will we know the top 5 moves that drive him wild? Or this season's cutest looks for less!?! Fine, I'll go back to intellectual pursuits and only read People magazine, "The Slightly Less Embarrassing Celebrity Gossip Rag" is their motto.

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  6. Every month I swear I won't buy anymore women's magazines as they are just filled with ads. And every month I fall into the trap of buying them. Aren't we just a sorry bunch

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    1. I remember reading one magazine once and I was into triple digit page numbers before I hit my first article.

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  7. We could get a lot of fashion info from blogs. For me magazines are getting to be too expensive.

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    1. I pretty much only read them when I'm at coffee shops so I don't have to pay for them.

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  8. I gave up buying women's magazines ages ago, well magazines in general when I realised I was flicking past more pages than I was reading. I didn't know or care about the celebrities, the fashion was bleurghh and the articles just left me wanting to chew my own arm off.

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    1. I think the only ones I've ever really liked were the sci-fi ones.

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  9. I haven't bought magazines in years as I get them from my local library. I still read Dolly and Girlfriend even though I'm nearing 40, I read Cosmo and Cleo which are both becoming more like Dolly and Girlfriend.

    If we don't read these magazines how will we keep up with the latest boy bands to crush on, the current style of dress to wear to our proms, and how to get nice and thin to fit into a bikini this summer when the cute boy in our class asks us to the beach????

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    1. I must admit I don't buy them either, I tend to read them in coffee shops or salons.

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  10. Oh man...I can't read the glossies anymore because I am gullible and every time I do, I feel inadequate and actually feel like if I just used... and spent more time on... that I too could FINALLY have Zooey Deschanel's gorgeous popping eyes and full, perfectly behaved hair. So I mostly have to ignore them now for the sake of my sanity.

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    1. Zooey, why do your eyes have to be so perfect and your hair so thick? It makes the rest of us feel inadequate!

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  11. Before Cosmo got a new editor I was so bored with that magazine. All it talked about was how to look hot for your man or how to please your man...Like a woman's life had to be centered around how to find a guy and then how to keep him happy and please him.

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    1. And where are the articles about how to make a man please you? Those would be much more beneficial.

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  12. You should watch Idiocracy. It seemed much less plausible when I watched it initially but after the last two US elections I've begun to think smart is somehow NOT desirable by large segments of the population.

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    1. I have that one on my hard drive, I think. I'll have to watch it this weekend.

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  13. When I pick up teen girl magazines (just to read the covers, I don't actually read them), I think, crap--were they this dumb when I was that young? This was decades ago, so they may have been better then. Or maybe I was a dumb teenager. Or maybe a mix of both.

    One good thing about those magazines. They give you a few seconds of entertainment when you stand in the grocery store line and have nothing to do but read the article titles on the covers. But that's it, cause I'm not paying $4 for a magazine I read for five minutes.

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    1. LOL! I must admit I do enjoy reading the headlines at the checkout and trying to work out what the articles might be about. I'm rarely right, although my made up stories are usually more scandalous.

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  14. It's not just girls' magazines. Look at women's magazines like Cosmo. Sex sex sex! Here's a sexy tip on how to have the sexiest sex EVER!" How many 'tips' on sex can one magazine possibly come up with? Thousands of issues worth, apparently.

    "Tip #1045: Have sex out in a cornfield in a rainstorm while grating his nipples with a cheese grater!"

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    1. But what do you do if you live in the city with nary a cornfield in sight?

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  15. It's not so bad as adults, looking back and seeing the ridiculousness of it all, but I worry about the generation growing up with these magazines, when it's all about being slimmer, prettier, sexier, etc. What about self-image? Yikes!

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  16. "....our brain size will reduce, our IQ's will decrease, and eventually we won't be able to take care of ourselves."

    Bingo, and men's magazines have about the same effec on ust. They just go about it differently.

    S

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  17. Celebrity magazines like US and People are killing me. I lose IQ points whenever I pass by one at the supermarket checkout.

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    1. And that's why you should only order delivery pizza. Don't take the risk of coming across a magazine in the supermarket!

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  18. Someone mentioned it above but the movie Idiocracy also immediately came to mind when reading this.

    Also, let us not forget about how our society also rewards all the idiots that burn themselves with their coffee or lose a limb trying to trim their hedges with a lawn mower with hugely large cash settlements allowing them to procreate as often as they would like.

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    1. That's true, we do seem to be encouraging stupidity, don't we.

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  19. This post is perfect. Starting with the title. It's like you have taken the unformed thoughts from my head, and transformed them into a cogent and funny piece of writing. Thank you.

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  20. So, what's the latest color of eyeshadow?

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  21. I like to read these at the dentist or hair dresser, just for laughs.

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    1. LOL! Yep, that's what I tell me people too. Just for laughs ;D

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