A Woman's Weekly

I think I am addicted to weeklies. It all started quite innocently with fishing out a copy of Love It! Magazine to read in the bath. Next was Take A Break, followed by Real People and there isn’t an end in sight.

Now, I consider my self a reasonably educated semi-feminist. I have no understanding of cosmetic surgery or the latest weight loss fad. Neither am I a 15 year old single mother with hoop earrings and hair scraped back so tightly my eyes have started to wander towards my temples.

But, how could I resist the riveting weekly story about someone having a sex-change? ‘My Groom is a Bride’! ‘How I became the first pregnant man in Bolton’!.

For the more harrowing tales, paragraph one will set the scene and force the reader to like the tortured protagonist. Hence, a lot of ‘I smiled’, ‘I cupped my baby bump’ and ‘I giggled as I stuck the last bauble on our Christmas tree’.

Inadvertently, some form of disaster will strike in paragraph number four. ‘Dwayne only had four weeks left’, ‘I was about to loose my baby’ or ‘I just didn’t feel comfortable as a man any more’. Luckily, good friends are always at hand to ‘soothe’. I could write a whole book on the overuse of the word ‘soothe’ in human interest stories. ‘It will be okay’, Stacey soothed, ‘Don’t worry, he only lost both legs, an eye and a kidney’, Jayneesha soothed …

After much soothing and despair, a solution will present itself in the shape of a ‘hunky mechanic’ with ‘rippling muscles and eyes like saucers’, accompanied by a picture of a grinning, hideous male with two litres of hairgel on his head, a gold earring in his nose, fake tan on his shoe and a shifty glint in his ears. Chavboy to the rescue! First thing chavboy will do is impregnate the protagonist, because then she will be able to do all the smiling and bump-cupping from paragraph once again and everyone is happy.

Should there was a baddie in the story, a picture of Baddie (no matter what Baddie did, if they’re male, they will always look like a pedophile) will appear at the end, with a caption saying ‘Bruce refused to comment, but did say he had never met Stacey in his life. Sadly, we could not interview him properly because he is currently imprisoned for petty theft or GBH’.

Another staple requisite for the likes of Love It! is the weekly plastic surgery story. Entitled ‘I hated my ugly hooter’ or ‘Bullied for my spaniel ear boobs’, this will explain to the hapless reader that a restructured bodypart can buy you eternal happiness. It also reminds you that anything smaller than a D cup will ruin your life (Oh no, better go hang myself on my A cup bra right now! I can’t possibly go on like this!). To reinforce the point, ‘before and after’ shots are provided. Before: blurred picture, bad hair, misery all around. After: big smile, full makeover (which tends to evolve around blond highlights and a low cut top or bikini), lens no longer blurry lens. Flat chested BAD. Big tits GOOD.

The cunning editor also manages to consiostently feature the amazing weightloss story right next to the one entitled ‘My Bulimia Hell’. What now? Am I meant to loose weight or gain weight?

Particularly annoying is the ‘You’ve Got Male’ section. Where do they find these people? Building sites? The job centre? They’re always topless and look like they’re likely to reappear in next week’s issue as an axemurderer. If I see another bronzed sixpack on some semi naked fireman I am going to puke.

Thumbs up for the Reader’s Tips page though (‘Carly’s Top Tips’!) though. Did you know there was ten useful things to do with the little net bags washing tablets come in? And that you can satisfy your neatfreak cravings by sticking clingfilm on the bathroom wall above the sink so you can just peel any toothpaste stains off the wall without actually having to scrub it? Did you know that your goldfish just loves frozen peas and that you can make a perfect gardening kneeling pad out of ‘an old showercurtain’? I don’t know about you, but how many old showercurtains do you have knocking around at any given time?

I can’t wait for next weeks issue. ‘I love my fake 32G boobs!’!! ‘I stole my best friend’s wrinkly dad!’!! and the much awaited ‘Cheryl Exclusive’!!