Mysterious Absence

My mysterious absence from my previously near-daily blogging endeavors can best be explained in two words: journalism thesis.

I had to scramble in the last weeks to get my quantitative analysis done (that I should have gotten done during my winter break when I was, you know, NOT IN SCHOOL). And that involved counting thousands of pages of magazines to figure out how many were content-only, advertising-only, mixed content and advertising, advertorials, complementary content, and on and on and on.

For the record, I didn't get any paper cuts. But my pinky and thumb were raw from my hand constantly dragging across pieces of paper, writing and flipping.

And I now shudder at the site of women's magazines. My latest issue of Elle came in the mail last week and I wanted to gag. Ugh, the thought of a 60+ to 4o ratio of advertising to content just makes me sick.

And Vogue is by far the worst. No matter how much I love runway fashion, I can't seem to understand why a magazine needs to be 840 pages if 638 of those pages are pure advertising. It makes no sense. It's stupid. It hurt my hand and my brain. And my intelligence.

I've come to a conclusion: women's magazines are (1) not journalism and (2) advertising machines. Don't read them. Marie Claire's OK. But don't read them.