My Life and Other Animals: # 83 (2013) Why Womens Magazines Are Trash

I have never seen the value of buying womens magazines. If I want to be shamed about the way I look or how I spend my money or the social life I have I only have to follow the media or watch TV. What I don't need is it sitting on my coffee table as well.

Even my Facebook newsfeed is full of constant reminders I should be dieting, buying pointless beauty products and following some new celebrity fad. And where did the sudden influx of dieting adverts on Facebook come from anyway?

I leafed through someone else's copy of 'Closer' the other day. A more depressing and self absorbing rag you could not wish to read. It's why I stopped buying fashion magazines for research, because, apart from the ridiculous cover prices, they just made me hate myself.

Apparently they agreed to this comparison

Life's hard enough without comparing yourself to something that doesn't exist and if you're in the fashion industry it's always going to be a problem.

So reading about how someone has put on weight post baby or after a ridiculous amount of crash dieting and become a shockingly normal UK12 (which I hasten to add is below the UK national average) does nothing to make you feel positive about yourself, whether you are struggling with your weight or not.

One of the over all vibes I got from this magazine was that going from a size 8/10 to a 12 was BAD and deemed to be a failure. It's that constant pressure that being an average size just isn't enough.

Which is astounding when you walk around any town and see the level of obesity that's taking over our lives. Are these people ex-readers of magazines, failed dieters or what?

The competition to lose the baby weight fast. Let's not forget this is normal.

The intrusive nature of these articles with holiday snaps that celebs clearly did not pose for is at some level also quite hostile. Who has the right to debate on someone's weight regardless of how over or under they are? And if you're on holiday why should you have to see images of your 'bikini body' a week later in the pages of trashy magazines like this?

Note the before and after makeovers to convince you they are happier now than before

The 'miracle' stories of weight loss that you read in the likes of 'Closer' are just that. Miracles. And the sloppy use of photoshop to trim down already triumphant dieters only serves to remind us that it's still not good enough.

These are not adult magazines, they can be bought by anyone. And time and again we hear about how girls as young as 8 are going on diets to lose pounds with no idea of the damage they are doing to their developing bodies. It's setting people up for a lifetime of failure. Diets do not work as a long term solution and it staggers me that magazines are still allowed to produce these kinds of articles with noone to answer to.