The Ladies' Home Journal, let's face it, does not have a great reputation with the younger crowd. My mothers reads it. My grandmother reads it. My great grandmother read it (I think). The magazine is--how to put this lightly?--old. Outdated. Ridiculously outdated. Irrelevant.
So when I opened up my mailbox last month to find a copy, I was surprised. What the fuck? I said out loud, pulling the plastic-encased magazine from the box by its corner, checking the mailing label because clearly this was in the wrong box. There was my name, spelled neatly on the little white tag. And then it occurred to me to hide it, in case someone might be passing by, see me with it, and get the wrong idea (for instance, that it might actually be addressed to me--it was!--or that I might actually read it). Tucked inside the inaguaral issue was a little card telling me that my grandmother had purchased a one-year subscription for me.
Oh, she clearly knows me so well.
I took a Women’s Studies course in undergraduate, so, like everyone who took a women's studies course, I stopped reading “women’s” magazines. Fashion and beauty and feel-like-shit-about-yourself magazines. How to get skinnier in 5 minutes a day (You’re Too Fat). How to avoid wrinkles around your eyes (Getting Old is Bad and You’re Probably Already Too Old). Sex Secrets Every Woman Should Know (You’re Probably Not Doing It Right).
So too I dealt with LHJ: I discarded it on the coffee table and hoped it would go away. It was the centerpiece of many conversations in my living room for the next month and it was suggested--not only once--that I write a blog. I laughed. That would require that I actually read the thing. Eew.
But then one afternoon, and I cannot specifically pinpoint this afternoon or its context (I’m sure my brain has blocked most of this memory for my own protection), I picked up the magazine and, well, I read it. Or read it as much as it is possible to read the LHJ. It’s been a snowball effect from there: I read the first one, caught myself weeks later quoting the magazine to a friend, then realizing I had done this, vowed to stay away from the magazine from here on out. Then the second magazine arrived. I read that too. And now, here we are.
Give a writer lemons, and she will make lemonade.
So, welcome, dear friends to my year reading the Ladies’ Home Journal.
