October 2002
Sonia Pereira
magazine whore
O My Gosh, It's Oprah!
Not too long ago, I opened up a thread on a Chicklit.com forum about
magazines one knows better not to subscribe to, but for some inane reason
(like the evil ingeniousness of marketing strategies), does so despite
better judgment.
Now, I am not necessarily a magazine snob. After all, I've admitted to
reading Elle Girl and Vogue on a regular basis. But
I also like to pride myself on my collection of Grand Streets
and Paris Reviews as well. Which makes it all the more difficult
to admit my fairly recent subscription to Oprah's O, the magazine
that features it's constantly smiling namesake on every single (freaking)
issue.
I must stress the importance of the fact that I am in no way an Oprah
fan, which is not to say that I don't like her, I just really have no
opinion of her. Wait, yes I do. I think Oprah's pretty cool in terms of
coming from a rough childhood involving sexual abuse. Looking at what
she's accomplished without it being handed to her on a silver spoon (unlike
so many of today's "it" people), really makes one have a lot
of respect for her business sass.
And unlike Martha, she seems to be more sincere than your average TV
personality. Plus, the woman gets points just for not being a goofy, singing
catastrophe, like yet another TV feel-good woman with her own magazine.
So, after having established that I am not really that biased (for or
against) concerning Oprah, I'll go on to say that O is both a
cool magazine and yet often terribly trite for the more informed reader.
Or perhaps, just for a reader period.
From reading (mostly flipping through or skimming) O I'd say
her target audience is middle-class to upper-middle-class women who want
self-help techniques to improve everything from their marriages to relationships
with their folks and who don't really read much save for what's currently
on the Oprah Book Club agenda. Basically, the same audience as her show.
Which becomes somewhat of a problem for me. I'm married, yes, (which may
be part of the weird reason why I started subscribing to O as
well as Martha Stewart Living) but I'm also twenty-six-years-old
and an avid reader of Bitch, Bust, Magnet,
Nylon, etc. In other words, magazines that don't quite jive with
this whole Oprah sentimental deal. So, why the hell do I keep reading
it?
Well, sometimes O can be surprising. It often features articles
written by respectable authors (such as A.S. Byatt and Penelope Fitzgerald)
as well as fun fashion pieces that relieve me from the overflow of fourteen-year-old
models and g-strings. (Which reminds me that there are no annoying "Guess"
ads with girls wearing ugly denim jackets either.)
Last month's September issue had a really cool feature on www.mirrorproject.com,
which is a site founded by Heather Champ, a woman who digs taking self-portraits
in mirrors. The site consists of different people around the world submitting
photos of themselves in reflective surfaces like spoons, mirrors, etc.
After reading the article, I went to the website and (yeah, I know it's
dorky, but I've been taking pics of myself all the time after getting
my damn digital camera) posted a tiny, teeny pic of myself. And even though
you can barely see what I look like, still...who woulda thunk O
could bring me such a fun thing to do?
In the same issue a series of women entrepreneurs are profiled (gosh,
I love when mags do this...) in a spread that's followed by rules for
the O Big-Dream Contest, in which anyone can submit the magazine
a "dream" business idea and perhaps, win the right connections
to make it happen. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's pretty darn
rad.
And then in the same issue there's an interesting article on Elizabeth
Targ, a doctor devoted to studying the power of prayer on healing sickness.
Following that piece is a nice spread on photographs of NYC, cool photos,
not of Fifth Avenue, but of wacky graffiti and little dogs huddled on
the street like a posse of miniature Alfs. Sweet.
Though some issues of O are better than others, I still must
warn any who have not yet experienced the magazine that it isn't always
so packed with semi-substance. I have zero tolerance for anything "New-Agey"
and O tends to serve up a hearty dish of psycho-babble meant
for the kind of person that reads "Chocolate for the Woman's Soul"
or some other such tripe. There's the annoying "Dr. Phil" who
likes to yell at people and call it tough love. And there's the token
interview with some schmaltzy character such as Chris Rock, Brandy, or
Phil Donahue. (Ewe. Those, I always skip.) Other than that there's some
all right recipes for those in need of new ways to spice up the dinner
table, and some nice spreads on products Oprah personally picks and writes
little captions about (but they tend to run from one-hundred to about
four-hundred smackeroos, so I wouldn't exactly call it catalog shopping).
Bottom line? Don't fear this magazine. If you want to buy it, don't freak
out if the punky girl/dude behind the counter is going to think you're
a dork. (But if you do care, just stick a copy of the new Punk Planet
over it when you hand it to the cashier. Then again, that might only emphasize
your dorkyness, so, better just to brave the waters.)
O is not my kind of magazine, but it's fun when something fluffy
and easy to make fun of is needed to battle the intensity of the newspaper
and the inanity of US.
