Before I write a review I would like to apologize to all fans of the magazine for being such a classless representative of the oppressive sex who has nothing but one thing on his mind. Hell, atleast I am being honest even though it greatly depreciates my chances of getting a date with a feminist gal.
Having said that I fondly remember my wasted teen years reading my cousin’s Mills&Boon novels and of course spiriting away my mother’s Femina as soon as it was delivered. The magazine was a cornucopia of information and provided some of the answers to the questions which my perverted teen mind was seeking. Answers to questions which couldn’t be asked without getting a chiding from your elders for being too precocious.
The magazine was glossy with some excellent photography and delectable subjects.
By the time I was fifteen I knew most of the models on an intimate basis and could identify them in ads with greater ease than I could remember math equations (ahh! if only math book authors had insight about the power of visual learning)
The other articles in the magazine stressed the various issues affecting the modern women either in the workplace or at home. What’s it like to be a woman in this day and age and how can you make sure that you always have the upper hand? How can you identify blatant sexual discrimination and deal with sexual harassment?
All kidding aside, it was very informative to know how to approach a girl without prompting her to yell ’’Pig’’.
As a strong supporter of women’s rights I believe that the magazine did very little to actually touch upon any topic which affected women in anyway. It didn’t do anything to break the mold of its reader, instead telling the poor suckers who dished out their money how miserable their life was. How the glamor girls lived, where they bought clothes and who they were going out with. Right! like I care.
Of course without fail it had the photos of the contestants in their beauty contests it sponsored. According to Femina, beauty contests are a way for women to express themselves. Well, didn’t the suffragists struggle for something more lofty like voting rights and equal opportunity in every walk of life.
I can’t think of a more blatant insult to women’s rights other than parading some beauties with almost impossible to attain statistics and call them a representative of the average woman.
But I’m not complaining about beauty contests, they are good fodder for the fantasies of the average sexually frustrated teen who has neither the money nor the resources for dating those beauties.
Occasionally the magazine does cover some political issues or even socio-economic issues. I appreciate them for doing that because a woman has to get an ’’all-round’’ education and even though the journalistic ability of the writers covering these issues are minimal at best it gives ammo for an argument with the enemy.
And provide answers to the questions commonly asked at beauty contests, which invariably produce one answer, world peace.
Another part of the magazine is the model watch or whatever they call the modern versions of Narcissus. The appreciation of beauty is natural to either sex, but elevating them to the status of a demi-god has me seriously doubting the intellectual calibre of the magazine editors.
Finally the best part of the magazine is the food recipes they publish. That’s one thing they have got right, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But isn’t that a paradox to the very cause they are fighting for.
What do men know, their evolution stopped at the Neanderthal stage.
Femina is indeed a magazine for a woman of substance, a substance called Silicon.