Skip to main content

New Magazine launches:
Sex drops out of the Top Ten

"Maybe it's because of the Internet" Myrna Blyth's articles on women's culture at NRO are often interesting. Today's is about new magazine launches in the year just past, 2004. Blyth is a former magazine editor and today she talks over new magazine launches with Samir Husni, an expert in the subject. What Samir has to say is encouraging:
Samir thinks the magazines that will succeed today appeal not to the buzz-based, let's-do-lunch-at-Michael's media elite but to the genuine interests of red-state readers. Another launch he likes is a teenage magazine called Justine, published in Memphis, Tenn. "It has beauty and fashion and relationship features but it is wholesome. My daughter reads it." And what do you think was the category with the most launches in 2004? "Crafts!" Samir reports. "Everybody in America is making something for their home." And which category had far less launches than in the past? "Sex. Maybe because of the Internet. But for the first time it wasn't even in the top ten."
It little things like this, I see hope for the future. We could all use less Cosmo in our lives and in the lives of the young women we care about. A full blown Return to Modesty would be grand, but that's still a ways off. I can vouch for the craft thing. Rebecca is crocheting (not knitting! I've been warned) and through her and her friends I've seen a real wave of interest in traditional women's craft. They seem to be doing it, not because they have to, but because there seems to be a resurgence of interest in what mothers used to do; it's curiosity and it's pride. I think this trend is quite cool. It's been a while since I've been able to say that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wordpress

My move to Mac has been very happy except for two issues - gaming and blogging. For websurfing and multimedia, a Mac is of course a terrific machine. Games on the Mac platform are often ports of games made for the larger PC market and that means a Mac gamer will have to wait for the port. I'm not a heavy gamer by any means but I am very happy that the Mac port of Civilization 4 is finally here. Well, my copy isn't here quite yet - but it has been ordered and ought to be here soon. The blogging issue is more complicated. I'm not fond of writing my posts in a browser window. This goes back to when I was first blogging and I lost one or two large posts into the ether. After that I moved to w.bloggar - a great little app that let me compose on my desktop and then click send when all was said and done. I have not been able to recreate that experience on my Mac, and not for a lack of trying! I looked at Marsedit , but that forces you to compse while staring at a bunch of HMT...
Post a Comment
Read more

Da Vinci: It bleats, it leads

The trouble with The DaVinci code is certainly this : the fundamentals of the Christian creed can be summarized in a few sentences easily learned by schoolchildren and recited aloud from memory by the whole congregation on Sunday. They are great mysteries to be sure - Trinity, incarnation, redemption, salvation, crucifixion, resurrection - but they are simple enough to explain. Contrast that with the account Mr. Brown offers of a centuries-long fraud, sustained by shadowy groups, imperial politics, ruthless brutality and latterly revealed by a secret code "hidden" in one of the world's most famous paintings. The Christian Gospel offers a coherent, comprehensible account of reality that invites the assent of faith. It requires a choice with consequences. Mr. Brown's dissent from Christianity offers a bewildering and incredible amalgam of falsehoods and implausibilities, painting a picture of a world in which the unenlightened are subject to the manipulations of the fe...
Post a Comment
Read more