Hissy Cat

« Sunday Night Blues | Main | Help A Girl Out »

October 03, 2005

Confession

Bust, like Tori Amos, Tom Robbins, and yoga, is something I, theoretically, should like. Not only am I, personally, the target demographic, but friends and co-horts whose tastes overlap in large part with my own and whose opinions and recommendations I therefore wholly respect love it. Bust also attracts some writers I really, really like. In high school, I once bought a Tori Amos CD and listened to it multiple times to try to force myself to like it. I knew I was supposed to. It was what the smart, young feminists in high school listened to. I wanted to be a part of the club. I wanted to show that I got, and supported, the 'message.'

While I never did learn to like the Tori Amos CD, I did manage to spend an agonized month with her torturous songs lodged in my brain. My relationship with Bust magazine is somewhat similair.

There are, to be sure, significant differences. I didn't enjoy Ms. Amos' music at all. In any given issue of Bust, I can expect a handful of things to like and other things that whilst I might not like them exactlly, still afford me with some degreee of pleasure and enjoyment.

But sometimes I think I'm missing something.

In the Oct./ Nov. issue there is an article on "cougars"-- older women who date younger men. I suppose the point of running an article is to show that older women can be sexual in a hip, edgy way. I don't by any means disagree with the premise or even the motivation for featuring this story (assuming, of course, that that was the motivation). But it's just not that interesting a topic. Ok, post-menopausal women can still slut it up with the best of them, but so what, that in itself does not really compell me. I'm not saying that there isn't a compelling story that could be told, just that Bust doesn't tell it. I think about an essay I read in Elle a few months ago as a contrast. The story was about 'whole beast' eating, a haute culinary adventure lark that involves paying scads of money to be served organ meat and bone and claw soup and every other part of an animal most people who have the choice to throw away would. That topic is even less innately appealing to me. I really don't give a damn about the world of uber-chefs or chi-chi gourmand eating, but the writer managed to make me interested in her story. The piece was so elegantly written and so infused with the human characters she was writing about that I couldn't help but be compelled. I was invested, emotionally and intellectualy, in the stakes that she saw in the topic. It was, in many ways, the ideal of glossy-magazine writing: it was deeply entertaining, clever, and witty; escapist in the best possible sense, in that the writing was strong enough to transport me into another world; and it exposed me to a story I didn't know I wanted to know and wouldn't see unless I happened upon it in a magazine, as it is not something I would seek out or pay for in a book.

Bust's writing is not so compelling.

Barbara. . . peppers her response with historical references and pop culture witticisms. When I ask why she likes dating younger men, she explains, "You don't have to worry about them leaving you for Elle McPherson, because they're not interested in that in the first place."

To start with, I don't need to be told someone is witty. If she says witty things, just repeat them and, I promise, I'll get it. Thing is, Barbara really doesn't say anything witty, at least not in this article. Not to mention that I'm not sure whether her mentioning Elle McPherson is supposed to be an example of a "pop culture witticism" or a "historical reference." In any case, please. I don't think I've heard the name Elle McPherson in years, not since the Fashion Cafe tanked.

There's also this:

One Saturday [Norma] placed an ad on Craigslist, touting herself as a cougar in search of willing young men. That night, "I posted the ad, went and let my dog out in the backyard, and made a cup of tea. I came back and there had been 56 responses in 10 minutes."

And I guess that number might be impressive. If you'd never looked at Craigslist before. Late one night during finals week, a friend of mine decided, as a joke, to put up a really ridiculously, stupidly fake ad on Craigslist just for shits and giggles and to see what would happen. She wrote she was an eighty-year-old Italian woman who had had a youth spent in orgies with the carabinieri. She got, quite literally, hundreds of responses from willing young men, including dozens of uninvited cock shots. My point is, anyone who knows what Craigslist is knows it doesn't say anything about anything one way or the other that Norma got 56 responses when a soft piece of rotted fruit would also have a double-digit numbers of takers desperate for a casual encounter with a moldy nectarine.

There's also the matter of letters they publish. I tend to be wary of any publication that prints only the positive I've-never-subscribed-to-a-magazine-before-but-I'll-subscribe-to-you type missives. I don't think Bust is evil or anything, but sometimes I think it's just kinda dumb.

That and I guess I haven't forgiven Bust for haranguing my hero P.J. Harvey for not towing the party line in her interview with Bust last year.

Posted by hissycat at October 3, 2005 09:46 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.hissycat.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/101

Comments

Posted by: mlle M at October 3, 2005 12:34 PM

Posted by: onion slayer at October 3, 2005 01:38 PM

Posted by: pregnant sex at December 20, 2006 11:31 AM

Posted by: sharon smith mayor nude at December 20, 2006 09:33 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)