Then something changed. I still buy every issue of Bitch without fail, but shortly after starting university, I gave up on Bust. It was probably all that sexy sex that did me in, actually. I’m all for vibrators, but I feel like the political change that can be effected from the purchase of said object is limited. A Hitachi Magic Wand is not going to protect abortion rights in South Dakota, or close the wage gap, or fight rape in the Congo, no matter how many cozies you knit for it.
I started calling it the Cosmopolitan of Third Wave Feminism and forgot about it. And then, with no other options at the bookstore last week, I bought a copy. I was disappointed, but then I wondered, was I even being fair comparing it to Cosmo? It had been even longer since I had read that mag, and surely Bust hadn’t become that dire. Maybe I was just being hyperbolic. So, I shamefacedly purchased a recent copy of Cosmo too, and set about to do a point-by-point comparison, using arbitrary categories and my own subjective opinions.
Let the glossy catfight begin!
Heteronormativity
Bust was always pretty queer-positive in my heyday, with articles about GLBT rights and some pretty hot lesbian and even trans erotica stashed in the back pages. However, in this issue, that story has a straight bent (hot sex in the library stacks! Pity the janitor!) and an article about how your guy needs to do all the relationship work, instead of you. And yeah, that’s a nice inversion on the Cosmo “What Turns Him Off” columns, but it still assumes that the average reader of Bust has a man-friend in their life, which, whatever. Shockingly, Cosmo comes through with a one-pager whose intro copy publishes a lesbo scare piece where “An intense college friendship exploded into a frantic affair their boyfriends didn’t know about. The heartbreaking results aren’t what either of them expected.” Actually, the “heartbreaking results” are more like “things got terribly awkward, and then I broke up with my boyfriend, but things had been heading south for a while, so eh.” And the woman still identifies as straight, so it’s surprisingly Cosmo who can see past the lesbian/straight dichotomy!
Point: Cosmo
Fawning Celebrity Profiles
The interview of Sophia Coppola, conducted by Kim Gordon, is pretty frigging noxious. It’s not Coppola’s fault, but Gordon’s, for hijacking the interview to talk more about herself than Coppola. To whit: “Growing up, did you feel self-conscious about who your dad was? I notice that [my daughter] Coco is very self-conscious about that.” You know what Kim? I’m just impressed your daughter’s preteen friends know about Sonic Youth. However, that’s a Gay Talese interview compared to the
Ashley Greene profile in Cosmo, detailing “the ballsy way she scored Twilight (as a secondary character -me) and a New Love (Joe Jonas -me) Man, if I just had her spunky ‘tude, I too could become the third chick from the left on a Twilight poster!
Point: Bust
The Doctrine of Stuff
I decided to award a point in this area based entirely on the relative cheapness of the most expensive item in each magazine. Bust doesn’t price the clothes in its fashion spread, although they have Christian Louboutin shoes there and a $549 Vitamix blender in their gift guide. Cosmo has a $625 pair of Diane Van Furstenberg shorts. At least you can make a margarita with the blender, whereas the shorts do nothing to get me drunk.
Point: Bust
Ridiculous Self-Improvement Goals
In 2011, would Bust like me to agitate for Stephen Harper to reinstate funding for Sisters in Spirit? Or be more aggressive about fighting street harassment? Actually, I need to “buy more sex toys” and wear “sparkly pink eyeliner” so as to truly be a “messy, imperfect, beautiful, honest... ever-evolving contradiction.” At least that’s relatively achievable (sparkly pink eyeliner probably costs about $6 at Shopper’s Drug Mart) compared to the roll call of self-improvement efforts Cosmo would like me to effect. I better look leaner naked (99), keep my man from cheating by “accentuating his awesomeness” and “flirting with someone else” (85), get off Facebook more often (102), where more of the “makeup men can’t resist” (153), “take a sexy soak” (157) and more things I didn’t possibly have time to read through, because I was too busy writing up a profile for Match.com. I don’t want to be caught babyless when my ovaries spontaneously combust at 35 (“Are You Running Out of Time to Have a Baby?” 94-97).
Point: Bust
Man Crush
Cosmo presents the horrifying vision of Joe Manganiello, the man who sounds like he should own a sports bar in Long Island, but actually appears on True Blood. Bust counters with Rivers Cuomo. One looks like he has a beard made of magnetic filings, the other is... still Rivers Cuomo. May I refer back to that lesbian confession article?
Point: Draw.
Conclusions
Well, Bust is still better than Cosmo, but that’s because anything is better than Cosmo. Reading that magazine is exhausting, with every page screeching at you to do this or that to have better sex, a better body, a better man. I wanted a nap after I was finished. Does anyone even take it seriously anymore? If people do, I don’t want to know about it. I do, however, want to know what happened to Bust to turn it into a clone of long-departed Jane magazine. It used to be better, and it could be better again, if it would let its feminist sensibilities be more than icing on the vegan cupcake.
3 comments:
Brilliant, as usual!
Aww, thanks my dear. I can't believe I can write anything without the inspiration you (and our bad TV habit) used to provide.
What bad tv habit? Are you saying our habit was bad, or the tv shows we chose to watch were bad? Also, have you watched any of the new SVUs? Without a tv, I feel frightened not knowing what the most recent threats to my single lady-dom I face!
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