As a product of my generation, I prefer to read everything digitally on the net or on a small cell phone screen rather than physically bring dust-collecting paper into my teeny, tiny NYC apartment. The idea of buying books or magazines is ludicrous. However there is one magazine I really enjoy (no, I’m NOT telling, suffice to say that it isn’t girly in any way). So when I saw it discounted for a yearlong subscription at an absurdly low price while perusing the mag’s site online, I caved and signed up for a subscription. I mean, they were practically giving it away. These people who work in print must be really desperate.

So I’m envisioning myself reading their publication while curled up in bed, blissfully without my laptop, and flipping through the pages (how antiquated!), and maybe even tearing out articles here and there to hang on my fridge (how domestic!).

Yet somehow in the checkout process, they decide to ALSO give me a yearlong subscription to the lady mag Self as a ‘bonus gift’ (see what I mean about them giving stuff away? Soon you’ll get paid to ingest things hard copy). The last time I read a lady mag outside of a nail salon was in the early 90s at sleep away camp. The magzine was Seventeen and it was the embarrassing ‘my bikini top flew off when I went down the waterslide’ story section, and I thought it was kind of sucky and repetitive even as a nine-year-old.

Flash forward to present day and the only time I’ve ever looked at a woman’s magazine since is when caught at a nail salon without whatever book I’m currently reading and without enough text messages to keep me busy. Even then, I only scan for pictures of Craig David or Natalie Portman.

Yet now I’m an unwilling Self subscriber (of course, I’ve received 3 copies of Self since placing my order and 0 copies of the magazine I actually ordered…) so the other day when I was stressed and tired, I decided to try and relax like a “normal person” and got into bed with a copy of their magazine. Well, let me tell you, I was shocked. Here are some of my discoveries:

1. You no longer have to famous, hot or even recognizable to be on a magazine cover. The cover of the issue I picked up off my floor had three ladies on it – one who I recognized as Charlotte from Sex and the City, the other two unrecognizable and one of them was (gasp) sort of fat. Non-famous, almost fat people are on mag covers? Since when? I thought photo shopping experts everywhere were digitally liposuctioning everyone to be insect skinny and give woman everywhere body issues. Apparently, not. Is this new?

2. Magazines are still filled with a million glossy products and clothes which I can’t even visually ingest, let alone take a serious interest in. To me it all just looks like clutter, so I skip forward to page 36 where there’s a Thanksgiving beauty alert about home brewing your own pumpkin face mask. This is real. They even stoop as low to claim that preparing it is, “as easy as pie.” There’s also a blurb about the newest fab thing called ‘Cardio Tennis.’ Tennis is cardio. !? I know lady mags have been recycling material ever since they said everything original about beauty and self-care after their fifth issue in 1966, but this is worse than I expected.

3. Ads and the actual magazine are now for all essential purposes indistinguishable. In flipping a page, I’d be reading (ok, skimming) what I thought was an article or product review only to realize it was a triple page ad expertly designed to look like part of the actual magazine. Yet the advertisers sort of shoot themselves in the foot since in trying to blend in, they’d advertise their parent company’s razor, shampoo and off the shoulder dress look (3 completely unrelated things) all at the same time, just leaving me bewildered. Sigh. I know the entire magazine industry is advertising supported and that every product mentioned or reviewed positively pays for the privilege, but this is worse than stealth product placement and ineffective.

4. Next I come across Beauty Shortcuts written by real women who’ve emailed in their tips. This was the only part of the magazine I actually found readable or remotely practical – the section written by non-magazine people online. Figures.

5. Now they offer up an office workout routine of a woman in neon colored spandex outfit on a chair with a theraband doing a backbend. Yeah, no one in my office is going to give me weird looks if I start popping those moves. The article and routine don’t take into account the restriction of office clothing or space. But if you want to change into full work-out gear at the office and then chose to return to your chair and perform crazy moves in front of your coworkers instead of just going to a gym, this sequence is for you.

6. I fully understand why lady mags are on the brink of collapse when I get to the next section: 20+ pages about cancer as part of ‘Self’s Cancer Handbook.’ Are the editors of this magazine out of their mind?!?!?!? Yeah, I really want to relax and learn about how neon colored nail polish is in right now only to be bombarded for the next 30 pages about every kind of cancer known to woman (some which I didn’t even know existed), their horrific survival story, and how each one of them thought it was nothing at first – and then almost died. “I mistook cancer for a canker sore” is a direct headline as is “I lost a toe to cancer.” If you’re not paranoid about everything being / causing cancer, one eye glance across this page will put you in that state for life. After their gruesome photo display of mastectomies and their little chart which tells me red meat and alcohol both increase my risk of contacting cancer, I want to throw this magazine at the pigeon on my fire escape. And drink a beer.

7. Then there’s a million ads about those shoes that make you lose weight / sculpt your legs and butt. The winter version of Fit Flops. I guess that promotional gimmick is here to stay.

8. Finally, they close this piece if print humiliation with a 5+ page spread about losing weight by exercising with a gal pal, and all the exercises you can do together – like pushups facing one another, high-fiving after each one while balancing on one arm, or squat thrusting back to back, and a few other things grown women wouldn’t be caught dead doing, and probably wouldn’t even perform for money.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that until the next issue. In sum, in trying to relax with a magazine like ‘a normal woman,’ I just found myself in deep awe and fascination of the lady mag industry and how much it has (or really hasn’t) changed since I was nine. My vote: if we can’t eliminate this crap completely at least move it 100% online and save the trees.