Slog - The Stranger's Blog

Line Out

The Music Blog

« Hollywood Mystery | Save the Planet! »

Monday, March 20, 2006

Savvy Women…

Posted by on March 20 at 8:03 AM

I’m not sure if they read The Seattle Times on Sunday, but they probably spent the day throwing up if they do.

The Seattle Times has launched GENDER: F. There’s a little box with a red check mark that I can’t replicate here, and it’s ever so edgy. I couldn’t bring myself to crack open the magazine-style section but “The Savvy Northwest Woman’s Guide to Doing, Making, Looking, Feeling Good” isn’t meant for GENDER: Ms like me anyway. But the cover text left me all agog. “THE GREAT AMERICAN BREAST: Amazing Facts, Better Bras,” “GROWN-UP GIRLFRIENDS: Nurturing Our Relationships.” “YOUR HEALTH: Five Things to Know.” “FINDING BALANCE: Powerful Seattle Women Share Their Life Lessons.”

GENDER: F, in other words, appears to serve up the same patronizing crap that most women’s magazines dish up every monthyou know, the kind of magazines that truly savvy women don’t need to read and/or wouldn’t be caught dead reading. (Love to hear some comments from any actual women who actually read the thing.)

GENDER: F reminds me of another recent Seattle Times effort: NEXT. Launched in 2003, NEXT was a full page of opinion pieces by childrenexcuse me, NEXT was a “youth-oriented opinion page… by writers in the 17-25 age group”that was supposed to draw youngsters into the Seattle Times. NEXT was a pathetic joke, and it limped along for a few years before someone at Seattle Times HQ had the good sense to take it out behind 13 Coins and kill it. I predict the same future for GENDER: F. It’s patronizing and pointless, it’ll limp along for a couple of years, and then its body will be found in a dumpster behind 13 Coins.

Yeah, yeah: What do I know? I didn’t read GENDER: F’s profile of Jean Enerson, and I skipped the big breast expose. But I was right when I predicted that NEXT would fail before it even started running. Sometimes you just know, you know?


CommentsRSS icon

Did they mention the RUMORS about Jean Enerson? That would have been truly edgy.

How 80's of you, SJ.

Shouldn't it be "Sex: F"? Or is this a magazine for all female gendered people - female impersonators, queens, pre-op transexuals, female-identified hermaphrodites and males, maybe even metrosexuals?

The term "gender" gained currency in the 70s, as I recall, as a way to distinguish femininity as a social/cultural construct from the mere natural fact of what sex you are.

How come once we fastened on the term to make this distinction, everybody starts obliterating it, and using "gender" as a synonym for "sex"?

Oh come on Dan, that hetero Christian Boyscout from Enumclaw got his big break in NEXT over the issue of the Atheist Boyscout from Port Orchard. And now he has his own blog or something, where he writes about how he and the mayor of Spokane were "like this." (Crossing fingers).

I saw that! I was going to read it and see whether it was merely bad or mind-bendingly awful, but I got distracted by being pissed off at the editorials. . .

It's not hard to see the new section for what it really is: an opportunity to sell a bunch of ads to spendy advertisers like plastic surgeons, laser skin resurfacing clinics, and jewelers.

My own household's gender: F dismissed the thing with a snort. I took a look at it; it makes Cosmopolitan look the Anarchist Cookbook. Ad department run amok.

I saw that Gender F thing and first thought that they were giving women an "F" (flunking) grade. Fascinating!

Then I realized it was a section put together strictly by the ad department. (Or at least it looked that way.) Nevermind.

It was interesting how they really only profiled "professional" women, many of whom we are already familiar with. What about an organizer, dishwasher, teacher? I'm also entirely done with the "I quit my fancy job/law firm/financial company job to do something that makes less money but seems to make me happier and probably involves plants, animals, painting, or children" story. ZZZZZZZZzzzzz....

Gender F indeed, Woman. The Times fails miserably once again.

Next....damn kids don't read papers, but let's give em one page once a week, then they'll be sure to pick it up. Dumbasses.

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 45 days old).