thank you so much for this! it is so important that we, as women, take a critical look at the media and realize what they are REALLY saying.

great blog

Thanks so much, Caitlin! It drives me crazy to see this kind of advice, because the more we see it, the more we think it’s actually normal and good for us. I’ll definitely be adding to this list, because, unfortunately, these tips show up everywhere – regularly.

I love your blog: http://operationbeautiful.com/

And I couldn’t agree more with your mission.

Caitlin writes: “The mission of Operation Beautiful is to post anonymous notes in public places for other women to find. The point is that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL. You are enough… just the way you are!”

I encourage everyone to check it out!

So I just found your site through the NYT and I am intrigued. I readily subscribe to WH and other fitness magazines. While yes, sometimes their advice is a bit much, instead of being so negative about it, I look at it in a different light. At least there are publications that focus on fitness and eating right. I find it invigorating to read such articles, and take advice from them. It’s like my own personal motivator every month! The 3rd week of every month, I get something in the mail that gets me off the couch and trying something new (especially hearing about people’s success stories)! Sure, prunes will never truly replace a cookie (who are we kidding) but at least it gets me going to fruit.

Yes, we are all beautiful, and while these publications sometimes run wacky trend and not-so-practical tactics, overall, they assist women everywhere towards their fitness, weight loss, and happiness goals.

Oh, and what’s so bad about standing instead of sitting at work? That article regarding the downfalls of a sedentary lifestyle has saved me!

I hope that all of your posts are not so negative, you have a chance to change people’s lives here.

they aren’t just opinion articles, they provide statistics and ideas. if given enough exposure to these kinds of articles a person might become pretty savvy at noting the discrepancies related to biased opinion. it might even inspire independent thought.

GREAT article! I avoid women’s magazines at all costs (except Glamour who so famously- or infamously- published a nude picture of a real woman earlier this year) and this article reminds me why! Kudos!

Hey – great blog! Nice to see on Psych Central. I think women’s magazines are full of horrible advice about health and nutrition – almost all of them still encourage restricted eating for weight loss (which has been proven over and over again to be counter-productive and metabolically damaging), and promote completely unrealistic beauty and body ideals which promote body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. That said – it was fun to read your reactions to the advice you found. Talk about ridiculous!

I love this article. It is refreshing to see some critical analysis of woman in the media. We are told over and over and over and over that we need to be skinny, be constantly on a diet, obsessing over every meal, act feminine (what is feminine anyway?), and all these other things, that we can’t even be all at once! It is about time that someone shows the unnatural nature of all these articles (which I would argue are the negative). It is sad that they all make so much profit off of our insecurities.

Laughing out loud throughout this piece, Margarita. Often when I read these kinds of “tips” in women’s magazines, I can’t help but think that the overworked & underpaid interns who are probably forced to write them have exhausted every possible way of recycling/restating the same old advice (which 99% of the time seems to boil down to, “Stay smaller”). What’s less than laughable about these snippets of advice is that a lot of women (and girls) take them seriously, actually try to LIVE by them.

The one example you pointed out that actually made SOME sense to me is Brian Wansick’s “Read between the lines…” advice about restaurant menus — only because it puts me in mind of “The End of Overeating” by Kessler (see http://blog.kimwrites.com/2009/06/17/book-review-the-end-of-overeating-by-david-a-kessler-md.aspx). Dr. Kessler wrote about the startling extent of thought that’s put into manipulating the appetities of consumers, by restaurant chains and food manufacturers.

And while I think for most people simply being aware of provocative adjectives is NOT going to change the way they order and eat from a menu, I have to admit, after reading Kessler’s book, the new awareness I had of how much I was being manipulated to choose certain foods, and eat greater quantities of them, truly affected how I ate going forward. It actually assisted in my efforts to eat more mindfully — that is, listen more closely to what my body’s really asking for, and recognize when I’m genuinely satiated, and not just shoveling the food like an automaton.

Really enjoyed this, well done!

Women’s magazines and diet books are always offering these tricks and games. Use a smaller plate to make portions look larger. Take a bubble bath when you feel like snacking. All designed to distract us from the fact that we want more food than we’re allowing ourselves to have. We’re trying to fool our bodies… but our bodies can’t be fooled.

What an awesome blog! I laughed aloud at this entry. Who, indeed, would ever compare popcorn with pizza (this seems especially sacrilege to me as a recently diagnosed Celiac)?!

I’ll be a regular reader, for certain!

This kind of advice from women’s magazines is by no means a recent phenomenon. I’ve been researching dietary advice and the development of the “thin ideal” in Good Housekeeping magazine, which began publishing in 1885. Slenderness was promoted to some extent before 1920, especially in fashion advice. By the 1930s women were admonished to monitor how other women ate and dressed so they could “improve” their own behaviors. The advertising of that era (for foods, for corsets/girdles) added to the strident message. No wonder women of my mother’s era became so obsessed with watching their daughters’ weight! Love your new blog!

I really appreciate this blog’s purpose and I fully support countering society’s constant messages about “perfect bodies”. I guess physical appearance has always been deemed high on women’s priority lists, but it is really difficult being inundated from a young age with constant messages about weight- particularly in a country with such consumptive habits and poor nutrition. I think the key thing that’s missing in women’s health articles are possible causes leading to unhealthy habits, such as compulsive eating or eating to compensate for other things. It’s important to get these messages about what gives you the best health, nutrition, and energy; like you said, though, it should be about feeling good about yourself rather than restricting or punishing. Thanks!

Thanks everyone so much for your comments! I really appreciate the positive feedback!

Elise, that’s so interesting! I’ve always wanted to read women’s magazines from the 20s and on to see if their advice was similar to today (I had a sneaking suspicion it was. I’m actually going to NYC for Thanksgiving and wanted to stop by one of the big libraries there to check them out – I figured that’s a good place to find old magazines. Where have you gotten your issues from? I’d love to hear more about your research!

Kim, thanks for your great point! Flashy, fancy ads can do a lot to sway someone, and it is good to be aware of it. It’s definitely part of being an informed, savvy consumer.

Liz, I do think some articles are positive and helpful. To me, though, most of it is still too rigid and punishing. The features on real women are great. I just wish women’s magazines realized that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t equal constantly ruminating about food, working out six days a week, abstaining from dessert and manipulating yourself to eat less.

I’d love to see articles on improving body image, an article or two about disordered eating and eating disorders (which are all too prevalent). Not every article needs to have tons of tips and tricks. I do enjoy reading about the latest workouts and yummy recipes for healthy foods. I just wish it didn’t come with a big side of guilt.

Robyn, awesome point! That’s what I was getting at, as well, above with my comment. Let’s absolutely have articles on unhealthy behaviors, too.

I just want magazines to offer deeper articles than “don’t eat out with more than 4 friends, because you’ll eat 150 calories more.”

Women’s magazines have large budgets and smart staff. I’m not sure why they don’t offer more interesting articles that go beyond empty tricks.

I’m really not so sure I like your negativity. It took a lot of learning and growth for me to get to where I wanted to be in terms of my weight. Some of these hints that you so quickly criticize might really be helpful to some people. Maybe just back off a little bit and stop being so cynical.

I have to say that I appreciate the opportunity that this blog has presented for the discussion of the media’s spin on nutrition and fitness but it is very aggravating that there seems to be a total lack of understanding of what it takes to control weight and to stay fit and healthy with physical activity. The biggest problem our nation has is the total and utter lack of personal responsibility for what we put in our mouths and what we do with our free time. Although some of the “tips” and “hints” the magazines give are sometimes silly, overall they are trying to convey the message that you have to control your calories and live an active lifestyle which does mean that you have to work out on a daily basis. There is one basic concept that rules all for weight loss, weight gain, and weight maintenance and that is calories in versus calories out. If you do not restrict, reduce, or control your calories and be physically active for at least 30 min, if not an hour, five days a week, you will not be able to lose or maintain weight loss. Please do not fool yourselves into thinking that just because the magazines may not be 100% right all the time that there is no truth to what they are saying. To be healthy and maintain weight you have to control calories taken in and you have to be physically active at least five days a week.
I challenge everyone to take responsibility for themselves. Stop blaming the media and the food industry for making you overweight or obese. You chose to eat those high calorie foods in too high of a quantity and you chose to be inactive. It is your own choices that have put you in the position find yourself. Take responsibility for your actions and make a choice to change you ways. Make the decision to choose healthy nutrient dense foods and make the commitment to be physically active every day. It is a lifestyle not a diet or a fad. Making healthy food choices and being physically active daily is a lifestyle, commit to it. I dare you.

Fantastic. I am going to make a daily visit to this website. As someone who used to work at an eating disorder prevention/treatment organization, I applaud your efforts to help raise awareness about the insidious nature of the media and the profound effects our cultural attitudes have on our self-esteem. Bravo!

Reading this today was so funny bc I just brought in a container of Sunsweets to eat at my desk today, not because I need a cookie substitute but because I love prunes–they really are a great sweet treat for me, the problem being that I can eat 10 or so prunes which is like 4 regular chocolate chip cookies calorie-wise, so if my goal were weight loss, I’m not sure how helpful that’d be.

Amen Annie! You should start your own blog!

I always point out to my daughters the covers of women’s magazines at the grocery check out. It is amazing the number of them that promise on the cover the world’s best cheesecake and the world’s quickest diet.

When I was an undergrad I did a research project on the prevalence of eating disorders among my fellow students and came across a startling fact re: models. A model for a popular soft drink,(if I remember correctly it was Rolling Rock Cola,) in 1940 the average model weighed 140lbs and was 5′4″ but today was 5′9″ and weighed 109lbs. What kind of message does that send?

All of us can eat in healthy ways and exercise, and I encourage that. But guess what? Some of us will do this and still be fat. Fat does not always equal unhealthy, and thin does not equal healthy. The images we see in these magazines are of thin women, not necessarily healthy ones. As a matter of fact, for most women to look this way they would need to do things that are not healthy at all. There are lots of signals of health…cholesterol level, glucose level, heart rate, and others. And for women, want to live longer? Then be “overweight.” because women in that category tend to live longer.
The thin ideal exists to control women. Create a standard that is unrealistic for most but convince them that if they meet that standard they will be happier, and if they don’t meet the standard it is all their fault. Then when they invariably don’t, they will blame themselves and feel bad. And it will keep them obsessed with the standard rather than the real problems in women’s lives, like the fact that women receive lower pay, are beaten an raped at unbelievable rates, and are still doing most of the housework and childcare. Brilliant.

@Liz: Oh, and what’s so bad about standing instead of sitting at work? That article regarding the downfalls of a sedentary lifestyle has saved me!

Unless one can convince one’s employer that they should pay for a “standing desk” or you buy your own, I don’t see how this is feasible. Bending over to work at your desk is asking for back issues. And most of us can’t afford the “standing desk” price tag.

I will apologize in advance for venting but this does seem like an appropriate venue. As a member of the weight management practice group and listserv there is a lot of conversations about topics that I question their importance in helping clients meet their goals. Most recently this has been about discretionary calories and their calculations. Imparting no disrespect to the AHA, but is this really helpful in teaching people how to live a healthy lifestyle by giving them a set number of sweets they can have every day? Like with weight watchers, if you tell someone they can have only this much sugar during the day they will focus on it and make sure that they are meeting that limit. Isn’t that defeating the whole purpose of trying to eat healthy and live a longer healthy life if all your focus on is how much sugar you can have. Whereas, if we focus more on consuming whole grains, fruits/vegetables, and lean meats/dairy products and maintaining an active lifestyle with daily physical activity, won’t the overall education and focus of the patient be more helpful and illustrate long term success? That’s a mouth full. The guiding question is, wouldn’t people be better supported to be educated how to eat healthy tasty foods that are economical and manage calories and physical activity? It appears that the information available to the general public at times is too specific or is defeating the overall purpose of helping them to live a healthier life versus a tightly controlled one.