Media

The top women’s mags for New Year’s resolutions

January is the month of new beginnings, and whether that means losing weight, saving money or just trying to be happier … the women’s magazines are on the case.

Redbook calls its January issue “Fresh Start,” but let’s be clear about what that means: losing weight. Yes, there are a few pages of makeup tips (eyeliner is a must!) and a few cheap clothes thrown in to make up for the dent in your wallet. (Pencil skirts are cool, okay?) At first, we found it all very annoying, especially when TV celebrity Ali Sweeney says that her “splurge” is huevos rancheros. Do those even have cheese? Otherwise, the routine is the same: Eat vegetables and carry around nuts. Eat protein for breakfast. Don’t eat after 7:30 p.m. Beef up your exercise routine.

We hate to admit it, but Good Housekeeping made us smile. Maybe it was the striped socks, but the burst of color on just about every layout seemed designed to lift spirits. We’re gluttons for articles on “organizing” clutter, even though the ones it suggests look to take way too much energy. Every woman’s magazine has its obligatory celebrity profile, and GH’s take on Queen Latifeh was actually inspiring. Anyone who loses a family member young in life and manages to get it together has to be admired.

Woman’s Day calls its January issue its “debut Happy Issue!” What makes women happy, besides “Fun Finds $20 & Under?” or “A Party that Pops!” or “Clever Uses for Sponges”? The best one can argue appears to be that life is full of mundane details, and embracing each with gusto is the key to happiness. One woman interviewed in the mag actually had an epiphany while reading a greeting card. We were pleased to note the split pea with tomato and bacon soup, chocolate swirl bread and a full page photo of a stack of nine (we counted) pancakes.

While there is a lot of overlap in the January issues of the women’s magazines (and every month), you have to wonder why Sweeney made it into both Redbook and Family Circle. Still, Family Circle breaks the mold with a pop psych article on “The Problem with Praise.” It’s counter-intuitive, but in an era where kids are pampered beyond belief, a little tough love is probably a good idea. “Nonstop platitudes can create a hunger for external approval” is one of the lines that goes beyond drivel. An article on getting rid of clutter is a step above the others. Turning to one color of wrapping paper (white?) for every holiday, birthday and other occasion is just about the best suggestion we’ve read in a while.

As it rings in the new year, the New Yorker still hasn’t kicked its old habit of stuffing pages with verbiage saying little that’s new. Take the feature on the US war on drugs, whose newest bit of news concerns a botched DEA raid in Honduras more than a year and a half ago. After 10 pages of hand-wringing, the most substantive idea for a solution that’s floated comes from China, which a century ago started the opium trade so Mao didn’t have to worry about importers during his violent crackdown. If the editors embrace that idea, they might be a bit more coy in a story on China’s project to decode the genetics of human intelligence, which has alarmed Western scientists. “You [Americans] feel you are advanced and you are the best,” says the head of the Chinese program. “Blah blah blah.” Unfortunately, no compelling rebuttal is supplied.

Bill de Blasio is facing a tall order as he looks to make good on his campaign promise to reduce inequality in the Big Apple. New York lays out nicely why this is so (see Albany and the US Congress), but still figured it might give him a few pointers. What about Mike Bloomberg’s incessant contention that higher taxes on billionaires would drive out the city’s main source of revenue? “Not a chance,” the magazine says, noting that New Jersey’s 2004 millionaire tax “provoked almost no migration by the wealthy.” For New York, “there aren’t a lot of substitutes,” says Joel Slemrod, an economist at the University of Michigan. There’s “being around other people in the same business — but there’s also the opera, Central Park.” We won’t mention the fact that the latter two lately have been propped up by the billionaire Koch brothers and John Paulson, respectively.

For its final issue of 2013, Time gives us the “Year in Pictures.” We found the Japanese diver in the Santa suit hugging a shark to be more odd than anything else, but plenty of others are downright jaw-dropping. There’s a series by photographer David Guttenfelder taken in North Korea, which includes a picture of a TV monitor depicting a military tank hanging in an elementary school classroom. We liked the now-familiar silhouette of the sprawled frog being hurled across the night sky by the fiery launch of NASA’s Minotaur V. There is also, of course, the surfer barreling down the 100-foot wave in Portugal. Maybe most astounding of all, however, was the less-publicized image of Saturn taken Oct. 10. While the cloud rings across nearly all of the giant planet’s girth are circular, its polar ice cap is a giant, perfectly shaped hexagon. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Pythagoras.