The recent shake-up in the women’s magazines’ creative and editorial posts may be a signal that some of these aging, tired names need a facelift. Cosmo is making the most changes, hiring a new creative editor and a slew of others while losing its executive editor to Self magazine recently. A look at this month’s issues gives a hint as to what all the commotion is about.
Marie Claire, the French magazine that has teamed up with Hearst in the US, is miles ahead of everyone else — even after losing two editors to Cosmo recently. There is a certain Je ne sais quoi that makes you want to spend hours reading it through and through. First off, the design is spectacular and the paper stock is super glossy — what a magazine is supposed to be. A Mondrian-inspired beach theme page and one called “Violet Femmes” are just two fabulous items in the May issue. Unlike other women’s mags, Marie Claire does not talk down to its readers. Its features on the Netflix hit “Orange is the New Black” and the feminists trying to shake up politics in Texas are just two cases in point. We’re not crazy about the multiple covers, or the upside-down “beauty” issue. That may be taking creativity a bit too far.
Cosmopolitan Editor Joanna Coles admitted to The Post that “The hardest part is the visual, and now we have that piece of the puzzle in place” after hiring Theresa Griggs from Women’s Health as its new creative director. If Cosmo wants to tackle Marie Claire, it’s got a long way to go in the looks department. But it’s the content that is lacking, as it’s hard for Cosmo to keep upping the sexual ante. Features like “Sex it UP: 24 Big Bang Moves You’ve Never Thought of” sounded enticing, but was total cornball. A photo of reclining nude legs entwined is the closest it gets to porn, and the directions for massaging and “Sliders” as a form of foreplay fall in the eye-rolling category. Still, the mag gets high marks for a piece on the suicide of a Florida teen and the complicated case of what is — and isn’t — cyberbullying.
Lucky’s May beauty issue is 99 percent product placement, and frankly we had no idea how many female beauty products were on the market until we flipped through it. Aside from a boatload of skin potions, lip gloss and hair saviors, Lucky offers up the usual star tips. Kate Moss tells us that “jewelry is one thing worth splurging on” while Karlie Kloss fixates on nail polish. Meanwhile, a photo spread on design sneakers was really the worst excuse for fashion we’ve seen in a while. The magazine is full of such mindless, harmless fluff.
Glamour seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. Does it want to be serious, like Marie Claire, or mere fashion fluff, like Lucky? Occasionally it gets something amazingly right, like an exclusive interview with Elizabeth Taylor’s granddaughter, Naomi DeLuce Wilding, now 39, who’s not nearly as pretty as her grandmother but charming nonetheless. Doesn’t every girl want to know what it was like to play dress-up with the most glamorous movie star of her era? The obligatory celebrity profile — this one of Scarlett Johansson — falls flat. But Saudi princess Ameerah Al-Taweel’s efforts to bring women’s rights to the kingdom, including the rights to drive, inherit property and gain custody of children after divorce, give an unexpected cosmopolitan twist to Glamour. Elsewhere in the issue, it’s bikinis followed by the diets to get you in shape for them.
The New Yorker, for some reason, seems to have drugs on the brain this week. Inside, there’s a riveting lead story on the capture of Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as “El Chapo,” who teaches a lesson on how to evade law enforcement for decades while racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits and murdering tens of thousands. It helps to live up in the mountains in primitive conditions, for one, and if you must come into town for the occasional steak dinner, make sure you seize the cellphones of all other patrons first and pay their bills when you leave. But the biggest lesson might be not to trust BlackBerry to keep all your communications secure. North of the border, there’s the story of Dr. Stephen Schneider, a doctor in Wichita, Kan., who got a little too lax with prescribing opiates, resulting in 16 deaths.
We can’t be bothered about who did, and who didn’t, make Time’s list of the “100 Most Influential People.” We are bored that Beyoncé is on the cover, overexposed as ever, and by the fact that her hubby, Jay Z, didn’t make the list. It’s slightly more interesting that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was asked to write the blurb for Beyoncé, despite the fact that Sandberg got snubbed by the list. But Sandberg’s Beyoncé blurb is dull, and there’s a lot of that going around here. If you’re having trouble sleeping, try reading Hillary Clinton singing John Kerry’s praises. On the other hand, we enjoyed the fact that Chris Christie, snubbed by the list, was asked to write about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “One of the most difficult challenges is standing up for what you believe in when faced with relentless public attacks,” Christie observes.