Opinion

What women want

‘How out of it am I?” That’s the name of a game I play once a year or so. Last Sunday, I turned on the Billboard Music Awards — and it turns out I’m completely at sea. I wondered aloud about the functionality of parachute leather pants; I Googled the name of an awards category (what the heck to does EDM stand for?). When the host suggested I “shazam” a song if I liked it, I started waving my hands at the TV like a magician trying to get a rabbit out of a hat.

My puzzlement with pop culture, celebrity shenanigans and cutting-edge fashion hasn’t exactly made me the prime market for a typical women’s magazine.

Glamour this month features a picture of Pink wearing very little and biting her fingers in a ferocious pose, with an article promising she’ll tell me “the secrets of an alpha girl.”

Marie Claire offers pictures of gaunt models sporting outfits that neither I nor anyone I know would be caught dead in. An animal print blazer over a metallic jacket and a floral skirt? Does it help that she’s posing with a statue of Mickey Mouse?

Then there’s Cosmo, with a feature called “Get it on! Make sex hotter” and an article on actress Sofia Vergara, who boasts “I’ve never had a plan for anything.”

Judging from the endless ads in these magazines, their strategies seem to be working. But I may not be the only one who finds this chronicle of what might as well be life on another planet off-putting. Verily, a new magazine launching next month, may be for us.

The editor, Kara Eschbach, was working in private equity on Wall Street when one day over brunch she and some of her friends started complaining about women’s mags. “Why is it that none of these magazines reflect the life I’m living or the life I want to be inspired to lead?” she wondered.

Born with seed capital from investors but no advertising yet, Verily is starting as a bimonthly. Its pages contain models who are, well, let’s just say it, pretty. They look natural, not particularly thin and generally seem happy to be walking through a field or frolicking on the beach.

Oh, and about those beach shots — no bikinis. Which is why, perhaps, there is no “ultimate ab workout” in the pages of Verily.

There is a section on adding different exercises to your hikes. But, as Eschbach explains, she didn’t like the “culture of fear” created by women’s magazines. You know, “Lose 10 pounds, or else.”

But there are other subtle messages in Verily that many normal women will appreciate. A feature on a professional mother of nine children quotes her as saying,“I value my work, but I don’t define myself by it.”

Eschbach says this was an important lesson she learned from her mentor at Credit Suisse, who told her not to wait too long to settle down and have kids. She worries that professional women are too often told that they have some kind of responsibility to other women to focus on their careers.

And many women’s magazines buy into that message. Myrna Blyth, the author of “Spin Sisters: How the Women of Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America,” says that the “problem with women’s media is that it has acted as if all women were the same — as if they all had the same beliefs and the same political judgments.” If Verily can get beyond that, she says, it would be “all to the good.”

Verily’s relationship content seems to skip over the sex tips (don’t worry, Cosmo will offer 20 more next month) and gives advice about dating with an eye to marriage. Why? Well, says Eschbach, “most women want to get married. They aspire to that.” Huh.

No, this is not a magazine geared toward evangelical homeschoolers. Eschbach acknowledges that it is more for an urban professional audience, women aged 18-34, with income in the $60K to $120K range. But its readers’ chief concern is not showing up at the hottest clubs wearing provocative clothing and gawking at celebrities.

Verily’s co-founder, who used to work at Elle, told Eschbach, “There is no reason why you can’t have a magazine that is beautiful and shows fashion — and treats women as smart and dignified.” To which I can only add, “Shazam!”