Despite the mounds of snow that refuse to melt, spring is almost here, the clocks have been turned forward, and you’ve got one more hour of evening daylight. What else can that mean, but it’s time to get into shape? In other words, firm those abs! Start lifting these mags!
The latest science on obesity indicates exercise doesn’t really work. And then there is Sharon Stone, 56. She’s the cover girl of the March issue of Shape, which we presume is supposed to be an inspiration. Even without plastic surgery (she assures us), Stone does look better than most women at age 26. It’s hard to be too tough on her, as she has come back from a stroke and a bad marriage to a newspaper publisher. We were curious about her “star workout,” but there really aren’t any new exercises, just scissors, squats and yoga stretches. We were pleased Shape devoted at least one of its pages to the role of hormones in weight: leptin, ghrelin, cortisol and estrogen.
You’re going to want to pick up the latest issue of Self for one reason: “5 tricks to lose weight and not a single workout required.” Or so the cover promises, next to cover girl Julianne Hough, with her bedroom hair, sly smile and perfectly flat abs. But flip through to page 124 for the advertised secrets, and you may be dismayed, as we were, to find out that it’s a one-pager that endorses fad diets. Appealing to emotions really works, so if you just cut out sugar for a few weeks, you’ll be so happy you did it that you’ll never want to have to go through it again — and stick with it. On the positive side, the magazine has only two pages of exercise photos and a slew of fun things, like a single page photo spread of spices that will cure what ails you.
There is nothing sexier than a scowling young man in jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt, arms bulging with muscles. Or so that must be what Men’s Fitness thought when it put Ashton Kutcher on its March cover. That said, the design is so bold and smart we want to keep reading. It manages to pull together tidbits — like bacon is bad for you, smoking takes 10 years off your life and energy drinks cause depression — and present them in a layout that makes it all seem new. Then there’s “The Fittest and Fattest Cities in America.” No surprise our favorite West Coast cities, namely Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, top the lean list. We’re promised “the right sex moves” on the cover and can find only a measly two paragraphs on the topic, buried on page 102.
Men’s Health also has a T-shirted hunk on its cover, which must mean there are fewer ways for men to show off their bods than there are for women. We liked best the page numbers attached to promised stories on the cover; why don’t more magazines make it easy like this? For example, “She wants you to watch: Her surprising sex confessions, is on p. 140.” We turned right to it, and discovered what the big deal was: exhibitionism. Men’s Health is more about sex than others we reviewed; six articles on the topic were enough to warrant a separate category in the table of contents. Still, the mag has a lot of variety, and strays just enough from the body beautiful theme to have a one-pager on how to make an Adirondack chair from packing crates.
Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza’s father speaks out for the first time in the New Yorker, and the story of his son’s descent into murderousness is utterly dark and devastating. “With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he had the chance,” says Peter Lanza. When his son shot his ex Nancy four times, Lanza speculates, each bullet was meant for each member of his family including himself. In the end, Lanza says he wishes his son had never been born. “There can only be one conclusion, when you finally get there,” he says. Elsewhere, we learn that “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky encouraged Natalie Portman to try ecstasy to prepare for her ballerina role. “Just tell me what it’s like!” she responded, rather sensibly.
We skipped New York’s cover story on “Mad Men” star Elizabeth Moss for fear of spoilers (we’re a bit behind in the Netflix queue at the moment). But the insistently sexy photo shoot was hard to miss, apparently done at her apartment. Interesting to be one of Moss’ neighbors, but the best nekkid pic by far of this week’s issue captured a pair San Francisco hippie protesters boarding what appears to be a Google bus. The female is getting on first, with the male taking the opportunity to check out her posterior. Speaking of, there’s a piece on billionaire Dan Loeb and his war against the management of Sotheby’s. Aside from his love of money, it would appear that Loeb is fueled by rage at being slighted a decade ago in a deal for a Matthew Barney diptych.
How do you persuade people to move into the Freedom Tower? Time’s cover story gives an inside look at its construction, essentially a massive steel-and-concrete column surrounded by a bit of office space and glass. We must say we feel somewhat comforted by the 71 elevator options. Elsewhere, a feature on election-spoiling numbers geek Nate Silver quotes the stats savant saying some tough things about certain members of the journalistic establishment. Opinion columnists are relegated to the “crap quadrant,” for example. “Two-thirds of the op-ed columnists at America’s major newspapers are worthless,” according to Silver. Meanwhile, Vox Media’s Ezra Klein fails to rate among the “big systemic thinkers.” And Nate had seemed like such a sweet young man.