Ladies’ Home Journal is going sexy in its final issue as a monthly magazine — with a cover featuring country singer Miranda Lambert.
The issue that hits next week ends 131 years of monthly publication for the Meredith-owned magazine that traces it roots back to 1883 when it was started by the Curtis Publishing Company.
And while the cover cut line ably teases the story inside on the sexy songbird — “How the Country Superstar Got This Body” — nowhere on the cover is there even a hint that it is the title’s farewell issue.
The news that the July-August edition ends monthly publication is only conveyed in the editor’s letter from Editor-in-Chief Sally Lee — co-signed by about 30 staffers who are now out of a job.
The farewell letter features the first issue that used a photo on the cover — Ida McKinley, wife of President William McKinley, in 1898 — as well as a 1928 cover featuring a Norman Rockwell painting and a posthumous Marilyn Monroe cover that appeared in 1973, with a cover story by Norman Mailer.
The final issue also chronicles the 1987 story that still resonates today: a story by Betty Mahmoody about her flight out of Iran — which was turned into the movie “Not Without My Daughter,” starring Sally Field.
While slapping “Farewell Issue” on the cover might have helped boost newsstand sales, a company spokesman said the company refrained from the move because it still plans to bring out specials on a quarterly basis.