Magazines, A Girl's Best Friend

Every boyfriend should know the best way to pacify their girlfriend is to give her a stack of magazines, particularly Fashion magazines. THAT should keep her busy for a few hours. Well, what do you know, I came home tonight to a 6-inch stack of September issues of Vanity Fair, Lucky, Entertainment Weekly, Nylon, Fast Company, NY Mag, People Style Watch and Cosmopolitan, which definitely shut me up for more than a few hours.

Although I'm a sucker for magazines, the only time I buy them is when I'm at an airport waiting for a layover flight, but when I see them in doctor's offices, laying on people's coffee tables or in the cashier aisle at Duane Reade, I can't help but pick it up and flip through it like a kid on candy withdraw. Flipping page by page, my eyes scan the ads, pictures, spreads for "things". These "things",  I now realize are the "cool beautiful things I want".

I might be part of the small percentage of females that don't online shop, ever. I'm not on Gilt or Banana or Zappos. I do not do the online shopping. So today when I felt the familiar urge to want something new and beautiful, it felt exciting. As a teenager I would clip out my favorite fashion spreads or dresses or jewelry out of magazines and make collages. I know there's digital versions of that like Polyvore and Tumblr--digital versions of collecting images that inspire you--but it just doesn't feel the same, feels almost forgetful or lost with the billions of images stored in the cloud. Which is why I still keep a sketchbook overflowed with clippings, stickers, cards, etc. next to my bed. 

With the increasing reliance on your Facebook and Twitter "anchoring" communities to feed you content--the content often feels repetitive and old. I admit that it felt refreshing to read features in Fast Company about David Lauren, neuromarketing and China's high school system. These are topics I probably wouldn't have otherwise stumbled upon online (unless I followed @FastCompany, which I do now). My point is, I respect publications that make an effort to curate good stories, topics and photo spreads, and there is magic left in print after all.