Wordblog

Cosmopolitan is 35 this month and Carol Sarler in the Daily Mail has taken a look at the latest edition and likens it to walking down the street and bumping into a friend you have not seen for years:

But as you look closer, your pleasure turns to horror - for she is not the gal you knew and loved; she is now a raddled old slapper with desperation in her eyes.

It was once an aspirational magazine for a whole generation of women she says but is now “as grotesque as she is tragic”.

Sarler continues:

The cover sets the tone, with a doggedly relentless string of provocative words and phrases. We have ’sex boosters’ and ‘being thin’ and ‘loving your bum’ and ‘Kylie’s boyfriend’, we have another boyfriend who ‘beats the beautiful’, we have ‘real men’, ‘guys who grab’, ‘turn-on tricks’ and who ‘demands’ what in bed.

It’s like a gynaecological conference without the brains to match…

I know exactly what she means. I have always looked at Cosmo from time to time and I bought a copy yesterday to discuss with students. It is not what it was, From its fun but serious approach it has gone to sex and celeb.

I have a feeling that somewhere along the way it lost its way and readers and reinvented itself for a different audience. I suspect that all the commenters who have added their supporting views to Sarler’s piece are of her generation.

A look at Cosmo website confirms it is not aimed at them. There is a chat room with a thread on spanking and all written in txt language. On the home page there are instructions on how to have sex in a hot tub: I suspect the original Cosmo girls would have worked that out for themselves.