I hate beauty mags and gossip columnists!

For everyone who RSS'ed me - I pulled out the temporarily-published post which was supposed to represent my all-important monthly Mizo post. I wrote that half-asleep and it needs to be polished.

In the meantime, can I just talk about how much I hate beauty magazines once again? I know I've mentioned this a sickening amount of times, but I went and stumbled into one again. And I need to let it out. Not so much about how they make you feel ugly, but how they think they should tell you what is in and what is not and what I should and should not wear. They talk like they're this superior, all-knowing race of humans who, in heartless pity and contemptuous humour, have decided to grace us with their fake, glossy, papery selves and dictate to us what rules our drab little lives have to live by.

I hate the way they try to make it sound like their tastes represents the world's. Where's all that talk about beauty in diversity!

It may be a tad funny when they tell you what kind of gifts you should give your boyfriends, but it becomes teeth-gnashing annoying when they tell you what "chic" gifts you should get from men - AND - what you should not get! It's not cool for a woman above a certain age to get teddies and chocolates, they say. The gall! I'll like whatever I want, and I'll dislike whatever I want. If I get fluffy, baby blue teddies with pink ribbon bows from a man I really like at 45, I'll still like them if I like them.

And the season's in things -"This month's color is pink - so girls, what are you waiting for? Swathe yourselves in pink even if pink looks horrible on you and go make big fools of yourselves!" Or, "Black is no longer in so stash away your LBDs" - they'll say. "Kiss your man like this, touch him like this, play with your jewelry like this, glance at him like that this season....."

I mean, who wrote all this? I'd imagine by perfect women who earn top money doing basically nothing, whose boyfriends never cheat on them, and they get expensive lingerie as gifts and it always fits them beautifully, they are unaffected by all earthly womanly defects - like cellulite, and stretch marks, and dark circles, and they also possess the power to set their men aflame with passion with just one kiss. Always! All that besides the superior intelligence.

That has to be it. You can come and tell me these women don't look like goddesses like they sound like, or that they get itchy nipples, or that their boyfriends cheat on them, I wouldn't believe you.

You're probably thinking 'Why is she reading them if she hates them so much?' But in my defense, I'd like to state that I stay away from them when I can, which is almost all the time. But one gets stuck in rooms full of ONLY glamour mags for hours sometimes. Very little that can be done at such times.

It's a good thing most people don't take them too seriously. Maybe everyone's smarter than they think, or just can't afford to live the cool, high-flying (also unreal, fake, empty) life they try to promote. It's still a world of beautiful variety and colorful individuals with colorful tastes. Imagine what it would be like if we were to all take them seriously. We'd walk out into a world where every woman wears the same perfume, same color lipsticks, clothes, and accessories. Likes the same things, same hobby, also kiss the same way, flirt the same way, make love the same way even. Exactly what the month's edition tells them is cool. B-o-r-i-n-g.

Or are they just not serious? They're kidding. None of this is supposed to be taken seriously, is that it? If so, I apologise for being stupid and thinking they are for real.

As for the gossip columnists, all I can say is that I really don't hate them. I'd never want to marry one, but I like them much better then fashion mags - is all I have to say about them.