Why Do We Hate Our Magazines?

Source: fatgirlscanruntoo.ca

Recently I asked my Mum if she wanted to have my copy of Elle as I’d finished reading it, and she took me up on the offer. Sometime later, getting into her car, I found it dog-eared and tossed onto the back seat. Being the complete neat freak that I am, I wondered how she could possibly have chucked it away like that, letting the edges of the pages tear and the covers bend. It cost a whole four pounds after all. The now slightly warped face of Kim Kardashian pouted up at me from the glossy cover. And this wasn’t a one-off encounter with a discarded magazine; battered, years-old stacks of issues of hairdressing periodicals and stereotypical women’s weeklies adorn the coffee tables of salons, waiting rooms and even houses worldwide. It has become a regular occurrence to be faced with magazines bearing a crisis-ridden Katie Price two husbands and four boob jobs ago whilst waiting to see the dentist.

The magazine is a bit of a diminishing art form, really. Most popular mags nowadays can be read electronically, and some exist purely online. Generation Y has the commodity of endless information at their fingertips; these aren’t the days of a teenager having to pick up a copy of Melody Maker or Dazed to find out what’s going on in the world of music or politics. From 2011-2, 234  magazines ceased operations or were closed down, and according to statistics from the end of 2013, subscription levels for 22 of the top 25 magazines declined, with just Time, Glamour and ESPN The Magazine gaining numbers. But why have we taken such a careless approach to our once beloved publications? A lot of magazines are casually flicked through and then hurled into the recycling bin, passed on to someone else or condemned to the magazine graveyard that is the coffee table. There’s a certain charm to reading reviews of films that came out when you were fourteen. Did Anonymous from Hull manage to finally revive their marriage and spice things up in the bedroom thanks to the advice of Coleen Nolan? Equally, you could remind yourself of up-and-coming stars a few years ago and seeing if they ever actually graduated from NME Radar (probably not). Or maybe rediscover bands you’d completely forgotten about – take May 2006’s issue of Q which featured an editorial on Orson – remember them? Taking a look at the adverts can even conjure up a vaguely nostalgic giggle through checking out the cars or perfume or alcoholic drinks being advertised in 2010.

What the iBooks-inspired wave of digital zines and blogs is (ironically) missing out on is the opportunity to create art from their supposedly useless and less eco-friendly printed counterparts. Artists such as Samuel

Eco-artist Kathy Carney is fascinated with the aesthetics
of superfluous things
(Source: ecofriend.org)

Price, Kathy Carney and Hong Seon Jang have upcycled discarded magazines to create unique and contemporary portraits and sculptures from the papers that clutter shelves and are often scattered across café tables. All I’m saying is you can’t beat the smell and the tactility of physically holding a magazine, and you can’t papier-mâché your iPad.

In the same way that people seem to absolutely love and cherish old editions of books, why not magazines too? Okay, so I might be comparing a first edition of Wuthering Heights to a year-old issue of OK!, but, in some bizarre way, they have a similar appeal. In fact, some old issues of magazines - from the haute couture of Vogue’s 1916 debut, to the soft porn of Playboy’s first issue in 1953 - are extremely rare. Since I’ve wanted to write from a young age, my journalistic instincts have led to my magazine rack overflowing with everything from National Geographic to Rolling Stone to Harper’s Bazaar. Through this random assortment of journals spanning from the fascinating to the totally useless, maybe I’ll capture the buzz of era amongst pages or stumble across a gem for the future. Or maybe just take up valuable space. Katie Price doesn't care either way.