OUT ON A LIMB: Dear Cosmo, You’ll Never Convince Us Obesity Is Healthy.

The real question should be: Why DO mainstream magazines think they can convince us that being anorexic OR obese is beautiful and healthy? It’s not, and they can’t — at least not anymore. Ever since the internet and social media allowed independent content creators to go viral without Vanity Fair’s help, simply pushing “pretty” models isn’t going to be profitable for a costly mainstream magazine anymore. They’re now competing for “pretty” with all the healthy, normal-sized independent online creators who don’t charge a subscription fee and aren’t bogged down with all the politically correct stuffiness you see in mainstream media content. And best of all, they’re authentic.

They’re competing with YouTubers and writers like me and my friends, who barely spend any money on content yet can be just as influential, if not more. One thing that was incredibly shocking to me in my time working in cable tv is just how much these established media outlets spend on things like hair, makeup, and studio sets. I couldn’t understand how they were turning any profit…unless, they were being funded top-down, which is increasingly the case for a lot of established media outlets these days.

So, being simply “entertaining” or “aesthetically pleasing” is no longer profitable for an established fashion magazine like Cosmo. Mainstream beauty magazines need to convince their audience that they are still worth reading over an independently-run website like Evie Magazine, for instance. So they’re going to remind you why you’re really choosing their magazine: not because you’re looking for beauty or entertainment, but because they are Cosmo and Cosmo is still the arbiter of how “beauty” is defined. Nobody can compete with that.

Read the whole thing. And note that it’s appearing on a Website called Evie Magazine, founded by a woman named Brittany Martinez who explained her goals in an article at Quillette in 2019: Women Needed a Magazine that Doesn’t Lie to Them. So I Started One.

For decades, magazines have sold women countless lies about sex, emotional fulfillment and health issues—usually under the guise of “empowerment.” They prey on women’s insecurities by normalizing unhealthy extremes (first it was borderline anorexia, now it’s obesity). They encourage casual sex and lie to readers about its emotional ramifications. They tell women they’ll be unhappy with a husband and kids but fulfilled working for a male boss at a big corporation. They laud celebrities who aren’t good role models, turned Hillary Clinton into an object of worship, and attack or ignore women who don’t share their views.

Millions of women—especially here in the United States, where I live and work—have been left out. They’re tired of having to go to trashy publications just to find useful reads on health and beauty. For decades, women’s publications have tried to convince women they can be just like men, instead of celebrating femininity and what makes women wonderfully unique. It was this gap in the market that made me and my colleagues wonder: “What if there were a conservative Cosmo?”

From that question, Evie Magazine was born. She’s an online publication covering health, beauty, fashion, relationships, career and culture. Her mission is to empower, educate and entertain young women with content that celebrates femininity, encourages virtue, and offers a more honest perspective than they get elsewhere. She’s Classier than Cosmo, Sexier than Refinery29, and Smarter than Bustle. Millennial women are Evie’s audience, but so are the “Gen Z” women born from the mid-1990s onward. (Do men read Evie? Sure they do—even if they might not admit it.)

Is Evie “feminist”? That depends on your definition of feminism. The reality is, modern feminism in its doctrinaire form isn’t popular. Many women realize that, at its core, progressive third-wave feminism can express itself as a form of self-hatred: a rejection of our feminine beauty, unique gifts and the natural role we play in our communities. In effect, it seeks to turn first-rate women into second-rate men. Paradoxically, this movement also is suffused with negative and condescending attitudes toward masculinity, whereas Evie readers love their men, and are thankful for the protection and sacrifice that men often have been called upon to deliver throughout history.

I don’t know if Martinez is looking for additional funding, but Evie dovetails absolutely perfectly with the topic of an 2012 article by the Professor in the New York Post headlined, “Where big GOP bucks could matter:”

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.

This stuff writes itself, probably more easily than the Spin Sisters’ pabulum. And opening up a major beachhead in this section of the media is probably a lot cheaper than challenging major newspapers and TV networks head on.

The only losers will be the political consultants who ate up so much of the GOP’s cash this time around.

Are rich Republican donors smart enough to do something like this? Well, we’ll find out.

They haven’t yet, but 2021 would be a damn good time to start.