Dear Editors,

            As I see it, magazines like yours want the content of their magazine to reflect the desires of their target demographic.  As a twenty year old woman, I fall into that demographic, so I feel compelled to tell you what I think, on behalf of all the women in this country who are thinking the same things.

            Your magazine is insulting and damaging.  I understand that, as it’s focus is pop culture and fashion, it is not supposed to always be serious or discuss world issues.  I am not condemning you for writing about fashion.  Rather, it is the way you deal with fashion (and sex, and pop culture, and women’s issues) that offends me.

            Are women so terrible in their natural form that we must be plucked, waxed, shaved, hair-dyed, eyes-painted, starved, fee bound in painful shoes, breasts lifted and padded, tummy tucked, wrinkles smoothed away, and anything else that will contribute to capitalism that you can come up with?  We are fed such contradicting ideals by magazines like yours- be strong, achieve our dreams, but look “pretty,” manipulate men (as without men, what’s the point of life?  we are told), and change our behavior so we will be liked.  Sex is not the only- or even the most- important thing about women, and sex is not only for women who are young, thin, white, and conform to your standards of beauty.  Your magazine sells women’s sexuality to them like it’s something they have to earn (through the right skirt or the right way to attract a man, or a million other things).

            There are things more important than money- like helping women to develop the self-confidence you’ve previously helped undermined.  There are also ways to make money more creatively where women do not have to be demeaned.  I will not buy your magazine or the products advertised in it until there is some change, and neither will many of the women I know.  You need to know that the ideas you perpetuate are unacceptable to millions of women.

Very, very sincerely,

Liz Holden

If you care at all about your readers, you will print my letter.

You can contact me and my group at:

            femme_revolution@hotmail.com

            femmerevolution.8.com