(I need to be out of the house in 30 minutes, so please excuse the furious scribbling and inevitable typos.)
In the past few months, I've spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out which topics that I want to write about for mainstream publications. Should I specialize? What should I specialize in? Yadda, yadda. This is a boring topic more appropriate for a conversation in my backyard with a drink in hand.
In order to make a better decision, I've been keeping an eye on what other women writers write about and what topics make it to the cover of magazines. Here's some data to add to my unofficial research.
Check out the recent cover of Foreign Policy magazine.
More commentary by the Monkey Cage and Duck of Minerva.
Also check out the recent cover of Newsweek.
Pretty appalling.
Apt. 11d 
Newsweek was sold for $1 a couple years back.
The news magazine business is a pretty tough one to be in these days.
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Also, the “Why Do They Hate Us?” is pretty funny in combination with the photo.
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Did you read this? Probably the best analysis I’ve seen:
http://www.acontrolledsubstance.com/2012/04/23/for-white-girls-who-have-considered-sadomasochism-when-domestic-violence-is-not-enough/
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What are the articles actually about? Is the FP article about violence against women? Is the NW article about 50 shades book? Or are the images completely gratuitous?
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“Or are the images completely gratuitous?”
Not totally gratuitous.
The Newsweek cover is funny because 1) a “working woman” who looks like that is probably a professional model or similar 2) the most lurid fantasies of a working woman who looks like that likely involve three square meals a day, IHOP, melted cheese, using ALL of the dressing on her salad and drinking non-diet soda.
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The problem with the Foreign Policy issue is that:
1. They called it “sex” to make it sound spicy. The correct term is actually Gender, and gender politics.
2. There are serious academics, both male and female, who have been studying gendered institutions, gender roles, gender crimes, etc. in the internaitonal system since the early 1980’s and NONE of these analysts was cited or even referenced. Whoever editted this volume made it sound as though no one had ever thought about these issues before when in point of fact people have been considering these issues for almost 30 years.
3. Some of the questions in the poll were actually wrong or based on assumptions that the scholarly literature has actually refuted a very long time ago.
The best way to explain it might be to be if there were a medical journal which came out with “the vagina issue” and ignored the fact that there were people called gynecologists and urologists who had been studying the question of female anatomy for hundreds of year, and ignored all of the findings of that entire field in order to focus on something like ‘the use of the term vajayjay on Grey’s Anatomy” — all the while masquerading as a seriously sciencey
publication.
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How about you do something on your tweet about Obama and Clooney? Seriously, I’ve been reconsidering whether I want to contribute to the campaign after all this “Wouldn’t you just looooove to meet George Clooney?” (This does not mean, of course, that I wouldn’t just looooove to meet George Clooney. He’s awesome and incredibly handsome. But I am insulted that my campaign contribution is being solicited this way.)
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Why do they hate us? Perhaps mag covers like this that mock their religion and objectify their women? Way to build bridges and show some respect…
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