It's Not Rocket Science

Last week I picked up my very first personal anonymous troll on Twitter. It was terribly exciting. I’ve had people say obnoxious stuff to me on Twitter before, and I’ve had people leave nasty comments on stories I’ve written (the lovely things people write on articles about suicide prevention! I hope you all get herpes of the eyeballs) and I’ve had some weird phone calls, but this was something new.

Someone went to the effort of trawling through the web archives of the Wentworth Courier (where I work as a reporter) to find some of my lesser writing, and then set up a new Twitter account to pester me about it. This was our little exchange: 

@Poots68 @Jen_Bennett Hey hypocrite, tell us more about the “new organic skincare range SOTO” How it leaves you “feeling nourished and nutritional.”

What they had found was a beauty story I had written for the Wenty oh, about a year and a half ago. They went to slate an admittedly half-arsed intro I’d written for some environment piece and then complained about a headline on another story of mine (which was a cliché, but hey, I didn’t write it). 

I said I had indeed written beauty copy for a while, that I had always attempted to make it as un-moronic as possible, that I skipped anti-aging and other dubious claims and also, hey, I’d love to read something you’ve written, anonymous person? 

@Poots68 @Jen_Bennett I’m not an angry mc writer. But when I see journos hatcheting other journos, I get curious about their own “work”

@Poots68 @Jen_Bennett Like many, I value my anonymity. Anyways, bored now. Won’t trouble you again. Good luck with the penetrating commentary.

So, if you’re out there anonytroll - and I’m guessing you read my Twitter feed, otherwise, how would you know I make fun of Marie Claire on a regular basis - I say hello! I hope you are well. But this is not another whine about how anonymous trolls are ruining the internet and how everyone should have to identify themselves and whaaa this person was mean to me. This also isn’t (much) about the standards of my own writing, although I believe that frequent self-examination is essential and if you think that you’ve never produced a dull or dumb sentence, then I sincerely hope I never come across anything you’ve ever written.

This is about why I read women’s magazines and whine about them on the internet.

It sort of starts with the odd period (recently over) during which I became, by default (and virtue of the fact that I was the only woman on the team), the beauty writer for the Wentworth Courier. My main - ie, real - rounds there are Woollahra Council, along with a smattering of education, health and suicide prevention, with crime and breaking stories being shared among the team. At one point we took copy for the beauty section from a central desk; that was disbanded and the job was handed to me.

Now I should point out here that despite appearances, I like make up. I like fashion. I like nice things. I just don’t think they are the be all and end all, and the suggestion that they will much for your life beyond make you look nice (whatever your definition of “nice” is, of course) I generally find ridiculous.

So when the beauty swag started arriving at my desk (and OH IS THERE SWAG, more on that in a bit), after a few weeks I began to approach with caution. I didn’t write about anti-aging stuff, or if I had to, I tried to avoid using the phrase (a moisturiser is a moisturiser is a moisturiser: it will make your skin nice and soft but it will not make you look 21 if you are 40 no matter how many peptides are in it). I tried not to be too gushing in my copy, but it definitely came through - I mean, if the damn thing has five kinds of flower in it, you’re probably going to bang on about spring florals or something. I tried not to lie to readers, basically. “This face wash smells really nice and leaves you feeling clean and refreshed”.

Then, one fateful evening, I was waiting for a pizza at a place down the road from my house. Said pizza shop (now a tapas bar, of course) always had a massive stack of women’s mags. This particular evening I picked up Marie Claire, and began to flick through it. I hadn’t read it in ages, but I had always thought Marie Claire to be the reasonably intelligent one, you know? They had articles on World Events and other Serious Issues. Except, as it turned out, those Serious Issues (generally you get a Gruesome True Crime Story, sometimes with a twist of sexual assault, a Women’s Rights Story – extra points if it’s of the Look Foreign Women Are Like Us Too, Even Under Those Funny Headscarves variety, and a Profile Of A Lady, Possibly Dead Or Brung Low By Drink Drugs Or Men Or All Three And Also Dead) were generally addressed in the most shallow, glitzy and clichéd manner. The fashion shoots – and hey, I have no problem with ludicrous designer clothes, to a point – were frequently ridiculous. And the beauty copy? GOLD. And this was the thing that ultimately set me off: Marie Claire’s “Beauty Best Buys” were really “Stuff we got sent this month” (SWAG! It’s the whole point of being a beauty writer). Products were inevitably “essential” or “life changing” or, in the case of an eye shadow set, “challenging”. There was, as I recall, a moisturiser retailing for a few hundred dollars.

Now I knew this stuff already, really: that magazine copy was frequently asinine, if not simply false, and just there to get you to buy stuff that you don’t need. But it began to cheese me off. Also I needed a hobby. Also I like making fun of stuff on the internet. So now I read Marie Claire every month so you don’t have to. So far the stupidest things I’ve seen were the $990 moisturiser with gold in it, and the four-page “feature” on Facts About Boobs, which included the revelation that a majority of men look at them when they first see a woman.

But really, when I read Marie Claire and co, I just get annoyed. I am not dumb. You, dear reader, are not dumb. As I said, I like make-up: I have piles of it, and painting my face is fun. I don’t wear it work every day, I wear it when I’m going out and feel like perking up a bit. I like painting my nails ridiculous colours. I love a bright red lipstick. But it is not an essential part of my life, it is not required for me to be a functional woman in Australian society and if I forgo it for whatever reason it is not some terrible failing on my part. So why do these magazines – written by women who I know are not idiots, because I’ve met some of them – treat us like we are of sub-par intelligence? I’ll buy the lipstick, Marie Claire, but because I like the colour, not because it’s going to transform me into whatever bombshell is in this week.

People know women’s magazines are stupid and treat their readers like Barbies with just enough functioning grey matter to operate a credit card, but they forget from time to time. I want to read a publication that understands that its readers may well spend their Tuesday night the way I’m spending mine: Watching Wayne Swan hand down the budget, while keeping an eye on an eBay auction for a Cacharel dress. Just because I like pretty things doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.