The Issue of Magazines

Magazines can be a wonderful thing. When I was younger, my sister and I created a magazine called Miss Sassy. My Dad was working for the Ministry of Natural Resources then and he would come home with these glossy pieces of paper that as a true environmentalist, he did not want to throw out. So, he gave them to us. We created issues of a magazine out of these pieces of paper. The magazine ran during the early 1980s.

It was fun doing that magazine. We would do the drawings of our dolls, some of them Barbies, and there was always a cover model. Since we both really enjoyed watching Little House on the Prairie, we would have the late Michael Landon do the interviews with the cover model for the inside spread of the magazine. Our knowledge of magazines came from all the pre-teen rags that were out there that we devoured.

All this to say that creating your own magazine can be a wonderful experience. I have my own now called Donna that you can look at here: http://kakonged.wordpress.com. So you see, my interest in these things run deep. I also remember how much reading and looking at magazines such as Glamour, Vogue and Elle affected how I felt about myself as a teen and how damaging some of those images were.

It is a great thing that I went to journalism school and did my graduate degree in media studies, plus continue to work in the field. This allows me to look critically at the images in the media, such as magazines, and not to be affected by them as much as I was as a teenager. I can now look at a beautiful woman in a magazine and not wish to be exactly like her. I can now look at expensive things in a magazine such as Vanity Fair and not pine wistfully for things I do not have such as a private jet. Who knows...they may come in time any way, however these are not things that I truly do not desire. With age and wisdom it is much easier to define yourself, yet still be creative if you chose to be.