It started one fateful day, in perhaps third grade when I picked up an American Girl.
I quickly progressed to Girls Life, J-14, Seventeen and Cosmogirl, then, as I grew older, to Elle, Glamour, and of course Cosmopolitan. I devoured every page, every tip and trick that I needed, didn't need and never knew I needed.
My closet hides boxes of years-old issues, thousands of meticulously consumed bits of advice, countless images of beautiful girls laughing into cameras.
I may be a smidgen slow on the uptake, but I recently realized that my beloved glossy volumes might not be as reliable, or even reasonable, as I always assumed them to be.
Maybe I just finally started to really read them.
On my lunch break at my job as a pharmacy technician, I scanned through a new magazine and was a little taken aback by an article that proclaimed one could "cheatproof their love" by uttering "You are so hot" to one's boyfriend or husband as often as possible.
The article went on to imply that many women who have been cheated on could have prevented the predicament by repeating this phrase to their significant others, and that the woman who nabbed the cheater surely did so.
While I was a little startled that this sort of reasoning could be published in a national magazine, it made me reconsider the other advice that these magazines administer.
Almost every article is focused on self-improvement, whether it's "rules" of inter-office dating, how to attract a man or how to dress for a first date.
This fact, of course, is nothing new, but what message is it sending to today's future women who could be moving past these ideals?
Rather than provide tools to succeed in life, as magazines champion themselves to do, they seem to breed a very particular brand of insecurity and paranoia that should not be necessary in this day and age.
The often inconsistent or confusing tidbits of wisdom that women's magazines dish out -- was that a "half-smile," a "devilish smirk" or a "coy, close-mouth grin" he gave you? It makes all the difference, according to the Cosmopolitan web site -- give the impression that love and appearance are the most important aspects of a woman's life.
I have read countless times that a female should be submissive in her mannerisms because it is attractive. I have read articles that reported on, and seemed to approve of, a diet of Diet Coke and tootsie pops.
A passionate career or news literacy is apparently a bonus -- but only because they provide good conversation.
These claims seem to me archaic and beyond debate -- and yet they are still being given to young girls and women, including myself, as facts of life, and we accept them passively.
We are the generation of Doctor and Teacher Barbie -- we are cultivated to hold interests, lives and careers while remaining eternally beautiful, wealthy and in love with our very own Ken.
Whatever you do, you need to look good doing it.
Fashion magazines obsess over Michelle Obama's arms and J. Crew ensembles, and the media tore Hillary Clinton apart during her campaign to become the democratic presidential candidate for her suit choices and general "unfeminine" demeanor.
Little is usually said about the actual events or debates from which the pictures are pulled.
But even now, we are at a time in our country where it is not only accepted but expected by the country that a woman will take a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, and very little is said about her appearance or attire.
Society seems to be moving away from objectifying women. Perhaps women's magazines should move away from perpetuating it.
