My two favorite magazines are Vogue and Parents. I devour them with a separate but equal interest, and am always looking for ideas from the two of them. Having seen pictures of me, you may be surprised that I am an avid Vogue reader, but I am more into fashion than is visible in my wardrobe. I'm merely limited by the cash in my purse and the size of my Mommy shape.
Parents is a great magazine; I have clipped numerous recipes and dog-eared many pages for the future. I keep absolutely every issue, which I cannot say for Vogue. Vogue issues only survive in the spring and fall fashion issues which I keep for Maeve to cut up in the future. I guess that boils down how I feel about the two magazines - Vogue is a fleeting visual joy, Parents is for life.
What I appreciate about Vogue is its total enslavement to beauty. They review beautiful books and plays, take you to beautiful sets, and show you beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes. The fact that I will never own, nor even enter a store where these clothes are sold is immaterial. It lets me dream, imagining myself with windswept hair, a train made of feathers and flowers running behind me for yards, in colors an artist would envy.
Vogue, however, tends to assume I am a beautiful, slender heiress, so it recommends to me things like Botox, vacations on the Riviera, and $10,000 watches covered in emeralds. You have to put it down sometime and remember that you are as far from a slender heiress as you are from the moon. And Parents is about who I actually am, what my real life is like, and how to get Oreo crumbs out of a carseat. Parents assumes I am a Mom, that's all, and Vogue dreaming aside, that's who I am.
I will continue to get both magazines until the ads start offending me too much (in Vogue) or until Maeve moves out of the house (Parents). But until then I am both selves, the dreaming me and the Momma me, and those magazines will give me the tools I need to be both of them with flair.
 |
| Strike a pose |
Just because style tends to take a backseat to babies doesn't mean you have to lose your fabulousness. Let your inner Jack McFarland out to play once in a while ;)
ReplyDelete