Mag Monday: Cosmo and Frankie

Cosmopolitan, November 2012

• I'm not a massive fan of Kim Kardashian, but I love this cover. Her face looks a bit weird but her body looks beautiful and I adore the swimsuit she's wearing. I also love the colour combination, it's fresh and fun. 
• There's a timely, in-depth and sensitive feature on rape that reinforces the important truth that it's never the victim's fault, even though we as a society tend to lean that way. It also offers practical advice, underlining the importance of talking to someone - anyone - if you've been assualted - even if it's a helpline like 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
• Changing gears completely, it always astounds me when people are willing to go in a national magazine to talk about their sex lives. Seriously, who wants their parents or co-workers to see a photo of them next to a headline like "we have sex up to five times a day!" or "we love skype sex!" Talk about TMI.
• 'What does $50 buy you around the world?' is a really interesting feature, and quite unique - I haven't seen it done before, which is always a plus. I was amazed that the Pill only costs $15 a year in Sweden (!), but strangely less surprised that you can buy an apple the size of a child's head in Japan for $26. Meanwhile, one cocktail costs $50 in Dubai - the same price of 10 months' worth of rice in China, or a goat in Africa that that can provide up to five litres of milk a day for a family. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
• 'The blended orgasm' has possibly the most off-putting sell ever: "They did it with smoothies, they've done it with soup... now they're doing it with orgasms." Anyhoo, the actual feature is about "The Holy Grail" of orgasms: a combined "C-spot" and "G-spot" climax. Moving on...
• A great career feature about loving your work profiles author Jessica Shirvington (she says the key to getting published is finding the right agent - she had a three-book deal within two weeks of signing with her agent), designer Belinda Macphereson (she used a credit card to fund her start-up period - eek!) and entrepreneur Aimee Marls (founder of TOM Organic pads and tampons - she got the idea from a school project!).
• The 'Cosmo clicks' mini-mag inside claims to be "your ultimate online edit". It's broken down into fashion sites, celeb Twitters, Cosmo staffer bookmarks, international blogs, travel sites, fitness sites and lol-worthy pages. I got excited when I saw this inside, because I obviously love the interwebz, and I especially love finding new stuff to waste my time with do online, but I was really disappointed with the execution. Most of the sites included were, like, so 2009. I'm talking Buzzfeed, Reddit, Someecards, Texts From Last Night, Cute Overload and I Can Haz Cheeseburger. This is like internet 101 for people who have never been past the Google homepage.
• 'You'd never eat one of these would you?' (with pictures of chocolates, labelled as various STIs) is a clever execution of a feature about the risks of unsafe oral sex. A lot of teens (and, I'm guessing, adults) don't really consider the need for protection when it comes to oral, so it's good to see awareness being raised here.
• There's plenty of pretty bikini candy in their swimmer special - broken down to the best cut for your shape.
• Being totally obsessed with nail art at the moment (like the rest of the female population), I loved the beauty feature on different DIY trends.
• Other features include 'Is it time to kill the hashtag?' (#never); 'Put the O in phone' (how your phone can help your sex life - no, it doesn't involve the vibration setting); 'There are more people addicted to love than to alcohol and drugs'; 'Find your happy place in a fortnight' and 'Kink is the new black' (obligatory 50 Shades-related feature).
• Overall, this was a more enjoyable than average Cosmo for me, but it didn't blow me away.

Frankie, November/December 2012

 

• This is my favourite magazine cover OF ALL TIME. The photo doesn't do it justice - it's embossed so it looks and feels like it's actually been hand-stitched. It's so pretty and tactile. The cover is to celebrate Frankie's 50th issue, and the magazine is mega-sized to boot. Love, love, love.
• Now Frankie is a magazine I can always rely on to inform me of awesome new websites (especially those I can spend cashola on). Like Little Shop, Hello Polly, Able and Game and Hug Me Harry.
• 'Hey boy, hey girl' is a short but interesting feature on Sweden's introduction of the gender-neutral pronoun "hen", and the pros and cons of the policy.
• 'Goodbye, friend' is a personal essay about how friendship break-ups can be just as hard as relationship break-ups. I really connected with this piece coz I'm still kinda devo about a friendship that fell apart last year.
• As someone with hoarderish tendencies, I also loved the feature 'Stuff does matter', specifically: "It's OK to love something just because it makes you feel good... on a very basic level we need very little, but on an emotional level we need things to enrich our life. We need things to make us feel good. We need stuff that gives us tactile experiences. We need things that are beautiful. Beauty is important in the world... You should think about how things are going to fit into your world and if they're going to make you happy. 'Do I need this?' isn't as good a question as, 'Am I going to enjoy having this?'" I could go on but then I'd be quoting pretty much the whole article. Instead, I'm just going to link to the writer, Megan Auman's blog. Eff yeah, stuff!
• 'The science of crying' is a fascinating piece on what happens to your body and brain when you cry. It makes crying sound so awesome I feel like watching Beaches right now.
• 'Misery chicks' is a delightful ode to the sarcastic '90s girls like Daria and Darlene (and the women who played them).
• 'High-flying flunks' profiles famous people who failed before they succeeded - including Thomas Edison, Agatha Christie and Walt Disney. Interesting info and gorgeous illustrations.
• 'You look relatively stylish' is a lovely pictorial in which five designers share photos of the style icons in their own families.
• 'Let's make cake' is a really awesome section featuring six classic "almost-never-fail" cake recipes (with pretty pictures and all): sponge cake, chocolate cake, orange madeira, carrot cake, coffee banana cake and fruit cake.
• 'The Meryl Streep fan club', accompanied by a breautiful illustration of the actress, immediately made me smile. I luuuurve Ms Streep, so I really enjoyed this list of her greatest hits. 
• 'Young adult' highlights some classic YA books, which obviously aligns very well with my interests. Authors included are Robin Klein, S.E. Hinton, Judy Blume, Maya Angelou, Ruth Park and John Marsden (three out of six made up a big part of my tweendom).
• 'Mamma's choice' hands the decision of the topic for the article over to Frankie's contributor's mothers, leading to Benjamin Law writing about his mum's perfume collection (which hilariously turns into a discussion of how smelly his family is), David Evans rather touchingly chronicling the lack of stylish clothing available for women over 50, Marieke Hardy giving some insight into her rather exposed relationship with her mum, and Rowena Grant-Frost's heartwarming account of her memories of the Australia she experienced as a child, made unique by the fact that, although born here, she mostly grew up in Germany. It's a really sweet feature all round.
• I may have done an inner fist pump when I read 'The cheese platter', which features six steps to the perfect - you guessed it - cheese platter. I'm a bit obsessed with cheese lately so I found this advice very useful - although to be honest I'll probably break all the rules next time I need them. To hell with clockwise formations - just give me the cheese.
• Other features include an interview with Beth Ditto, 'The relationship relic' (letting go of souvenirs from exes); 'Our little farm' (six people talk about life on the land); 'The pixel trade' (one man traveling around Australia for free by trading his photography services for food/shelter/transport); 'Sharpest tool in the box' (basic tools everyone needs); 'Pink walls and displaced identities' (a pictorial on Transcarpathia, a region in the west Ukraine); 'So you want to be gay' (one man's experience of coming out) and 'Draw your desk' (five artists, y'know, draw their desks).
• This issue of Frankie left me feeling really happy. As much as I love magazines, this isn't a very common feeling when finishing many of them. So big props to Frankie for a wonderful 50th issue!