Cosmo came into my life courtesy a man, and went out of it courtesy another man.
Some years ago, I woke up late one Sunday morning to find my husband chuckling over a magazine I had picked up at an airport bookstall the previous day – you guessed it, it was a copy of Cosmo.
A plastic wrapped Cosmo landed at my doorstep a couple of weeks later, thanks to my darling husband who thought it was worth subscribing to, and it was a regular on my bedside table till last year when I caught my just-into-his-teens son reading it with wide eyes and rapt attention!
Cosmo is about entertainment, not enlightenment!
Cosmo has generous doses fashion, fun, work, health, gossip, celebrities, shopping, parenting, and sex; it is about vicarious, and small, sometimes guilty pleasures! However, even though it does tend to go on and on about fashion and flirting, it’s not just for the glam doll who can’t see beyond her well varnished finger nails. It’s got a little bit (and then some) information about almost everything that will add a fun element to your life.
Also, this magazine is not just for the 'fun and fearless woman' as it claims to be - I know for sure men, for whatever reasons, enjoy reading (or sometimes just looking at) it too.
Why Cosmo is special
It is fun. Yes, there's plenty of totally unreal fashion here. There also is some pseudo psycho-babble that is good only for a few laughs, and advice that's not only very graphic and truly mind boggling, but also is guaranteed to leave you with at least one pulled muscle if you try it. But that's not all what Cosmo is about.
Cosmo handles matters serious and seriously silly with equal aplomb. There is no moral grandstanding here. There is just information, delivered in a non-preachy manner, and you are treated as being adult enough to know what to do with it.
It reminds us women we are more than what we think we are. Cosmo doesn’t let you compartmentalize yourself. Just when you think you are happy as a mother, it will remind you that you are a lover too. It will encourage you to go one step ahead at the workplace, and then to take that break to smell the flowers, so to speak, and to find a centre of calm within you. It will show you what the fashionistas are wearing at this moment, and just when you start to feel you are hopelessly fat, frumpy and so very 5 minutes ago, you will find one gem of advice you can put to killer use. The best part of it is that it is so woman centred in a 'not bound to my hearth and home' way, that you are more than ready to forgive it its many lapses.
Cosmo has everything a magazine that aims to entertain you should have!
For those who crib that Cosmo is just about sex, why do you focus on just the sex and ignore the rest? If that’s the only thing you can see, is that the fault of the magazine, or your own vision?
Reasons not to buy Cosmo
The media has brought information about sex is out of the closet, and this information shows no inclination to hide behind bedroom walls regardless of what you, or I, or the moral police feel. Sex sells, and magazines, Cosmo included, use it to make up the numbers.
While I would be the first to agree that this information is not quite appropriate for everybody, I would also be the first to argue that even if we don't need it dished out to us in such great detail, it is a part of our life that we cannot wish away, or pretend doesn’t exist.
The reality is that there’s very little a person can really do in terms of restricting their children’s exposure to any information out there (actually Cosmo seems quite tame in comparison to the music of 50Cent and to some of the information so freely available on the net!) A person can only do what is within his/her power to limit the availability of this information at home.
I don’t think I want any hormone-crazed early teen, let alone my own 13 yr old, to be reading up on the Jasmine position, not yet, and especially not from my reading material.
So what are my choices?
I am really not up to hiding my reading material under mattresses and praying nobody will find them, so, short of sending him away to boarding school so I could read the magazine in peace, I made my choice - Cosmo had to go!
If you are the kind of mom who gets a bit queasy at the thought of growing kids, (especially when they are yours) having access to racy reading material, read your Cosmo outside of your home. For everybody else, pick up a Cosmo, and enjoy.
One day Cosmo will be back on my bedside table, and I’m sure at that time it will still be good for some laughs, for some info, and some experimentation. Till then, hello Femina and hello Good Housekeeping, welcome to my life; goodbye Cosmo- stay fun and stay fearless!
