Why you’ll see me starve before you’ll see me working for a women’s magazine

Spotted this morning on the train, in some women’s magazine (a weekly of the celebrity / gossip kind I would guess from the tasteless design) in a young woman’s lap.

On the left-hand page of a spread: Advertorial recipe feature promoting luscious-looking cupcakes.

On the right-hand page of the same spread: Huge red headline for the crash diet feature “Lose 5lb in one week!”

I’m not even going to go into the whole screwed-up body images and imposed beauty norms kind of stuff.

But still, I’m just as puzzled by the question how any editor with a shred of integrity can sign off such a spread as I am amazed that there are actually thousands of women out there who are willing to pay money to put themselves through the self-imposed emotional torture that these magazines promote.