Five Things I Hate About Women's Magazines (In no particular order)

5) Improve! Now, improve some more!

Try and find a women’s magazine that doesn’t say something about improving yourself. Whether it’s lose some weight, get better friends, get a new job or just be a different person (articles like ‘How To Be Funny’ or ‘How To Be A Social Butterfly’ are fairly common), every single magazine aimed at women preaches that you should never be satisfied with yourself. Now, of course everyone has aims in life, but if you have to get them from a magazine, you should probably be worried about yourself.

4) What does [insert random action here] show you about him?

Women’s magazines analyse everything men do. Quite literally, everything. How they eat, how they style their hair, what sort of music they like. Because obviously, women and men are completely and utterly different and could never understand each other without the help of these magazines.

3) Sex: How to please him. And only him.

Do this position, do that position. Wear this. Talk like this. You must experiment, you must be ‘fun’, or your boyfriend will get bored. Why talk to him about this sort of thing when you could read a magazine?

2) Budget Buys…or not

A budget outfit £500 does not make.

1) How to change your entire life, look and personality to find a boyfriend

You can quite literally find articles such as ‘Hobbies that men find attractive’, ‘Jobs that men find attractive’, ‘What to wear to hook a man’, etc. Alongside advice to ‘just be yourself. Guys like that’. Apparently the people that make these magazines see no irony in this whatsoever. 

Updating Fairytales ; Example

Cinderella

Ella Cendrillon was a miraculous baby. Not in the sense that she was amazingly beautiful, or incredibly clever; her existence was quite literally, a miracle. 31 Crescent Drive was burnt to the ground on the 18^th of September, 1990; when the firemen were sifting through the ashes, they found Ella, still cradled in her baby basket, sleeping peacefully. The newspaper headline, which framed a photo of her still sleeping soundly, read CINDERS ELLA, and the name stuck.  

In some early versions of 'Cinderella', the heroine's name is Ella and her nickname derives from her sleeping in the ashes of the kitchen fire. It doesn't make sense in the modern world for Ella to be cleaning fires, so I've changed the reason why her nickname emerges. Additionally, Ella's surname literally means Cinderella in French. In all versions of the story, Cinderella is an orphan (common theme in fairy tales) so all I've done is lose the stepmother. I never understood why she didn't ship Cinderella off to a relative or something anyway, if she really didn't want her.

How to Update A Fairy Tale : Part Two

Love at first sight? No thanks. 

In almost every fairy tale you care to name, as soon as the prince and princess (or equivalent) meet, it’s love at first sight. They don’t even have to talk (in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White’s case, only one of them has to be awake) and they’re both quite happy to marry, have babies and live happily ever after. How often do characters in modern romances fall in love at first sight? In ‘When Harry Met Sally’, twenty years elapse before the pair even realise they have feelings for each other. In ‘You’ve Got Mail’, they talk for months but can’t stand the sight of each other in real life. No modern reader will accept the two main characters falling in love at first sight. Use whatever romantic plot device you fancy, but they’re going to have to really connect before we can believe in, and care about, their love story.

Less is more

A lot of modern fairy tales take the original story and just ‘convert’ the main features into a modern form. How many modern versions of Cinderella replace the lost shoe with a mobile, or a purse, or some other modern girl accessory? The prince’s ball is replaced with a high school dance, or a work do, or something equally banal. This makes the story oddly jarring sometimes; some elements of fairy tales just don’t fit with modern life. Why is Cinderella never helped by social services? Why doesn’t Red Riding Hood just get a taxi over to her granny’s house? How did the 3 Little Pigs all get planning permission at the same time? It’s also incredibly predictable.

A far more subtle and effective way of retelling fairytales is to take the original elements as an influence, but not let them dictate your story. Cinderella can grow up and move out of her stepmother’s house before she meets her Prince Charming; it doesn’t take away from the magic of the story. Another way of dealing with the difficulties of translating these classic stories to the modern age is to take the original elements as symbolic; for example, Snow White’s stepmother, in the original, demands her heart on a platter. Maybe in a modern retelling, she breaks Snow White’s heart in some way, or takes a heart shaped necklace from her. Don’t make the reference so subtle that a casual reader will miss the allusion, but there’s no need to overstate it either.

How To Update A Fairy Tale

How To Update A Fairy Tale; 

Fairy tales are as relevant today as they were when they were first told. They are constantly being retold, both on screen and in writing. Modern, or updated, versions appear all the time. Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber, and other stories’ is a perfect example of the different types of retold fairy tales that appear. Some stories simply allude to the original fairy tale (in the first story, there is a statue of ‘The Little Mermaid’, some are direct retellings, such as ‘The Company of Wolves’, and some are more modern versions, such as ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’. Often, writers attempt to translate the original fairy tale directly into the present, but the change in social conventions and the development of new technology necessitates some work to make sure the new version isn’t laughable. I’ve come up with some key things that need to be changed for a modern fairy tale to work.

Modern Story, Modern Heroine

The role of women in society has changed an awful lot since the times of Han Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers. Snow White may be lovely both in looks and character, but she is utterly helpless. She is content to just sit and wait to be rescued, first by the dwarves and then by a handsome prince (who she has no qualms about marrying after only meeting him once). Will this appeal to a modern reader? Not a chance. A modern heroine is independent and thinks for herself, and while she might need rescuing she’ll certainly make an attempt on her own account. There’s really no need for her to be the most beautiful women in the world, either; a modern women might appreciate a heroine she can empathise with. 

Next post:

Love at first sight? No thanks.

Less is More.

Chekhov's Gun; How to and How not to use it

Literary techniques, and their weird and wonderful names (bilsdungroman hardly rolls off the tongue) fascinate me. For one thing, it makes you sound like an absolute genius when you can comment on the use of incluing, or leitwortstil in a text. They're also incredibly interesting in how specific they can be, and sometimes in where they come from. Chekhov's Gun is an example of this; Chekhov advised that if you have a rifle on the stage in Act One, it should be fired in a later act. Otherwise, leave it out of the staging. This literary technique is both an example of foreshadowing (in that a seemingly unimportant object becomes significant later on) and minimalism, in that Chekhov advises that nothing should be mentioned that is not significant to the overall plot. Chekhov's gun is a technique that appears again and again, in film, television, literature and comic books. Sometimes the technique is used effectively - the "gun" is subtle enough so it comes as a surprise when it's involved, but noticeable enough for us to have the "Ohhhhhhh" moment when we realise we should have known all along. Sometimes it's ineffective; it's too obvious when first mentioned, or too subtle for us to even notice it at all.

Some effective uses of this technique are in 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' and in the 'Harry Potter' series. In 'The Hobbit', the Ring Bilbo obtains from Gollum is a magical novelty; in 'The Lord of the Rings', it's the most important object in the entire story and the central plot point. There are a lot of examples of Chekhov's Gun in Harry Potter. To name but a few, the Deluminator which opens the first Harry Potter book becomes a significant object in the last, and the cursed necklace which Malfoy examines in the second book is used by him as a murder weapon, four books later. The time between the first appearance of the 'gun', and its significant second appearance in these examples is particularly skilful.

In the Alex Rider books, and in several James Bond books and films, the spy is given several gadgets designed to help him. These gadgets are coincidentally EXACTLY what the spy will need in his next mission. Either the gadget designers are psychic, or this is a very poor use of Chekhov's Gun.