Recently I've begun to think about my blog as a sort of lifestyle magazine. But one that kind of turns things on its head. Usually in the glossy magazines you associate with the phrase start with something utterly materialistic and then works its way from there.
For instance, if it's an interior design magazine, it starts off with pictures of million dollar homes in exotic locations. Everything from their is accessories to this lifestyle focus. If it's on the other hand a men's lifestyle magazine, we apparently need help accessorizing just to express what we already are. For what we already are is something we should be content with. We may wish for other, bigger and better things, but may never disclose it.
The third example, which is a lifestyle magazine for women, I would like to expand slightly more on. These tend to start with giving women tools for changing what they're not happy with about themselves, particularely weight, but also what way to dress, accessorize and communicate. They then go on to tell women how to understand men and where the limits are, what is out of bounds and what is acceptable in terms of a good heteronormative boy-girl relationship. This off course starts with the fact that these (for the most part young) girls have not attained a sense of self worth enough to know where the boundaries are, without having to be told. These magazines jump on the wagon before girls have been able to establish this sense, and are doing a swell job promoting feelings of falling short to this endless staircase to perfection. All magazines like Elle and the likes doesn't even have to justify their existance, as the teen mags have been hammering in their message with such success that women tend to have accepted their need of guidance and crave further guidance once out of adolecense, having reached adulthood. Inventing words like pretentious to make people hear the sound of an inner mocking bell that tells them not to dive to deep - after all, we're getting quite far away from the surface, right? All according to my subjective observations and analysis, off course.
If I were to sum this up, one (very crude) suggestion could be: Men's magazines doesn't deal in dreams. Women's magazines doesn't deal in reality. How to get your dream job through your "manly agressive means" is something you're supposed to know when reading these mags, all you need is to finally accessorize to make the statement that you know. Women's magazines on the other hand ignores the fact that reality is hugely tilted in favor of men's (stereotypical) behavior and codes. And the sollution offered is always to succumb to this ('learn to communicate', 'how to be a bossy boss', 'negotiate like a man' and so forth). The norm is to neatly place yourself within these categories and find happyness either by ignoring dreams or ignoring reality.
I've come to gather that my main audience is female (now I'm talking about live performances, it's very hard to gauge what the case is with record buyers). And the people who book me are usually males who are keen to keep this clientell in their clubs. So what does my lifestyle magazine want to suggest to people? Do I want to be an Oprah (or Malou von Siwers) who gives people a triathlon of selfhelp tips, that no one really has the possibility to take them time off from life to realize?
This lifestyle magazine doesn't deal in a primary currency of dreams or reality. It deals in uncovering reality so that we can dream up a reasonably realistic scenario that can go from being a utopia to a nowtopia, without having to lower our visions to only including materialistic goods. This lifestyle magazines doesn't say that you have to like certain music, or certain food or certain theology. They are all tools in trying to uncover deep structures in society that can be said to either create or stand in the way of meaning and peace.
This lifestyle magazine is not a quick fix in that sense. Instead, it's one man's journey through these different experiences, with reports on what tools have been found joyous, useful or troubleing along the way. And there is no way of doing this, without being pretentious. Pretentions to me, are but one of the useful tools I've learnt to harness so far.
Jonatan
Editor in Chief of JonatanB Lifestyle Magazine
