There are two main reasons that I bought Closer magazine this week, one of which was the cover line ‘BIZARRE REAL LIFE: My boyfriend dresses as my twin sister!’ Like, does it mean that he dresses as if he were her twin sister or does it mean that he dresses exactly the same as her current twin sister, meaning that whenever they go out they actually look like triplets? Is this woman the ultimate narcissist? Or is she so generic-looking that anyone would look like her twin sister if they wore her clothes? Is she, in fact, the everyman?
I had to know.
I had to know.
The other reason is that it was cheap.
Once I opened the magazine, I began to realise that this wasn’t a normal Magazine Reading Session but instead an Incredible Journey of Self-Discovery. Come ride with me on the Journey of Self-Discovery. Come sip on my vial of sarcasm and savour its bitterness. Come swallow misogyny and regurgitate it as media satire. Come… well, you get the idea.
So, obvs the first thing I did when I had the magazine in my excitedly clammy little fingers was to flick straight to ‘BIZARRE REAL LIFE: My boyfriend dresses as my sister’. Spoiler alert: he just dresses like a girl sometimes. Which obviously makes him ‘like her twin sister’, leading inevitably to the sentence ‘Dating Shaun is like having a lover, a best friend and a sister all rolled into one’. Because those are three things we’ve all been dying to collate.
I’d also like to point out that at the beginning of this feature, the point is made that Shaun functions as A REAL MAN IN SOCIETY despite sometimes wearing women’s clothes, ‘driving a delivery van, going to rock concerts and playing in a band’. He can drive, you say? He goes to rock concerts? The specific and exclusive hallmarks of maleness! How anybody could do such things while also owning dresses just blows my fucking mind.
Next up, appropriately enough, it’s the singer who gave the world the lyrics ‘He’s gotta be so macho’, a song which made us all claw our brains out of our skulls in the nineties and therefore explains why we’re now all so stupid that we use hashtags in Facebook statuses. That’s right, folks, it’s Sinitta. The best part about this article is that it annotates an image of Sinitta with the incredible sentence: ‘Sinitta wants to reveal all about life in Simon’s harem’, and other one directly below that straight-facedly states: ‘Simon’s harem includes (l-r) Lauren, Mezhgan and Sinitta’. No, hang on, I just noticed that there’s a box in the corner where they’ve wheeled out Samantha Brick to ‘reveal her fears’ for Sinitta. That’s the best part about this article. You could not make this shit up.
Now it’s JORDAN. The gist of this is that she’s going to write another book, and this time it’s going to be about that cage fighter bloke. I flick the next page while ordering an advance copy on Amazon (I mean, ahem, my local independent bookstore.)
Next, ‘Kerry Katona’s been craving takeaways’, plus the shocking truth that Cheryl Cole might think about one or more of her exes from time to time. Don’t tell me Closer magazine doesn’t have its finger on the pulse of human existence.
Time for that god-awful middle section they call CELEB INSIDER (in LUMINOUS PINK AND BLUE WRITING.) Summary: pictures of Miley Cyrus humping a can of Vimto; Chelsee Healey (who?) saying that even though she’s a size 6, she still feels fat; this weird thing: ‘Celeb highs! Mark Wright was chuffed last week when his stunning fiancée, Coronation Street actress Michelle Keegan, was voted Hottest Woman on TV by FHM magazine. Well-deserved, we think!’ I literally can’t think of a single reason why the sentence wasn’t ‘Coronation Street actress Michelle Keegan was chuffed last week when she was voted Hottest Woman on TV by FHM magazine. Well-deserved, we think!’ Unless winning Hottest Woman on TV from FHM magazine objectifies you so much that everyone just starts displacing your emotions onto other associated people around you.
Now it’s ‘POSH: I WANT TO BE LOVED’. Which basically translates as: Victoria Beckham wants her new reality TV show to be a hit. Because sometimes, being loved by David Beckham is so vacuous and dissatisfying that it actually becomes reverse-love that sucks all emotion out your body and leaves you craving the sort of adoration only the entire British public can deliver. We’ve all been there.
Then ‘The X Factor Ones To Watch’, a feature so boring that people have been known to fold it into tiny torn-up pieces and inhale into their lungs so they slowly bleed to death from loads of tiny papercuts rather than have to sit and read it a minute longer.
A couple of pages later, ‘LONELY KELLY VOWS: I won’t take Danny back, but I can’t cut him off!’ This begins a deluge of Women In Distress/Single Women Fall Apart articles that are so indistinguishable from one another I’ll just lump them all in this one paragraph.
Vanessa Feltz’s column has an interesting twist with this little gem tucked in amongst speculations about the outcome on Strictly Come Dancing: ‘It’s almost become fashionable to accept that any form of locking people up in psychiatric hospitals is a bad thing. But…’ INSERT DAILY MAIL OPINION HERE. How…unexpected.
Then it’s an interview with some woman who got pregnant in her 50s. Obviously the whole point of the feature (which has her posing completely naked apart from a really strange pale pink silk skirt with a slit up the side) is meant to be like, EW GROSS PREGNANT OLD PEOPLE THINK OF THE NURSE WHO HAS TO DELIVER THE BABY FROM HER OLD PERSON’S VAGINA, but y’know, throw in a few sycophantic hyperboles like ‘incredibly brave’ and you might get away with pink slitty skirt voyeurism.
Some way down from here, ‘TOWIE girls show off their killer curves’. This includes one called Chloe who says ‘My new shapely look will help me find love’. So many words…so little time.Later on, the experts of Closer magazine have a ‘debate’ about whether Kim Kardashian should have been allowed to leave the house after recently giving birth to a Real Human Child. Conclusion: undecided. Why don’t they just keep those pesky umbilical cords attached, and then women wouldn’t go wandering away from their spawn all the time?
Hang on, ladybros, it’s STYLE WATCH! Today, ‘slebs have their style torn apart by meanies at Closer. ‘Pamela Anderson attracts all the wrong attention as she channels silk curtains,’ says the anonymous voice behind SW, ‘We have a matching cushion at home you can have, Pam.’ Tragically, Closer are betraying their fundamental failure to get with the times here. Channeling home furnishings and upholstery has been cool ever since Zac Braff wore a shirt that matched his parents’ wallpaper in Garden State. I totally got your reference, Pam. Once again, it’s just you and me against the world.
After Style Watch, we’re supposed to care about ‘My secret life’, confessions from a 2010 MasterChef winner. Unfortunately, I don’t.
FASHION. Apparently ‘everybody’s wearing’ snow leopard print coats and corduroy dungarees. Finally, my wardrobe becomes fashionable according to the mainstream. A pause for a five-second victory dance.
The most entertaining fashion question is ‘I love wearing my ripped jeans for the weekend, but is there a way to smarten them up for work?’ The official answer is not ‘Sew the holes up’, which would have been amazing. Instead, it’s to ‘choose slick accessories’, such as a pair of black Topshop sunglasses with gold and diamante decoration round the top rims. Because turning up to the office in ripped jeans and a pair of gold sunglasses says ‘I slicked up my accessories’, rather than ‘I spent my weekend at a Halloween rave and now I have a coke habit.’
Next, ‘Beauty Buzz’, where one of their recommendations is to spend £40 on an Olay ‘skin buffer’. Elsewhere, the board members of Olay laugh all the way to the bank.
There’s a heinously boring-looking article on fashion here that’s called ‘Nude meets white!’ You can probably see why I skipped it.
BUT WAIT! It’s a fuckload of diets (so you can fit into your leopard print jacket and your new pair of corduroy dungarees.) My favourite is ‘The Daytime Vegan Diet’, where you eat vegan all day (as the name suggests) and then ‘come 6pm, meat and dairy are back on the menu.’ MIDNIGHT STEAK AND CHEESE FEAST! Why don’t they just sell this advice directly to doctors who deal with all that childhood obesity malarkey they’ve been talking about in the news? It’s gold dust, I tells ya!
Right after the diets there’s a giant picture of a chocolate cake accompanied by a recipe. Naturally.
’30 SECOND MAN DECODER. WHAT HE SAYS: Let’s just be romantic and cuddle tonight. WHAT HE MEANS: I really shouldn’t have mixed beer, wine and cider tonight – my head’s swimming, I feel a bit sick and I really can’t feel anything below the waist, let alone get it up. I just need a nap.’ And what if he actually meant he wanted to cuddle?, I hear you cry. Well, then the answer’s simple: he’s a woman.
Relationship advice: ‘I fancy my friend, but he doesn’t seem to take the hint. How can I find out if he’s interested once and for all?’ The agony aunt replies: snog him. If he likes it, he’s into you. Jesus, it’s like she’s literally looked into a crystal ball and seen the future. Where do they get these psychologically nuanced, hyper-intuitive geniuses?
We’re at the back pages now, which comprise a TV guide and ‘Spot The Difference’. Spot.
The.
Difference.
The.
Difference.
This time I really am moving to that Tibetan colony. See y’all there.
Brilliant!!!
If you need/want to imbibe this drivel, stand in the supermarket queue behind someone stocking up for armageddon and read the copy at the checkout. Don’t part with money for it, it just encourages them
I’m in love
And that’s the reason why I won’t waste any money on this rubbish – it’s bad enough when I’ve had the misfortune of browsing through it’s pages whilst sitting in the dentist’s reception and feeling that I am looking forwards to being called in to the surgery!