This month’s issue of Self featured a quick and dirty outline of all of those catty characters you’re bound to encounter on a daily basis…especially this time of year.

Who are these girls? Well, after being grouped off into 4 categories, Self describes them as either The Critic, The Social Misfit, The Blowhard, and The Nosy Nellie. Sound familiar? Sound like –god forbid– you?

Well, here’s the rundown. Read and learn, friends, because nobody wants their personality to be reduced to a catchy phrase used by woman’s magazines.

The Critic - will put you down or insult you…no matter what. Passive-aggressivly of course.

How should you handle the most common kind of annoying girl? Try to remember what your parents always told you. This kind of bully-ish behavior probably stems from her lack of sensitivity and overabundance of negativity growing up, so ignore her.

You have nothing to do with her bitchyness so when she asks if you really need that extra cookie smile, say “yes” and eat it. Either she’ll get the hint…or be miserable. Hopefully miserable. Read More »

One of my good friends finished college. Three cheers for her, I say! Way to get it done in four years.

Last night, though, this same good friend also got engaged to her boyfriend of two years. Um. Congratulations?

Yeah, yeah, so they’re in love, whatever. I get it.

I was in love once. I never actually talked to the guy, but it was there. I’m still a little baffled by her annoucement of love and commitment at such a tender age as 22. Maybe it’s me, but a lot of the time, I still feel 14. I just have so much to learn about myself before I can conceive of taking the black - and - white plunge.

And before she started dating her boyfriend — oops, i mean her fiance — my friend was right there with me, braiding my hair in the photobooth with an economy bag of fun - size Snickers and a stack of trashy magazines.

Now, she has the Big Job, the Big Ring, the Big Life, and I’m wondering what to do with all these issues of Jane and feeling like I should take the training wheels of my bike. Read More »

I have to decided that today is National I Have Tons Of Confidence Day.

Why have I decided this? Because a lot of us need a jumpstart on that old self-image, and having an artificial holiday is one of the best ways to get that started.

Besides, naming random days is fun.

So if you happen to be one of the millions of women who want to grab Confidence by the horns (or balls, whichever) but aren’t sure exactly how to start, I’ve come up with a nice little promise we can make to ourselves:

“I (insert name here),

Hereby promise to make today a day full of confidence. I will make a special effort to treat myself with extra care and take time to realize I am awesome.

I will forget about pulling on my clothes when I walk down the street. They look great on me.

I will stop thinking everyone is starting at me because I look weird for some reason. I don’t look weird, and maybe that guy was checking me out in a good way! Read More »

We all know insipid magazines like Cosmo and Redbook give men the impression the women are all about “Impressing Them in Bed!” and “Finding That Position That Makes Our Orgasms Last for 78 Minutes!!” and “Shoes!!!”

But have you ever wondered what guy mags like Stuff and FHM say about us? One women thinks they teach dudes to objectify us.

How groundbreaking.

Rosie Boycott, a former editor for Esquire magazine and freelance journalist for the Daily Mail says that men’s magazines are becoming more and more sexually explicit, and the women allowing themselves to be photographed are partially responsible. Read More »

Rumor has it that Teen Vogue is the next to get the axe.

I love gossip. And I love rumors. But this is just slightly ludicrous. I know this because I have been in the belly of the Anna Wintour bred beast. And it was scary. But Teen Vogue is not going anywhere.

If I know anything, I know that.

First of all, Teen Vogue isn’t like Jane. Yes, the folding of Jane was a surprise to her beloved readers. But still, TVogue (as the insiders refer to it) doesn’t have the problems that Jane had. You know, little things like EIC’s who get booted from the magazine named after them. Small stuff like that was just the beginning of Jane’s demise. So really, it wasn’t a surprise.

While Teen Vogue targets a niche market (kind of like Jane), it is gearing its content to the upper crust teenie boppers of American society who have much more money than the angry liberal feminist types that scoured the pages of Jane.

And let’s be honest, it’s still Vogue and that means more than anything to the higher ups at Condé. Like the names of the über important teenagers they feature on the pages of the mag, the Vogue name carries a lot of weight…unlike the people who work there. Read More »

I now have one more reason to think Condé totally sucks. As of today, Jane Magazine is no more. And I, for one, am pissed.

Jane was my favorite. Smart, empowering, funny and fashionable. Of all the women’s magazines on the stands, it was the least pretentious and the least likely to make me feel stupid and whorish. And as someone who has worked within the inner sororities of the magazine world, it was refreshing to see a magazine so unlike the others. The staff and the writers actually understood our generation of women and wrote for our demographic.

I never read Jane when under the helms of Jane Pratt, so I couldn’t ever judge Jane as it was under the reign of Brandon Holley. All I knew was that despite the fact that it wasn’t perfect (hell, what women’s mag is…) it was true and it was funny. And more than anything it was refreshing.

Which is why I am still harboring resentment against the pricks at Condé Nast Publishing. I mean if you couldn’t give me a job, or pay me at my internship, couldn’t you at least keep one of your better publications going despite its flailing ad revenue. Couldn’t you at least give me SOMETHING from your grandiose spot at 4 Times Square where, within its pages, I can find a piece of clothing I can afford, a sex tip worth trying or an easy way to make 1,000 bucks? Read More »

Tired of all the washed - up rags out there that regurgitate the same gossip and beauty tips month after month? Well, there’s a new magazine on the rack that will be offering some different material. Muslim Girl is a magazine catering to just that — young Muslim girls who feel alienated by trashy, sex - fueled magazines like Seventeen and YM.

While Muslim Girl will offer advice columns and fashion spreads, the advice columns will focus not on blow jobs and dieting but “ethical dilemmas,” and the fashion spreads will not have scantily - clad tweens but modest models. But the magazine will spend the majority of its pages emphasizing positive female role models in Muslim culture.

I think Muslim Girl’s “white” counterparts should follow its suit. Seventeen, of course, was at the pinnacle of my reading list when I was all of twelve (I moved on to Cosmo when I was fifteen). For all the time I spent guiltily reading about crazy (and most definitely untrue) sexual exploits and blue eyeshadow, not to mention obsessively scrutinizing my developing body in comparison with the Brazilian models they used in photo spreads, I could have benefitted from some demure female role models of whatever ethnicity.

I’ve been reading Cosmo for a really long time—which is surprising since they’ve pretty much been putting out the same issue for, I dunno, ten years. The Cosmo Karma Sutra, X Number Of Tricks To Really Make Him Hot… it’s just the same thing over and over again.

Don’t get me wrong—I learned a lot from Cosmo when I was 15. Blow jobs—straight from the pages of this soft porn bible. And my gay friend Dave who taught us tricks on popsicles one summer night. Oh, those were the days.

Being older now, I kind of despise Cosmo. I hate all the sexual stuff and a lot of times I find myself thinking—aren’t women more than this? I mean, obviously we all think about guys (probably too much), but enough is enough. Can’t we talk about things like… politics, or even music that isn’t straight from American Idol? Why does the book excerpt have to be from a romance novel? I would even settle for simple chick-lit above the “he rubbed his rugged hands over my soft perky breasts as I sighed deeply in ecstasy.” Blech.

But I feel like Cosmo has reached a new low. In their new “exclusive Cosmo game,” Boy Toy “our cute sweet guy exists solely to serve you. That’s right, you control what he does, and if he keeps you happy, then you win points in the game. Watch out for the skanky ex-girlfriend though!” Um, gag me. Read More »