And Marie Claire can go fuck herself.

I informed Ryan this past week that if there is only one thing that will be outlawed in our house when we have kids, that one thing will be fashion magazines. Alcohol, cocaine, rat poison, AK-47, fine. Cosmo, HELL NO.

Any magazine that even subtly insinuates that you must have a certain weight, height, size, shape, hair color, eye color, skin color, sexual preference, diet, wardrobe, exercise routine, pet, car, job, personal life, etc or else suffer the social consequences of being Weird is just not allowed in a 1/2-mile radius of my impressionable child, especially if that child is a girl. I refuse to allow any literature that portrays "weird" as anything other than "not mainstream". Weird is not bad, it's just different, and different isn't bad either, dammit.

Watch almost any TV show or advertisement, any movie, open up almost any magazine, and you'll see Beautiful People doing Cool Things. I'm in my twenties, and I still want to be that Beautiful Person playing with that Cool Toy; young children have no chance. Everywhere you look, you're being shown that if you don't look like This, you're just plain Doing It Wrong.

Just yesterday, I saw a Benefiber commercial on TV featuring a Beautiful Person. She was tall, blonde, slender, with big boobs and a teeny waist, with perfect skin and teeth. She was dressed in a white outfit that only covered her breasts and legs, and that just barely. For a FIBER SUPPLEMENT. If you need sex to sell your fiber supplement, then YOU'RE just plain Doing It Wrong.

Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, Seventeen, even "health/fitness" magazines like Shape are all about one thing: selling a product, which means selling an image, which means selling the idea that you're ugly and stupid unless you fit that image. If you go to Cosmo right now, one of the first things you'll see is a big box with "Want a Guy To Follow You Anywhere?", "Fierce Footwear", and "Why Stop at One Orgasm?", plus boxes with "Guess the Sex Position!" and "Sex Position of the Day!" and a man with his shirt off. Even with the aforementioned Shape, a relatively safe magazine focusing on fitness, health and exercise, the first thing you'll see is an advertisement for an appetite suppressant--because healthy women don't have appetites, right?

And every single magazine has tons of pictures of women--in the articles, in the ads, on the covers--that fit into the mold: big breasts, teeny waist, perfect skin and teeth, toned everything. Nowhere do you see a stretch mark, a pimple, a split end, a mis-matched pair of breasts, a gray hair (unless it's an ad marketed to the Mature demographic), a broken fingernail, or anyone above a size 6. And that's just unrealistic, dammit.

Real People have boobs ranging Honkin' to Non-Existent, and that's fine. Real People have skin that's smooth as satin or pocked with scars and blemishes, and that's fine. Real People have blonde hair, brown hair, black hair, red hair, silver hair, white hair, pink hair, blue hair, no hair, soft hair, kinky hair, hair with split ends, and that's fine. Real People are shaped like hourglasses, pears, upside-down pears, triangles, upside-down triangles, sticks, squares, and circles, and THAT'S fine.

You want to see a perfect body? A perfect person? Look in the mirror. You are who you are, you are WHAT you are. Some people just aren't born to have six-pack abs, or smooth hair, or porcelain skin, or an hourglass figure. And there is absofuckinglutely NOTHING wrong with that, there is nothing wrong with YOU if that's how you are. Walk down the street, and you won't see supermodels--you'll see real fucking people, with real fucking bodies.

These magazines insist that the only things that matter in life are (a) fashionable clothes, (b) hot guys, (c) sex, and (d) obtaining all of the above by looking "hot". I'm not apologizing for refusing to let that shit in the same house as impressionable children, and let's face it, we're impressionable children right up until we're 30. Then we become insecure adults, and that's a whole new set of problems.

If my daughter whines and complains and wants to read fashion magazines, fine. She can buy them herself when she's 18. The only way she's allowed to before then is if she shows that she knows herself well enough, and is confident enough, to not be influenced by them (plus saves up her allowance to pay for it herself). I want my child to figure herself out in her own time, through her own experiences, using her own powers of deduction and reasoning and no one else's, not even mine.

I know: I say that now, but just wait until the time comes and little Lucy is being SUCH a whiney little bitch about how all my friends get to read Cosmo, MOTHER, why can't I, you suck SO MUCH, I hate you FOREVER, and then we'll see how well I can stand my ground against the raw power of Teenage Girl Angst.

Bring it.