Ten Steps to Increased Anxiety!

Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I am a women’s magazine addict. I am addicted not to Harper’s Bazaar, not to Vogue, but to the kind of women’s magazines that are displayed at the checkout lanes of your mid-range grocery store chains. It’s embarrassing, but it’s true. Whether I’m on the Stairmaster at the gym, or idling in the dentist’s waiting room, I hypnotically reach for the periodicals whose headlines promise to teach me how to “Organize My Life Once and for All!” and lose pounds fast on the grapefruit diet. You know—the types of magazines that feature Kelly Ripa on their covers. I’ve never seen the show she hosts, never heard her speak. But I know who she is. Because of women’s magazines, I know that Kelly Ripa has two high-profile jobs, a hunky Hispanic soap-star husband, and lots of children. And perfect skin.

Never mind that I don’t really need to know any of this trivia; I read it anyway. And then I can’t find the delete button for it in my brain. Useful information, like basic math skills and cursive writing, seems to vanish, perhaps obliterated by the onslaught of Kelly Ripa Fun Facts. Until someone over at the Mayo Clinic invents a neurological defragmenter, I will stockpile celebrity minutiae in my brain, and I fear that on my deathbed, instead of remembering my own children’s names, I will recall only the names of famous peoples’ offspring. Gwyneth begat Apple.

I now feel compelled to bring home at least one monthly cover image of Kelly Ripa with a turbo-fan flying mane of hair and a full-on, open-mouthed, manic rictus. (By the way, this type of smile, which celebrities have perfected, also happens to be a sign of aggression in chimpanzees. Keyword: Julia Roberts.) Never mind that I need this image like I need another hole in my head, or like I need its inevitable accompanying article, “Kelly Ripa’s Energy Makeover!” I know from direct personal experience in the glamorous world of show business that numerous celebrities derive their get-up-and-go from a glass pipe. Despite all of this, I feel powerless to stop reading, drop, and roll the hell out of the store without purchasing two or even three of these dirty little lifestyle rags. Yes, I do buy newsstand copies, furtively. If I subscribed to these magazines and the letter carrier knew my secret shame, I would expire of complications stemming from acute embarrassment.

I wish I could figure it out. It’s not like the magazines help or comfort me in any way. Despite repeated warnings from Good Housekeeping to “Get Started Now!” I remain a terrible procrastinator. The most cynical of all is Family Circle, which employs the double-whammy approach when putting together those hard-to-resist covers. Family Circle covers always have a mouthwatering picture of seasonal baked goods tumbling in artful abundance off dessert trays. A recent one features rich cream filling oozing out of a petit four that has been split in half—right next to a coverline, “Walk Ten Pounds Off In Ten Days!” But what really frosts my tips are the self-help articles. Talk about poisoning the well. Back in December, I read “Dr. Phil’s Family Sanity Guide for the Holidays.” I came home from Christmas dinner convinced that my family is but a Whitman’s Sampler of psychological afflictions. I used to think we were just colorful.

Flipping through them at the newsstand, I suspect that these magazines are actually mocking me and the other women who buy them. I think they’re edited by loveless, style-obsessed spinsters in New York City who don’t have families because they couldn’t fit them into their studio apartments. Instead they smoke and watch reruns of Sex and the City. I imagine them sucking down lychee martinis while brainstorming folksy, homespun articles designed to humiliate me. “Make Monogamy Sizzle!” Ha, ha, ha. Then they throw up lunch and go buy shoes.

I wonder if Kelly Ripa knows that her day in the media’s hot sun will end. Because these things are cyclical. Really, I wish Kelly Ripa no ill, for I feel I have come to know her. I wish her safe passage to the land of former women’s magazine cover girls. Marilu Henner, Lynda Carter, Marie Osmond. Pricilla Barnes, Vicki Lawrence, Dinah Shore. One day soon Kelly Ripa will join the ranks of these bygone celebrity Everywomen, who were recognizable and pretty, but not too sexy. Until then, may her beautiful countenance smile upon us from the magazine rack, a beatific, if disposable, Madonna extolling the virtues of low-impact aerobics, slow-cooker meals, and “Goof-Proof Eyes, Lips, and Hair!”