No Guilt, Great Sex, Flat-Belly Secrets of Celebrity Moms: In which we briefly review the American magazine industry as represented by the reading material at the beauty salon

It's summertime and the reading is easy.

There are so many beauty, health, career, sex, money and parenting solutions on the magazine racks it is hard to believe you are still wearing your hair like that. Why haven't you tweeted your way to a better job?

We fall for the promise of Shape magazine's 10-minute total body-toning workout because that's the kind of stuff you can trust a magazine full of women in bikinis to deliver.

Plus, with only 9 minutes to devote to our own body toning regimen, including shower, we are not in a position to call them out. Even if they do seem to hedge a bit by offering a Plan B: Fake a Toned Body Tonight.

Likewise, we would never question the authority behind Cosmopolitan's Levitating Multiple Orgasm guarantees. We are probably just doing it wrong. Besides, no one knows this stuff like Cosmo. What other publication manages to reveal Never Before Revealed Sex Secrets month after month? Your own husband/boyfriend/dreamdate is always telling them stuff he wouldn't dream of telling you.

If Marie Claire tells us we can Look Like a Million for UNDER $100, we are ready to invest - despite the fact that their shopping list includes a collection of $98 accessories.

But we are pulled up short and spilling our lattes over the boldest of the Overly Punctuated, Multiple Typeface Manipulative Promise Headlines in the Summer Magazine Stack at the Beauty Salon - brought to you by Working Mother magazine: 

Never feel GUILTY again! (it's possible, we promise) 

Really? Has WM discovered the secret to silencing our inner Sanctimommies? Or perhaps a nice selection of summer reds for under $15 a bottle?   

Here is New York psychologist Dana Dorfman, who is quoted three grafs into the story:   "A person without guilt is a sociopath," she says. 

That is setting the bar a little high, don't you think?

Further reading from the Guilt Archives: Bad Mommy Diaries, Is a hobgoblin anything like a hamster?

Comments

[MommyTime]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what exactly is this article guaranteeing if the quoted experts say only sociopaths are guilt-free, while the headline promises us never to feel guilty again? It seems to me that the logical conclusion is that this article is a clear set of lessons on how to become a sociopath. Sa-weeet!

[Suburban Kamikaze]

Sadly no. For that you will have to wait for my forthcoming parenting manual: The Underachiever's Guide to Good Enough Parenting

SK

[Executive Suburbanite]

Sanctimommies is the title of your next book, after The Underachiever's Guide to Good Enough Parenting. Seriously, I would buy that shit asap! Even better would be The Overachiever's Guide to Dealing with a Mediocre Family

[Suburban Kamikaze]

We really should have switched them all at birth.

SK