If I were to list the most extraordinary developments in American pop culture in my lifetime, I’d rank magazine population explosion right up there with the Hula Hoop, Nintendo, CDs, Michael Jackson and the Miracle Bra.
Magazines have increased in America the way nongrass grows in my lawn.
My teen son tells me there are now at least six magazines devoted exclusively to skateboarding. Motorcycle gangs have their own magazine (whose principal pictorial subjects seem in no great need of Miracle Bras). There are easily more movie magazines than there are movie stars, even if you count Heather Locklear. There are a half dozen or more magazines on guitars.
An acquaintance of mine who publishes a magazine just for folks who like phosphorous grenades and garrotting techniques (Soldier of Fortune) tells me that in the last 20 years, the number of monthly magazines in America has risen from about 1,500 to more than 3,000!
My one comfort in this is that there always has been a place where America’s magazine madness could never penetrate, and that is “society.” I don’t mean the chichi, arriviste, wannabe, face-lifted faux society you find in flashy, poseur society magazines like Town and Country, W and Vanity Fair, which are mostly full of movie stars these days anyway.
I refer to real society, which is to say, Social Register society, the kind from which one could be dropped just for marrying a movie star, or even thinking about it.
Real society has had no magazine because it’s had no need for one. By longstanding tribal custom, the only times real Social Register society folk have been allowed to have their names or pictures in the public print were their births, debuts, marriages and deaths.
If you see a magazine picture of some face-lifted blond at some disease charity function, wearing a low-cut evening gown (especially with a Miracle Bra), and identified as “socialite,” you can just about guarantee she’s not in “society.”
Imagine then how simply aghast and truly appalled I was to discover that real society, Social Register society, now has its very own magazine.
Astonishing, but true. The magazine is published by the actual Social Register. It’s called SRObserver, comes out every six months and is up to its third issue.
As I was much relieved to discover, the first two issues stuck rigidly to tribal custom by limiting the contents almost entirely to announcements of births (Miss Eloise Blavet Armour, Master Edan Zephyr Bowers, etc.), engagements (the daughter of the late Mrs. Duffield Ashmead III was betrothed to the grandson of Mrs. W. Ogden McCagg), marriages (Tyler Ingham, daughter of Shawn McWeeney Baroness Dimitri de Gunzburg, weds Christopher Weld, of Bedford), debs and post-debs (Southampton Bathing Corp.’s August Moon Ball), and, yes, deaths (Permelia Pryor Reed, Goodhue Livingston).
There were some actual articles–“A Brief History of the Valley Hunt Club,” “In the Old Days,” “Titanic Discovery” and “The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum”–but these involved mostly the dead as well, certainly in the case of the Titanic and Scott and Zelda.
But then I turned to hot-off-the-presses issue No. 3. There were births, debuts, engagements, weddings and deaths. There were advertisements for Tiffany’s, Custom Charter Yachts and, yes, The New England Historic Genealogical Society. There were articles about old dead things (“A Brief History of the San Diego Yacht Club”; also, how Estelle Frelinghuysen Morris sneakily had her Pekinese listed in the Social Register, har har, with a picture of a Mrs. Frothingham Wagstaff and her now-dead lap dog.)
Gosh. There was also an article about J. Whitney Stillman, who, true, did go to the Millbrook School, and, yes, did dance with Ann Follis at her 1969 coming-out party. But Whit Stillman is also the producer-director-writer of the insufferably snotty but vastly amusing films “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona.” These, don’t you know, are movies. Whit Stillman, golly Moses, is in Show Biz!
Amazing. Appalling. What next–Cindy Crawford’s tea-dancing tips?
SRObserver has gotten at least one rave (for society) review in its letters column:
“I think this will be a most interesting addition to the Social Register.”–Mrs. Vincent Villard, New York, N.Y.
But some side with me:
“The Social Register is a convenient address and telephone book–not a vehicle of publicity. The Social Register Observer cheapens all of us who are listed. I will not subscribe to the Social Register for 1995 if I am to receive the Social Register Observer.”–Miss Katrina Thomas, New York, N.Y.
“I wish you would cease the publication of the Observer–it isn’t in good taste, and it’s not the same size as the S.R.”–Mr. and Mrs. Philip C.F. Smith, Bath, Maine.
Not the same size? Oh, horrors.
