I was gratified to find out I’m not the only one who thinks Cosmo’s covers are over the top (WomanNews, Feb. 2, “Read all about it: Sex sells, but some say magazine covers are going too far”). I could never understand why a woman would want a magazine with a sexy, half-clothed babe on the cover, unless maybe she is gay. They make me feel inferior just looking at them, even though I know they’re all plastic.
— Mary Chingwa, Waukegan
Not only are magazine covers oversexed, but magazines themselves are oversexed.
Why aren’t there articles on developing your character and on what real, genuine love is? As for the covers, I lived in Europe for 1 1/2 years, and there are pornography magazines right on children’s eye level.
When I returned to the U.S., I was shocked to find that it doesn’t seem to be much different here! How disgusting!
— Karen Peach, Chicago
I do not think that women’s magazine covers are oversexed.Magazines are intended for people who want to look like the supermodels and are trying to follow the social style set by society. In order to give the readers what they want, magazines have to show them what they are aiming for. You can’t say buy the “new age bra” and not advertise a picture of it. People want to see what it looks like.
As for children viewing these magazines, I think it is the responsibility of the parent to control what their children can or cannot read. To ban the magazines from stores is unrealistic because it would cause children to rebel and want to see the magazine even more.
— Teresa Rendina, Elk Grove Village
SCIENCE AND FICTION
Writers and commentators on surrogate parenting often have trouble sorting out fact from fiction. Some, like your guest writer, Evelyn Storr Smart (WomanNews, Jan. 5, “A lovely family, made possible by science”), don’t even try. Sugar-coated as a tribute to science, Smart’s cynical and offensive piece portrays surrogate parenting and egg donation as luxuries for the very rich. By contrast, egg donors and surrogates are portrayed as poor (and therefore plentiful) women–yours for the right amount of cash! Smart asks if anyone ever thinks about the surrogates and egg donors once the children are born, but has she made any effort to find out?
Smart opines that all the money and resources spent on these babies (before and after birth) could be better spent helping the abandoned children of the world. But how many unwanted and abandoned children does Smart have in her own home? My hunch is none.
For information and articles on surrogacy, from those of us with actual knowledge and experience, readers can visit www.opts.com, the Web site for the Organization of Parents Through Surrogacy, a national, non-profit educational, support and advocacy group based in Gurnee.
— Shirley Zager, Gurnee
