Bikini Shots

Warning: rant ahead. First, here's the background. Over the years I've had an evolving relationship with People magazine. Back in the day, I used to enjoy reading it, and for a few years in the 90s I even had a subscription. The new issue usually showed up in Friday's mail and reading it was a relaxing Friday night ritual that I looked forward to. Over the years, unfortunately, People magazine, along with the rest of pop culture and pretty much everything else we're exposed to on every level of media, has been dumbed down and sexed up to the point where I consider it to be almost unreadable now. It was never the New Yorker, but it didn't used to be "all bimbos all the time" either.

So here's my rant: Do we really need this many cover stories about B-, C-,
or D-list actresses who lost weight and are now posing in bikinis? To refresh your memory, the cover story for People's April 6 issue was a picture of Valerie Bertinelli in a bikini, with a headline that said "Bikini Body at 48." My thought at the time was "Is this really the most intriguing thing happening in the world of celebrities this week?" That issue must have really sold well because this week's cover is almost identical. It's a picture of Melissa Joan Hart (who???) in a bikini, with this headline "How I lost 42 pounds". There's also a "before" picture that the sub-headline describes as horrifying. Would you like to guess what her horrifying "before" weight was? 250 pounds? 185 pounds? No, her horrifyingly fat pre-diet weight was 155 pounds.

I fully understand that the fate of the world doesn't depend on what People magazine chooses to put on its cover every week. The cover story's one and only purpose is to sell magazines, and pictures of women in bikinis is probably as good a way to do that as any. I just really don't like what that says about our culture.