Customer Reviews

Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness --- and Liberalism --- to the Women of America

5 star:		(22)
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3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Finally somebdody says it out loud: Most women's magazines sell misery. About 10 years ago it dawned on me that reading my favorite magazines was well, depressing. All the articles were either about losing weight, (You arent' good enough as you are) or were about sex (You aren't good enough) or how to get a man,keep a man, change a man (Men are the enemy but you can tame one through clever manipulation)or seemed to be pushing some new crisis. They painted a picture of American women that makes us look dumb, helpless and under constant attack. The lifestyle magazines were bad but the fashion mags were even worse. And they all seemed to be pushing a political agenda.

Today I still read a lot of magazines but the Vogues, the Allures, Redbooks and Good Housekeepings don't cross my doorstep. Martha Blyth was actually part of the women's mag industry for many years. She took part in slinging the women's mag slop and admits it. The book is very good and explains completely why women's magazines are so dreary and how the readers are being manipulated.

I just received Spin Sisters via amazon.com. After reading the first chapter and laughing out loud five times, I jumped online this morning to order the book for my mother, sister, two sisters-in-law and my best friend. I love the humor and the sneak peek into the media world. This book is juicy, pithy, fun and infuriating all at the same time. Trust me, you'll LOVE it!

Blyth puts words to why I quit reading most Women's magazines some years ago. And, yes, she affirms our very strong opinions that the Katies, and the Dianes, and the ones whose names we don't know in magazines are all Liberal and spin like crazy....not that most of us hadn't already suspected that. All you have to do is take a look at the New York Social Diary web site and see them all schmooze with the Liberal elite of NY including Hillary Clinton. Read how they make heros of the certain Liberal women but generally ignore those on the other side of the political spectrum.

I still read "More Magazine" (but may soon stop if Hillary's on the cover again); Blyth started More but is no long involved apparently. However, Blyth was for many years editor of Ladies Home Journal and admits to some of the same offenses she finds in others, except she is not a Liberal.

She also points out how they paint women as stress-filled and proceed to tell stories guaranteed to make you lose sleep, even though the examples given are less likely to happen to most of us than an alien spacecraft landing on our roof. There are many, many revealing instances here of how they sucker women into their programs, and their magazines with bad news, scary stories.

Perhaps you've noticed how Barbara Walters likes to make people cry; how many magazine shows get in close on personal stories of loss or illness...some have admitted they want to make you care and to care enough to keep tuning in. And they will make into a mountain a molehill tidbit from the Health mavens, but then wonder why you are "stressed". (Oh no. This child was poisoned by a potato!....etc.)

You'll enjoy reading about the lunch crowd at Michael's in New York...the sisterhood gets the best tables and pig out on their Cobb salads after sessions with their $750 dollar workouts.....
How much Katie pays for hair dos, their million-dollar apartments, their homes "in the Hamptons" and just how "like the average woman" they aren't. Which would be okay, except Blyth makes the case that they want us to think the opposite.

Read it, Ladies, and enjoy a good gossipy, informative read, and then start questioning the stuff you read in the rags and see on the [television].

Loved it! And thanks to Myrna for validating my feelings about women's magazines. After so many years of reading these things, women start to feel as if they never measure up to the celebrities on the cover (whose lives are usually a mess behind the scenes, anyway). These magazines are driven by product advertising, ladies, and the more we remind ourselves of this fact, the less we'll be sucked in by their trends and the not-so-subtle message that we need to be "fixed" and made over! Thank you, thank you for this book!

SPIN SISTERS is a book women and men, magazine writers and readers should read and will most definitely want to discuss. It will grab and hold your attention if not purely to satisfy your curiosity about a glitzy industry that touches many lives. As you might expect from its title, SPIN SISTERS is about several women media moguls who --- according to author Myrna Blyth --- mold and shape the minds of unsuspecting American magazine readers and television viewers.

These industry "sisters" --- namely Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric and Barbara Walters --- spin news to convince women that they are over-stressed, overworked and underappreciated, according to Blyth. Whether it's soft-pedaling questions to like-minded liberals or ignoring news that might not fit into their tilted field of vision, media queens are selling ideas, she says.

"...Nowadays the 'political information' you get, girlfriend to girlfriend, often has a definite 'one-perspective' liberal tilt. Believe me, I know the formula: disease and diets, sob stories and social issues, and stress, stress, stress. And I know the impact such a formula can have on one's ideas and emotions."

In essence, Blyth says, female media moguls have scared or convinced American women --- who enjoy more freedoms professionally and personally than ever before --- that they should feel sorry for themselves. And readers gobble it up.

"They are the media's Nay Nay Sisterhood who feel sorry for you because they feel so darn sorry for themselves," writes Blyth.

The meat of this story will come as no surprise to readers, but the author's candor might. Blyth, a tenured magazine editor and journalist, is at times downright caustic as she unveils the not-so-pretty side of her colleagues (in crime). And while she admits to employing some of their techniques to grab readers and hold a magazine's market share, she dishes up tasty morsels of gossip to which most viewers and/or readers are never privy: groveling for the "get" or acquisition of a celebrity interview, the backbiting among media queens who American women have learned to love --- even worse --- to trust. And there's more, much more.

Keep a pad and pencil handy as you read through these chapters. You'll need it. The book is thought provoking, but I truly hope that readers will keep a perspective on the magazine industry and its audience. That, in fact, is the author's stated goal, though it's buried at the very end of the book's 309 pages.

Blyth, unlike the spin sisters she writes about, is a conservative thinker. And her fear, she says, is that women have somehow bought into the prettily packaged stress, sex and simple recipes formula that sells today's women's magazines. After reading the book cover-to-cover, gasping at times at the details that I'd always suspected but never known to be true, two questions remain: Why after 20-some-odd years did Blyth decide to spill the beans? And are women really this gullible?

As a writer who contributes to women's magazines, I read this book with great interest. I not only write for women's magazines, I'm a reader as well, a magazine junkie. I agreed with some of her observations about ambitious women today who lament their daily lives instead of appreciating the opportunities afforded them. I did pause to question why there aren't more conservative viewpoints shared or addressed in the pages of mainstream women's magazines. And I found myself nodding while reading about the nauseating number of references to diets and sex on the covers of magazines.

In between her jabs and barbs at the spin sisters with whom she worked, Blyth touches on real issues for women across the world who struggle with having it all and never quite understanding what it is that they really want.

"How did we go from having no choices about our lives to having so many choices that it has made some of us a little crazy --- and so very self-involved? When did independence turn into narcissism and self-indulgence?"

At times I wonder how much media reflects society, or vice versa. It's a discussion I have with friends of my own --- women who work in the media as writers and editors, not as producers or anchorwomen. I've already promised to lend them this book and look forward to discussing it afterward.

--- Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw

I was ripe for this book's tirade against the alarmist, non-substantive media -- I've been turning off the TV and radio, and not renewing magazine subscriptions for more than a year. Like Ms. Blyth, I'm frustrated by the media's efforts to whip the public into a daily frappe of envy, worry and helplessness. And angry that their motivation in doing so is not public welfare but rather greed -- to attract the readerships and viewerships that translate into huge advertising revenues. So -- an important message, though not new and probably not a revelation to anyone (if it *is* a revelation, you need to read the book).

But Ms. Blyth gets stars deducted for the way she delivers the message. The book's thirty pages of endnotes and indexing implies a substantive project. Instead, the writing wanders, unfocused and bloated, for 300 pages. It's hard to find more substance than what I summarized in three sentences of the first paragraph of this review. Rather than witty, I found the tone to be ickily catty and mean-spirited. And Ms. Blyth's credibility is eroded by her participation in this media scheme for 21 years as head of Ladies' Home Journal ... her efforts at penance now through this book are weakened by the fact that it's the reader who's paying $$ to read her apology.

My recommendation: read this book's dust jacket to remind yourself of what you already know -- and then use your energy to avoid the media's messages instead of reading this book.

It's nice to finally have someone give a voice to women who don't want to be blind followers of the liberal viewpoints they're bombarded with by the media. The inside stories of magazines are really interesting--especially when you find out how magazines get celebrities to appear on their covers.

What a great book! It's funny and fun to read, but also tells women the truth about what really goes on at women's magazines and in television designed for women. The models on the covers may be pretty but the picture Myrna Blyth paints sure isn't. The book is part expose about how women's media tries to manipulate us, scare us, and shame us into buying products. And part political, showing the subtle liberal slant that impacts women's media, but it's not a stodgy old conservative policy book, either. I laughed out loud more than once at the stories she tells, and I've already emailed my sisters to go buy this book.

It's about time somebody blew the whistle.

I was excited to receive this book in the mail last week, and must say that it was worth the money. Myrna Blyth cops to her own culpability as to that of her "spin sisters" in taking the eyes of american women off what is reality and placing them on false beliefs rooted in fear and self pity. As a former "magazine junky", I too am at fault--for trying to design my life around the whims of women who don't really have an idea of what the average woman is like. Who can really blame them--living in the land of opulence shields you from a lot. In my opinion--there were too many references to comparisons to america pre and post 9/11. This type of thing has been going on for a long time and the only recourse we as women have is to not get suckered in by it.

This book was fantastic. It's almost as if Myrna Blyth collaborated with me when she wrote the book. The author very succinctly captures my thoughts and emotions regarding the topics she covers. It is such a relief to know that I am not as alone as I thought, that my morals, beliefs and ethics regarding traditional values are shared by alot of people. I recommend this book to all women and even venture a little further and recommend it to all husbands and fathers. Myrna Blyth defines the path the media wants you to travel down and then offers you the path less traveled but more rewarding.