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Summary: Blyth's bid to return to media as a right-wing pundit
Review: After getting bounced from Ladies Home Journal, here is Blyth's desperate attempt to return to the media spotlight, this time as a right-wing pundit. "This is someone over 6o who wants to create a big-enough stir to get on TV" remarked Cosmo editor Kate White.
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Summary: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!
Review: And i'm not going to waste my time delineating the innumerable inadequacies of this tediously boring book that offers no new insights into the industry and beast that the author slavishly served for so many years. Blyth is trying to spin herself into another career and she only comes off as an Anne Coulter wannabe in need of a good editor and a better subject.
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Summary: A fun gossipy read with info ever woman needs......
Review: 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].
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Summary: Ugly Truths Behind the Pretty Pictures
Review: By Bill Marsano. Women protest against our culture's impossible standards of physical beauty but refuse to rebel against the women's magazines that promote and profit from them. The May issue of Vogue has Nicole Kidman on the cover yet again. Inside: 12 pages of photos in which she says not a word. Beauty is <that> important to Vogue. Now read the cover credits on page 42: "Actress Nicole Kidman in a Christian Lacroix Haute Couture oyster satin sheath dress. Lorraine Schwartz black-gold-and-diamond earrings. Munnu 18K-gold-and-silver double-strand diamond necklace. Fred Leighton 19th-century diamond flower brooch. Daniel Storto gloves. Makeup: Double Perfection Compact Matte Reflecting Powder Makeup SPF 10, Hydrabase Lipstick in Energy, Quarda Eye Shadow in Blue Notes, Precision Eye Deliner in Blue Jean, Instant Lash Mascara in Black, all by Chanel. Hair, Julien d'Ys; makeup, Stephane Marais for Cle de Beau Beaute . . . . Fashion Editor: Phyllis Posnik. Photographer: Irving Penn." With all that, <anybody> is going to be a knockout. If that doesn't convince you something's fishy, maybe Myrna Blyth can. She was top kick at Ladies Home Journal for 20 years or so and founding editor of More (for "older" women), and now, plagued with guilt, fesses up to decades of exploiting her readers. What she and her media "sisters" did and do is tyrranize and terrorize women: shape their politics by uncritically pushing a liberal-left agenda; foster health scares; frighten them about their physical safety; bemoan stress; harp relentlessly about their looks and weight. The result is a media culture in which someone like Zoe Baird, Clinton's failed nominee for Attorney General, was painted as desperate and sympathetic, despite her hiring two illegal aliens as housekeeper/nannies (for a $11,000 a year!) and skipping tax and social-security payments. You have to admire the chutzpah--not Baird's but the media's. How desperate could Baird and her husband have been on a combined income of more than $800,000 a year? The magazines' solution to almost all problems, Blyth says, is simple: Spend More Money. The goverment must spend more tax money on endless new "programs" for this and for that. Readers must spend more money on self-indulgent shopping and relaxing (sorry! I mean "stress relief"!). It will be noticed that a lot of the self-indulgent solutions are represented by four-color ads in the magazines. Which woman are these magazines really interested in: the poverty-line single mom with two kids struggling with two dead-end jobs out in Podunk? Or the one who has two kids in private school, a supportive husband, a fabulous job, high income with lush benefits, help that at the very least means a nanny and may include a maid and a car service--and <still> complains about stress? Myrna gives a hint: It might be the one who can afford Jimmy Choo shoes, spa visits that cost $600 a day, and long, long baths enhanced by $25 L'Occitane lotions and $30 "aromatherapy" candles. She fills us in on more--greedy, exploitive, hypocritical celebrities whose media appearances come at a price, both in dollars and editorial integrity, and she notes that those who disagrees with the magazines' political agendas are just not going to be heard from. You go along to get along in the women's mag world, or you do not get a byline. Then there's photo fakery. It's amazing what can be done with artful lighting and shadowing, and if those don't suffice, digitized photos can be manipulated endlessly. (The most famous photo faker was recently profiled in the New York Times.) One reported example: Some years ago Cindy Crawford was posing for Vogue, in a bikini that had lots of straps going in all directions, and one of them was esthetically at odds with her belly button--which was ditigially removed. Yes--her belly button! No wonder Crawford is quoted as having said "Even I don't look like Cindy Crawford." She doesn't spend much time on the most cynical of these magazines scams, which I call the Take-Back. First they remorselessly hype the latest fad breakthrough, running glowing stories month after month. Then, when the fad begins to die, they back off with second thoughts. Remember what happened to Quality Time? Well, now it's happening to Botox. Great Cure-All! Everybody's Doing It! You Deserve to Look Younger! Anybody Can! And now, in the same issue of Vogue, there's an article saying maybe Botox isn't such a good idea after all! Blyth unpretentious, workmanlike prose is clear and brisk, and in the end her has but two flaws. One is that it won't change any minds. Like Bermuda Triangle fanatics, women's magazine addicts can't change. Their delusion means too much to them. The other is the unpleasant odor hanging about Ms. Blyth, who fed profitably at the same trough as her media sisters for twenty years and has been well paid for this book as well. She's as guilty as the rest. She broke no laws but she betrayed her readers, inflicting utterly unnecessary emotional pain, confusion and doubt--for a paycheck. I'm sure she expects to be forgiven.--Bill Marsano is a professional writers and editor.
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Summary: Bitter, party of one? Your table's ready.
Review: Don't bother with Myrna Blyth's poorly-written, ill-conceived, right-wing rubbishing of the few American women who have managed to make names and careers for themselves in what is still, sadly, a man's world. Instead, go straight to the source: St. Jerome's medieval anti-woman diatribes. If you don't happen to read Middle English, never mind -- at least you won't have wasted your time on Blyth's self-pitying, middle school musings about how those popular girls are secretly really, really hateful.
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Summary: Finally!
Review: 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.
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Summary: A Quick, Interesting Read
Review: For any woman who has ever read Glamour or Cosmo, or watched a morning news show, this book will prove an interesting and revealing read into the backroom politics and intrigues of the "Media Queens," as Blyth calls the elite "Spin Sisters." The weakest parts of the book are Blyth's anecdotal evidence against the pervasive liberalism in the media and its harmful effects on the women that the media target. While it can certainly be argued that there is a liberal bias in most media, the negative effects of this bent are less clear.
For example, Blyth's characterization of Archie Bunker as the first staunchly conservative figure on a television show misses the point completely when she fails to state that the character was written largely as a parody against narrow-minded conservativism; her lack of detail causes her to lose some credibilty in her argument. However, her portrayals of the Media Queens and the first-hand accounts Blyth uses to illustrate their willingness to do anything to suck women in to their artificially created dramas, are interesting and insightful. Women of all political leanings should find something tantalizing in these stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Let The Buyer Beware
Review: I bought this book after hearing an NPR interview with the author. My mistake. Blyth sounds better than she reads. While some of the issues she discusses may be relevant, her writing style is repetitive & bludgeoning & her continual whine that the business she profited from is exploitive & manipulative is not a new concept. Authors much more articulate & eloquent have been discussing it for years & any woman with basic common sense can see through the industry's ploys without Blyth's finger-pointing. Women are already thinking for themselves & have been for generations so spare us your self-serving instruction!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book
Review: I bought this book after I read a great review of it in the Wall Street Journal and saw the author on TV. It's loaded with anecdotes of what really goes on in the world of magazines and examples of how the TV divas force their agendas on us.
This book is insightful and funny, too. I know I'll look at all media with a more critical eye after reading it.
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Summary: San Francisco Reader
Review: I breezed through this book and quite enjoyed it. I am truly tired of magazines and their absurd messages. Time to call a spade a spade-finally someone in the media comes clean.
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