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

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

List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $9.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: I found "Spin Sisters" provocative, interesting and entertaining. What the author says deserves to be said. She makes important points about media for women and politics. As one reviewer commented it is a book for women who are tired of not thinking for themselves.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: So-So
Review: I found this book excellent and confirms everything I have suspected since my early 20's. I always wondered why and how they can peddle the same article objectives month after month with each magazine and women's issue blending into one big blurb of ultra-liberal messages and agendas which in a subtle but powerful way impress upon very young and not so young women.I will never look at a "womens" magazines and some women media elite ever the same way again....a real eye-opener

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: guilty pleasure
Review: I have always considered women's magazines to be the perfect antidote to the cumulative effects of shrieking feminists. Andria Dworkin says all heterosexual sex is rape? Redbook tells about "The sex skill men adore, and how to do it well."

Women want what they want and publishers are smart enough to give it to them. The women who complain loudest about being forced to compete with each other as sex objects are the ones who can't get a date at the men's prison barn dance. The fundamental stress in women's lives is trying to convince themselves they want something more than a high-status male and lots of children to secure her place in his cozy household.

Blythe offers no real insight as to what message the women's media industry SHOULD be offering women but she does dish delightfully on her former covenmates.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Revealing and very funny
Review: I have an interest in modern culture and the impact of the media, so this book seemed a good read for me. Initially, I thought it might be a bit depressing. However, it is a pretty entertaining book. We are awfully good at whining in our country and Blyth points this out in hilarious and sometimes bitchy detail.

Yes, life in the 21st century is stressful, but so much of it we bring on ourselves through ridiculous expectations or by allowing ourselves to be influenced by the marketers looking to sell us a better and stress free life. Blyth brings that point home loud and clear.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Had to share...
Review: 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!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Please. . .
Review: I understand the ways in which the media manipulates, but it goes both ways, Blyth. Fox, Limbaugh and Hannity managed to get Bush elected again with the worst performance record ever. The fact that one reviewer suggests Coulter would like this book is certainly a reason to toss it aside. Susan Sarandon is not like me? No kidding. Neither is W like the average American, but he won on that platform spin. His family is blue blood from Connecticut--he attended Yale, Harvard (all on the merits of his daddy), but nonetheless, he has a silver spoon education. The Dixie Chicks aren't proud he's from TX--Connecticut does not want him either. (He was born in New Haven, CT, by the way). I am not a victim--I never thought I was. The point is all of us should be watching every level of the media with an open mind--it is obvious we didn't during this past election.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Another example of media's lies
Review: I used to wonder-is it just me or all the women are really whiny men hating anti-gun trampy feminists? I mean, if you read any women's magazine that's all you see. This book makes me think that may be things aren't as bad as i thought they were.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good read.
Review: 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.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good Message, Bad Messenger
Review: 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.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The fallacy of the author's thesis has already been proven
Review: If "liberal" ideas have the effect on women that the author claims, then how was George W. Bush reelected in 2004? Obviously the "liberal message" isn't working and her thesis has been disproven.

Besides, these magazines' portrayals of super-rich celebrities as "normal" people just like you and me is a prime example of how in the U.S. we are taught to worship the wealthy and to believe we, too will be wealthy one day. Sorry Ms. Blythe, that is not a liberal idea, but a conservative one. Also, the gossipy, malicious, tell-all that this book is merely panders to the lowest common denominator and to the baser instincts which conservatives always bemoan liberalism and the sleazier aspects of pop culture as appealing to.

I'll be the first to admit that most mainstream women's magazines influence women to believe they are overweight and that these magazines sanitize celebrities' home lives, but if you want a solution to or an intelligent analysis of these issues, this isn't it.


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