Anonymous asked: Hello :) today I was reading through my old cosmo magazines (I thought you'd be interested in this) and I got to the August 2010 issue and found the article, "Bound back (fast) from a bad health move" which at first glance looks like a really good article, but then you look at the picture and it's a girl sitting eating pizza in pyjama's, surrounded by pigs. Now, this is already pretty awful, but the caption makes it worse, it reads "Keep Eating like that and no one will be calling you Babe."

Wow, Cosmo, really?

That’s one of the worst parts about the magazine, in my opinion. They pretend they care about you but it’s obvious they mostly just want to reinforce negative stereotypes so that you’re so down about yourself that you feel like you have to continue reading their magazine because you’re so pathetic without them. (Generic “you” being used here.)

While the article on its own probably wasn’t that bad, I do take issue with the idea that we need to bounce back quickly from doing something “bad.” I don’t recall the article off-hand, but I’m assuming it probably was along the lines of “If you’ve eaten too many carbs, remedy this by doing [x]” or “If you went out binge drinking last night, do [y].” Cosmo is OBSESSED with the idea that the things we do to our bodies are either “good” or “bad” instead of simply looking at them as things. Like, it’s okay to eat a bunch of cookies. They’re just cookies. Cookies aren’t bad and you aren’t bad for wanting them/eating them. Hell, if you want to eat 100 cookies in one sitting, it’s not really Cosmo’s place to judge you. Your body, your life. Their faux-concern for people’s “health” really grates my nerves.

I think that toxic ideology really spills over into the very photo mentioned by anon: they put a woman — a person, a human being — at a table surrounded by pigs, a symbol for “gross, sloppy and fat”? It’s so fucking extreme. ONE decision does not make you a bad or gross person. You’re just a person! Making decisions! And if that decision means you eat an entire pizza, eat that entire pizza! Cosmo really prides itself on shaming people — especially women — into feeling guilty about the decisions they make regarding their body when really it’s none of their fucking business.

And, of course, THE WORST THING EVER would be not having a guy call you ‘babe’ — because, of course, eating pizza makes you fat and fat people are gross and nobody will ever love them! There’s so much fear-mongering; being fat is not the end of the world. All fat people are not unhealthy in the same sense that not all thin people are healthy. So for them to imply that if you make a “bad health move,” you’re on par with ANIMALS THAT ROLL AROUND IN THEIR OWN POOP, and, consequently, no one will ever love you, Fatty McFatterson? That’s pretty sick and twisted. It makes me feel sorry for the people who write this shit and probably actually believe they are useless if they gain a pound or eat a piece of cheesecake. They’re not. You’re not. You’re wonderful and beautiful just how you are.

My apologies for the novel. But, also, hi! I’m flattered that you thought to share this with me. Thank you. :)

P.S. What’s wrong with wearing PJs, Cosmo?!