The Shallow End: Closer Magazine

(Welcome to my weekly column of guilty pleasures and shallow delights! PatB)

Closer magazine has the power to fascinate and disgust me in equal measures. Not least at my own reaction to this byproduct of modern culture.

Brain

It's a bit as though I was quietly picking my nose some innocent Tuesday afternoon, and unexpectedly pulled my own pulsating brain out, impaled on one elegant pinkie.

I'd have to just look, and blink, and maybe poke it a bit further, and work out how consciousness hasn't ceased yet in the face of this brave new horror - but at no point could the experience be called wholesome, or edifying.

I first picked up this atrocious excuse for journalism when I was nursing a loved one, 24/7, through what later turned out to be a terminal illness - the sleepless nights and locked-in tedium called for reading material, and nothing too heavy either, and the innocent pink stylings and dirt-cheap price caught my eye.

This magazine is the equivalent of some hideous Frankenstein's GM mutation of the logic - it regularly obsesses about celeb weight loss, celeb weight gain, anorexic teens and people so fat they cannot lead functional lives.

And whatever story it reports, there's an underlying implication that You The Reader know better, and have wisely maintained that "sensible approach," to both food and arse size, that is the supposed holy grail.

Fridge Raider

A weekly feature called Fridge Raider - I shit you not - offers possibly the most trite advice on diet you'll ever find this side of "don't eat poo, or fireworks" (fruit and vegetables are good for you! - no shit Sherlock?) and the magazine's actual main domain name on the net is closerdiets.com.

This week, we learn that Kate Moss is ethnically white, and Not Fat (breaking news, hold the fucking front page, because I thought KM was Oprah's nom de plume?!) and some pictures of her being - well, pale skinned, and slim - appear in the Pulitzer-died-choking page 5 accusatory article, "Here's Kate on a healthy baby diet!" - obviously I've spared you the full-on capitalisation there.

This devastatingly insightful commentary quotes various wafflings from: "An onlooker"; "A source"; ooh I'm impressed - and then rounds up this waste of manifest existance with the cracking observation that she went out in a minidress that "left onlookers horrified at her skeletal white legs."

Now, as a gay man, I'm not a fan of female legs in anything but the most abstract sense, but trust me, they're not skeletal (don't for god's sake buy this crap just to verify that fact) - they're just the legs of a normal slim woman. They're actually very pretty, there are many far skinnier ones I could think of.

Logic

Anyone who was horrifed by those pins needs to get themselves to a shrink quickfast, as we used to say back in my army days. And then it all talks some crappy blah about some kind of high-protein pregnancy-promoting diet... but by then this story has attained all the journalistic credibility of "Aliens Raped My Cat" and I just tuned out.

Next up in this week's car-crash for the rational mind is an article about Victoria Beckham. If you've read any of the shallow-press's stuff about this married businesswoman and mum-of-three*, you'll know that they tend to think she's not fat enough.

(*I can't work out why the media, who usually delight in persecuting insecure single mums on benefits, have taken someone who's the exact opposite as their main whipping horse, but I know the tabloid/gossip mag world doesn't use our earth logic.)

Closer meets its usual standards of reportage by quoting ""A source close to Posh (said)"; and then it waffles on about her - weight, and how she was photographed drinking (gasp - wait for it!) WINE.

Things like this suddenly make me a want to be militant atheist, because if these judgemental fuckers are made in God's image, I truly dread the prospect of heaven.

Thin

Turning the page (yes, there's no respite) I have a photograph that shows that Courtney Love is: 1. not a teeneager; 2. quite thin right now.

Good on her? Nope, we have to pick on her tummy, which perhaps not suprisingly on a mum of 42, doesn't resemble that of a 12-year old (imagine the headlines if it did - yeach, I could die from the self-righteous crap that would generate).

I'll skip "Pammie's Boob Job Goes Lumpy" "Hot Mums Are A Beach Hit" and "Martine Gets A New Man - And A New Figure" (and the accompanying "Fears For Skinny Charlie (Brooks)" - gosh, wonder where these women get their body issues from?! Damned celebs!) and sundry other crap ("Get A Beach Bum By Summer!") and move straight to the aforementioned Fridge Raider.

This is the crowning gem of this magazine, in much the same way squeezing white pus out is the highlight of having acne.

Revelation

This week, actress Hannah Waterman (me neither) "reveals" what's in her fridge.

She says: "I go to Waitrose once a week if I'm organised enough."

WOW!

She eats, we are told, Soya spread (? yeah soya's great, wonderful), Feta, mozzarella and goat's cheese, free range eggs, a bunch of fruit and some other veg and meat. AKA - food, basically.

A nutritionist with a cute (and rather large) double chin then smilingly comments on all of this, with the combination of tired cliche and faint praise you'd expect - "It's also really important not to cut out a food group without checking with your doctor or a dietician" she burbles: but, "Luckily, this fridge is loaded with fruit and veg - good to see." Aw, shucks.

Harold Shipman

Now, I'm not sure which "food group" Hannah's cut out - "dairy" is quoted but the SLIGHT mention of three kinds of cheese makes me think she may need a dictionary - and I wonder endlessly at the magazine safe-haven of "Check with your GP" - if you were 56, female, and your GP was Harold Shipman, that endless fail-safe advice may have misfired somewhat. GP as national treasure/font of all wisdom, another tired cliche.

There's more - sundry advice columns, puzzles, and a TV guide that has the saving grace of having large full-colour pictures of anyone sexy - but it's shot its load by then, and waist size gets barely a mention.

So, Closer - yes, I buy it most weeks.

Fancy

Yes, it's disgustingly inconsistent on women's weight issues, health issues, body-image issues, and offers extremely unoriginal ideas like - eat fruit, it's good for you.

But a little bit of what you fancy does you good, and if watching this sad carnival of foolish fantasy, aggressive envy and journalistic ridicule helps me to establish my own fabulousness - and actually have a bit of respect and sympathy for people caught in the public eye, which let's face it our British anti-success culture hardly promotes - then it's served its purpose in my life.