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Are Women Human?
Dorothy Sayers wrote Are Women Human? to point out that you can’t deal with ‘women’ as a category, but must encounter them as individual persons. We can learn a lot about what women want, though, by looking at the magazines they buy. It’s a pretty short list, judging by that criteria. Women, it would seem, want:
- Validation, Inspiration and Motivation
- Help with Duties and Responsibilities
- Stories of Kindness, Miracles, True Love and Overcoming
- Beautiful, Well-Organized Homes
- More Time, More Money, More Self-Discipline
- Safety
- Newness of Life/Fresh Starts/Makeovers
- Good Health
- Treats
There’s nothing wrong with those desires, or those magazines (though I suggest you stay away from the ones that amount to soft-porn), but there are a few things the marketing research isn’t picking up on. Notice that the attractive magazines focus almost wholly on a woman’s doing and her getting.
For a real, individual woman-person to be fulfilled, she’s got to focus on her being and her giving.
When these magazines magnify her fears and needs and appetites to sell her something, they heap on the pressure to be always doing, acting, buying. I merely point out the disproportion to raise awareness of the potential for your balance to be affected adversely if this pressure operates beneath your conscious regard.
Here’s my prayer for you who read:
“May all your reading contribute to your inner beauty, your creativity, your self-giving and self-expression, your health and your highest ideals of community, virtue and personal fulfillment. May you find in your reading materials no interference with your spiritual growth, but instead, material for contemplation of the work God is doing in and through your life.”
Blessings to you and yours!
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