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Reading Salon

I just caught up on reading the past month or two of Salon. A few items of note (you have to watch a commercial or subscribe to read these):

Don't buy it!
In this shallow, muddled critique, writer Stephanie Zacharek dons an indier-than-thou attitude toward shopping magazines, referring wistfully and unironically to the "early days" of Lucky, before the editors sold out. Zacharek -- a committed shopper herself -- calls Lucky, Cargo, and its ilk "art rock masquerading as art" and yearns for a magazine that portrays buying as "a way of exercising our own creativity." For those of us who hate shopping, this is like having an alcoholic review beverages; her idea of what's good and bad are on a completely different plane. I personally find shopping magazines refreshingly honest. There's really not much difference between Lucky and Glamor, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, or Self -- those are all essentially shopping magazines, too. At least Lucky et al. admit it.

American Girl crazy!
This is the Salon I've missed. Margaret Talbot wrote this smart and eye-opening piece on the American Girl phenomenon. She attributes part of the dolls' success to KAGOY; parents who fear their daughters growing up too fast see the historical dolls as a sort of an antidote, an anti-Barbie. Talbot also shows that American Girls are an economically and racially diverse lot; the company has created a Native American, African American, and Latina, and attempts to teach tolerance through history. However, the dolls are so expensive that only middle and upper-class families can afford them. Ironically, they end up dividing girls in the real world between the haves and the have-nots, as only those who have get invited to American Girl-related playdates and those who don't are left out.

God? Sure, whatever
I mention this article only because it reminded be of a superb piece that appeared in the New York Times Magazine a few years ago, The Trouble with Self Esteem, by Lauren Slater, which basically argues that self-esteem is grossly overrated.