Better (than everyone else) Homes & Gardens

I have a love/hate relationship with the magazine, Better Homes & Gardens.  Mostly it’s love, but every now and then a major hate attack comes up.  One of the items on my summer to-do list is to go through all of my old magazines (I found one from 2006 today!), clip what I like, and then recycle the magazine.  I think that for the most part, magazines like Better Homes & Gardens are indispensable for gardening ideas, decorating tips, and even fashion insight, but most of my hate comes from the fashion category.  Lately, Better Homes & Gardens has had this section they call Style, and they choose someone, usually famous for their style, and they write up a spread about what she wears.  So here comes the hate. 

In a recent article, the blogger Lindsey Calla was featured.  Cute girl, fashion guru, but she says she also focuses on fashion on a budget.  In the piece, she says, “I’m a real person on a real budget, not a model in borrowed couture.”  Well, let me just say that I would love to have her budget.  The total tab for the outfit she is photographed in was a whopping $889.00.  Are you serious?  I haven’t spent that much on clothes in, well, never!  Maybe that is my problem.  I’m just not spending three hundred bucks on a rain coat, yes, the rain coat she is wearing is over $300.  Really?!  And is she is budget conscious?  Whose budget???

Now I know I do not have an enviable fashion sense.  I don’t even have fashion sense.  I generally wear the same pair of khakis two or three times a week (washed of course).  I counted, and I have nine tops that I attempt to rotate.   I really think that this style dilemma has a lot to do with my weight, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.  Seriously, though.  I will not pay that much for an outfit, no matter how good it makes me look. 

Onto another article…same section, but this time, the quote they pulled out was, “The perfect hostess outfit is all about comfort—flats are always my pick—plus something shiny and eye catching, like a fun necklace.”  Well, the aforementioned “fun necklace” that the Better Homes & Gardens staff picked out for this little get-up was over three hundred bucks.  Maybe I’m supposed to wear it with the rain coat?  This outfit also featured shoes over a hundred dollars, but apparently that is par for the course.  I really think I’m being priced out of this magazine.  Oh, and there is a perfect hostess outfit?  Maybe that is why I don’t host parties. 

Okay, another issue…the Spanx lady.  She supposedly created her line of cellulite slimming underwear because she couldn’t find anything that worked for her.  NEWS FLASH…slimming underwear won’t work for people who don’t have anything to slim!!!!  This is not rocket science, people.  Does that stuff work for people who tip the scales over 150?  Nope.  That is why there are skinny legs on the packaging and the Hollywood stars that wear them are already skinny. 

This last gripe of mine is about advertising, and it isn’t really specific to this magazine, in case you are thinking that I’m being a little harsh.  In the Lee ads, they have this impossibly skinny chick looking sooooo happy because her jeans are “instantly slimming” her.  Really?  I’ll tell you what instantly slimmed her, the fact that she hasn’t eaten in a week.  Or maybe she has eaten and she has one of “those” metabolisms.  What Lee should do is put a chubby girl like me in their ads and see if those jeans still work.  Oh, what’s that Lee?  They only instantly slim if you are already skinny? So, never mind about using me as a model. 

My subscription with Better Homes & Gardens will be up in a few months, and I’m not sure I will re-subscribe.  I just think that lately I am not in their price range.  Everything they feature seems to be out of my price range.  Some people relish the hunt for designer like things that cost way less, but that’s just not the khaki wearing, top rotating gal that I am.