Jane Doe

Ever since I strolled expectantly out to my mailbox this month only to come away empty handed, I've sat dejectedly at the pool, craving articles that don't come in pink and feature titles like "What's his intimacy IQ?"

Where, now that yet another magazine for smart women has flopped (See: Sassy), am I going to get coverage of the atrocities in Darfur, poignant commentary on the state of health care for the young and uninsured, tips on how to scheme my way into a thousand dollars and a rundown on the sexual proclivities of Justin Timberlake all in the same place?

Jane Magazine, the self-proclaimed paean to smart, sexy 20-somethings, filled a gaping void in the glossy entertainment industry. Namely-unlike those at Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Allure, and, in particular, USWeekly-the editors at Jane made an effort to provide lowbrow entertainment that didn't flat-out assume their readers had the IQs of bricks with tubes of expensive lipstick. Unfortunately, September marks the first Jane-less month in 10 years. Conde Nast dropped the magazine in response to a decrease in ad sales and lack of readership.

The fact that trash mags that insinuate that we're all the same whiny, issue-ridden wreck dominate the female 18-to-34 demographic is dismaying. The number of presumably intelligent women at Duke who consider magazine reading an acceptable pastime should not have to dumb themselves down just to spend an afternoon thinking about sex and jeans.

In fact, if I read another identical Cosmo that insinuates that my life would be perfect if only I had a man or a $600 pair of shoes, I am going to punt the next baby I see over my master's degree. And so should you, over your diploma that indicates you can read above the ninth-grade level at which Cosmo is written if that's all you've got. Frankly, we could probably learn more reading J.J. Redick's poetry (yeah, we grad students heard about that too).

And sure, several men's mags publish at the same depressing reading level, contain a similar amount of sexual content and even manipulate their fair share of insecurity, but a guy who wants to read a strictly-for-the-coarser-sex mag at the pool that doesn't insinuate he's Forrest Gump can just pick up Esquire or GQ, both highly successful glossies that surpass the monthly sales of remaining smart women's mags Bitch and Bust in mere days.

So why do magazines that stereotype women as insecure, man-obsessed idiots survive while those that dare call us "smart" don't? Periodicals like Glamour and USWeekly play upon common insecurities with articles that claim to help women accept themselves by harping on celebrity imperfections and telling us what is and isn't normal (both this month in Glamour), but these articles really begin a vicious cycle of convincing us we should have been concerned about celebrities and our normalcy in the first place. Next thing you know, you're buying magazines to help alleviate insecurities caused by other magazines.

Even worse, because women generally start reading fashion entertainment in their early teens, this stereotype becomes so ingrained by college that beautiful and dumb are fused together in our very conceptions of ourselves. (If you're not convinced, recall how many columnists have complained about Duke women dumbing themselves down to get men.)