Look at this! a bunch of amateurs made a magazine!

There's this new magazine that I really love. It’s called LOOK magazine. It might not actually be new. But it’s new in my life and that’s all that counts right? Well I suppose it is if you’re selfish. which I am.

Anyways, it’s a really great mag. It looks like Grazia, but it isn’t. I hate Grazia cos it thinks it’s really wonderful and acts above its station. “OOO I’m glossy and I sometimes have a little feature about women being sold to pimps and sometimes I’ll do a story about Africa” and then it’ll have a top 10 news this week countdown and one of the news items will be that Jennifer Aniston has a fringe.

I'm all for celebrity gossip. I go on the 3am girls website hourly. But just be honest about it. You can't have an article claiming that Angelina Jolie MIGHT be preggo and then talk about “issues”. I suppose when they thought it up they thought they were being well clever “what we need, like, is a magazine that comes out weekly but it’s GLOSSY! Cos women love shit that’s GLOSSY (it’s true. I do) and also women love ISSUES but they also love SHOPPING and SHOES and GOSSIP lol. We need to put them all in one place. Women”.

Another magazine that does that is STUPID I HATE YOU STYLIST but I'm sure you’re all aware of that.

Anyways so this new one that I love. We’ve established that it’s called LOOK magazine and it “looks” like grazia. (hahah funny joke). But why do I love it so much? Well they don’t pretend to be anything they're not. They like pretty clothes and celebrities and beauty tips. They also use models who aren’t quite plus size but look pretty normal sized. Which is really rare cos normally its super size or super skinny, right? And all the clothes and stuff are from the high street and not what celebs say is “high street” (French Connection, Selfridges, Cos, Banana Republic; 75 quid for a vest is not high street), but all the best stuff each week from Primark, Asos, Dotty P’s etc. I LOVE IT. It’s a bit dangerous though cos you can see you can afford it and your eyes go all funny and you get shaky hands and you just want to SPEND.

But the thing I like most about it is that it seems to be a bit of an underdog. A bit of a joke. I reckon there's about 3 members of staff and they are all in one office having a laugh and maybe even drunk on vino a lot of the time and they don’t get issued proper press statements or invited to celebrity events and just Google everything and cut and paste out of other websites. They don’t check the names of the celebrities either. They’ll have a picture of one wearing a nice hat or something and they’ll just go “isn’t michelle’s hat nice?”. WHO IS SHE? They don’t care!

Here’s an example. This week in Look they had a feature about festival fashion. In ir they advised that you wear HEELS for the evenings. Heels!!!!! Have they ever been to a festival? No probably not, they just thought dressing up=heels. And why not? They do what they like!
So next time you buy a glossy mag, don’t go with up yourself Grazia, or used to be funny but they lost it Heat. Try Look. Just don’t follow their advice too much or you’ll be teetering around Glastonbury in your new neon bright chunky structured heels.

Ode to Liz

I used to have a Canadian housemate, we’ll call her Liz. I suppose you could say that was her name. When I lived with “Liz”, I was about 25 and she was a turning 30. Liz’s attitude to how she felt about turning 30 would change on a weekly basis and this was a running joke with us that we would tease her about. One week she would say “look I'm turning 30, I need to start calming my life down, do more exercise, eat well.” Then the next week she’d be all “look I'm turning 30, OK, I need to party harder, sleep less, get drunk more, go on more holidays”. I used to think to myself. Gosh, turning 30 is hardly a big deal. She was only a few years older than me and I thought we were peers; the same. Why, do you have to come to terms with being 30? I really couldn’t understand it. But we still threw her a big party and she did it in style. I think that was the party I went as “the sort of boy I fancy”. Jane went as David Bowie and Hannah went as Russell Brand cos those were the days when we lived in East London and listened to the Russell Brand Podcast and fancied dj’s and thought it was the coolest thing ever when someone asked us if we went to Central St Martin’s.

Anyways, I’m now 28 and I keep telling people “next year I'm 30” cos my birfday is in December, see. I think it sounds all big and impressive, but then they “oh really wow you’re old” and I say, yeah but I’m only 28 and then it’s pointless. So anyways I keep saying that and I also keep saying “I'm just reaching a certain age ok, where I need to starting doing such and such”. Then I reel off same thing that I feel I should be doing now cos I'm at a certain age. Essentially, I'm doing the same thing that Liz did. My boyfriend even said “you’re doing a Liz”. So here’s a list of things that I feel I should be doing now cos I’ve reached a certain age.
1. Spending more money on makeup. I.e., more expensive brands like Clinique and YSL. I was truly surprised the other day when my number 17 nail varnish chipped after 3 hours. Time to move on.


2. Start buying more expensive cardigans. i.e. instead of spending 6 quid on one from Primark, get one from topshop for 35 quid and then it might last longer than 3 months. I understand 35 quid isn’t a lot to spend on a cardigan but it’s all about “investment pieces” innit


3. Start buying quality toilet paper instead of Tesco value. Cos I'm not a student any more OK?


4. Start getting my hair died at the hairdressers instead of doing it at home out of a box. I don’t even really dye my hair, but when I do, I'm getting it at the salon. Even though my hairdressers is a bit too cool for me and my stylist thinks I'm a square if I haven’t worn a cool enough outfit the day of my appointment, I either cancel, or go and buy a new one. So why I’d want to go and get my hair dyed there and have to spend about 3 hours sitting there feeling ugly and boring, I don’t know.
5. Start getting my eyebrows threaded by a professional instead of wasting precious minutes plucking them myself. Even though I got them tinted as well the other day and the lady dyed them black and drew them on bigger, just painting my face to create bigger brows. I looked like Chloe Essex.
And there you have it. So I think it’s fair to say that while Liz was having a genuine existential crisis about how to start living her life in a more positive so that she could enjoy her 30’s with gusto, I just think I should start spending more money, spend more time on my appearance and shop more. I always was a great thinker.