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"Self" Magazine : Issue Review

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Color me suspicious. My first issue of “Self” magazine arrived in the mail featuring famously thin-and-getting-thinner-all-the-time “Grey’s Anatomy” actress Ellen Pompeo on the cover, with one of those “everyone sez I’m anorexic but I swear I eat tons and I just have this wicked fast metabolism” confessionals on page 36.

This is a magazine about health, so why the notoriously scrawny cover girl, photographed so that neither of her pin thin arms is visible? There wasn’t a truly fit model available? One who might eat the occasional meal?

A small photo of editor Lucy S. Danziger on p. 18 reveals a sort of grimacing, overly blow-dried blonde who might be trying to have an expression on her face but you can’t tell for the Botox. That’s a lovely, wide forehead with nary a wrinkle ‘pon it.

Check out the model in the article “Your Firmest Abs Ever” who looks gorgeous from the front, but who, when photographed from the side, reveals another sliver-thin body totally unattainable to most women. I’m scared of her on the “T balance on ball” photo, where she looks like Skeletor in a pink jogging bra.

I hate the “Play Bod Libs With a Buddy” feature, which starts, “If I woke one morning suddenly adoring my body” and assumes that mostly what you’d do if you woke up adoring your body is be brave enough to ask your boss for a (fill in the blank) — “and I’d probably get it, too!” because of course the only thing standing in the way of women’s professional advancement is their own body issues.

Other than that, okay, there are some good features and the fitness tips are good. I can even do most of them. All I’m sayin’, SELF, is that we’ve got all them there beauty and celeb magazines to pimp the skinnies to us. We don’t need Skeletor from you, too.