When I wrote recently about culling the recipes that were burying me alive, this provoked several interesting conversations about magazine pack-rats. It seems there are many out there, with collections ranging from American Reciprocating Steam Engines to Zoology in the Western Pampas. More and more confessions have come out since that post – a lot of people seem to have a particular issue with letting years of magazines go. It made me feel better to know it is a common affliction.
I think it probably has something to do with seeing piles of them all in chronological order. That immediately makes them feel like a collection of something important. And if the subject is not a dated one, and you have a spare room, then there is really no reason other than space constraints to let them go. A recipe from 1978 may have undergone a few nutritional changes (this has been a successful theme for a recurring column in the Sunday NY Times Food Section), and an article in Popular Science on how to insulate your hot water heater, or a chart in Better Homes and Gardens on which perennials prefer shade, are both still timely and valuable.
When I think back to the beginning of my magazine consumption, it was probably first my grandmother’s Ladies’ Home Journals and Reader’s Digests. Then in grade school there was Life, and Look, with every cover a Current Events subject. I was completely seduced by Seventeen, and Glamour, with a few totally clueless pre-pubescent sneak-peeks at a Cosmo now and then. Sex was slowly doing its enticing little dance around my ankles. This was when I knew only that a diaphragm was part of your body.
Somewhere along the way, probably around 1965 or so, I got my first look at Playboy. A neighbor’s much-much-older son had stacks of them, and while his mother and mine smoked Parliaments and drank coffee in Apartment 301, I read his Playboys. The features and interviews were way over my head, but I appreciated the illustrations and cartoons. I also looked at the girls, with relish. They were all very wholesome back then, and there was more suggestion in the photography than actual nudity. I recall everything being hazy and pink, in soft focus. This was the first time I ever saw a blonde or a red-headed lady without clothes on. Or anyone but my Mom.
Every month I turned page after page of pictures of these nearly naked women, carefully unfolding the centerfold and then refolding it. It was almost an anthropological study. (I admit I also checked out some naked aborigines in National Geographic, but I knew I wasn’t going to grow up looking like them.) I was very curious about the pink women’s bodies — what would my body look like when I was a grown-up? It fascinated me, and inspired me, and amused the hell out of everyone who watched me. Then one July I became a handful of raging hormones with a whole other agenda, much less interested in just looking at pictures.
I read in the news today that the June issue of Playboy would feature a 3-D centerfold. Decade by decade, magazines have left less and less to the imagination. I don’t know that I would be entirely comfortable now watching my young daughter do as I did. But back then it was so innocent, warm and fuzzy. Almost everything was left to the imagination. Which, if you have a good one, is already in 3-D.