They are the sorority of spin — the media queens whose perfectly coiffured heads and pencil-thin bodies dictate the fashion and lifestyles of millions of women. Through their magazines and TV shows they dictate what American women should wear, eat, and do in the bedroom.
But now one of them has turned traitor and written a tell-all confession, sending shockwaves through US media circles.
Myrna Blyth, former editor of Ladies Home Journal, has launched a scathing attack on women’s magazine editors and the top female broadcasters. In her book, Spin Sisters, Blyth accuses them of ruining the lives of women with constant exhortations to be thin, beautiful, career-minded and still raise a family.
She also says they pursue a ‘liberal’ agenda out of touch with many women’s beliefs and frequently use scare tactics to keep women afraid and stressed. The sub-title on her book says it all: ‘How the women of the media sell unhappiness and liberalism to the women of America’.
Blyth admits she once practised all these dirty tricks herself. ‘I was a Spin Sister, too,’ Blyth said. ‘I wrote this book for the women of America to tell the truth about the business I know so well, about its power and influence, its manipulations.’
Blyth targets the very women she spent her entire career socialising with as they ruled Manhattan’s media scene. She picks off her main opponents ruthlessly. Top of the list is Katie Couric, doyenne of US TV interviews. She says Couric’s trademark ‘just another working woman’ style is fraudulent. Blyth paints a picture of someone who makes $16-million a year and spends $500 on a haircut. ‘Katie loves to play up the fact that she’s a typical frazzled working mom… with, I guess, a typical $3-million dollar East Side Manhattan apartment,’ Blyth wrote.
She was equally scathing about TV presenter Rosie O’Donnell: ‘I suppose it’s possible to find something phonier than Rosie’s relentlessly upbeat on-camera person — Pamela Anderson’s chest comes to mind — but it’s not easy.
Blyth also slams television figures Diane Sawyer and Connie Chung, but her main attacks are reserved for the editors of America’s leading magazines. She paints a picture of out-of-touch women leading pampered lives whose magazines make their readers feel insecure and inadequate. She picks out former Talk editor Tina Brown and Glenda Bailey, British editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and also attacks Kate White of Cosmopolitan, Cindi Leive of Glamour and many others, ‘Magazines and TV tell women over and over that they are frazzled and frumpy and that there are so many things they should be frightened about,’ Blyth said.
The counter-attack has been swift and brutal. White called the book ‘boring’ and accused Blyth of just wanting to become a conservative TV pundit. ‘This is someone over 60 who wants to create a big enough stir to get on TV,’ White said.
Ellen Levine, editor of Good Housekeeping, said Blyth had not been a good editor herself. ‘If she knew how to produce a better magazine she could have done it,’ she said.
Blyth has also been accused of self-loathing and looking back with anger at a disappointing career. ‘I thought she would be trying to shine a light on some of our faults, but she was trying to burn down the whole category of magazines,’ said Leive.
Some believe that Blyth has a point. ‘She has come out of the closet, and good for her,’ said Robert Kubey, director of the centre for media studies at Rutgers University. Kubey said that women’s magazines clearly peddled ideals of women’s health, looks and lifestyle that could be harmful. ‘There is an obsession with self-improvement. I opened an issue of Vogue once and if that wasn’t an advertisement for anorexia then I don’t know what is,’ he said.
Women’s magazines in America are famous for a working environment of women obsessed with their looks and each trying to outdo the other in fashion. Freelance journalist and beauty specialist Rachel Weingarten told The Observer that at one job interview for a leading women’s magazine she was escorted down the stairs by the editor. ‘She told me I would never fit the image if I did not lose 20lbs. It was like being punched in the stomach.’
One reason Blyth’s book has provoked such a strong reaction is that she has lifted the lid on the dirty tricks magazines and TV stations use to get celebrity interviews, slant a story or touch up a picture. She chronicles in exhaustive detail the gifts showered on potential interview subjects and the promises made to PR executives to secure front cover pictures of their clients. She tells how the ‘Access Police’ of PRs and lawyers surround celebrity clients, forcing magazines to agree to outrageous demands and suck any hint of journalistic value from their interviews.
‘When they get a celebrity to pose for a cover or sit for an interview, editors and interviewers tend to give them a free ride,’ Blyth said.
Blyth claims that virtually every photo in women’s magazines has been airbrushed or retouched. Models are made thinner and taller at the click of a button until their body types would be medically classified as emaciated. No wonder, Blyth says, that women feel insecure. ‘Of course, these models and actresses don’t look like their pictures either because their pictures are airbrushed to perfection,’ she said.
It seems unlikely that Blyth will be receiving any more of her once regular invitations to wine and dine with the powers of Manhattan’s media universe. But she says she has no regrets about coming forward with her message that American women have never had it so good. She said they are healthier and happier than ever before — no matter what their magazines tell them. ‘In truth, this is a marvellous time for women… that’s really the biggest, the most important story about women today,’ she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â