"Glamour"ous Wisdom

I don't read "girly magazines" very frequently. One reason is that, after about two issues, they all sound pretty much the same: Lose five pounds with this highly guarded secret (exercising and eating right--duh)! Buy the right jeans for your body type (and spend money you don't have)! Buy new makeup (and spend more money you don't have)! Cut your hair in this new fancy style (but did we mention that this also costs money you don't have?)! Try this sex tip in bed (if you didn't try it last month . . . or the month before . . .)!

Another reason I don't read these magazines is more straightforward: I simply don't have access. Aside from paging through them at the supermarket, I don't have much opportunity to read them. However, when I travelled to DC last weekend, I finished 3/4 of my book on the bus ride down. Therefore, when I arrived at my friend's house, I quickly scoured the residence for reading material I could take back with me. What I ended up with were back issues of Glamour magazine.

Reading Glamour magazine is like eating incredibly salty tortilla chips: the first few feature articles are pretty interesting, merely because they are new, the way that the first few handfuls of chips are nice and salty and crunchy. However, after fifty or so pages, I find myself skipping most of the content (and, if I'm eating chips, dying of thirst and craving Chapstick for my dehydrated lips!). I'm never going to color my hair--or at least not until it starts turning gray--and I don't have $200 to spend on an extravagant-looking pair of high heels, so most of the magazine ends up being irrelevant.

As I was paging through the December 2009 issue, however, one feature caught my interest: "Women of the year 2009." The cover story in particular appealed to me; it featured Michelle Obama. As I read through her interview with Katie Couric, Michelle came alive to me in a way she never really had before. It was when she dispensed her dating advice that I truly thought, "This woman is a really wise mom--just like mine. What a good role model."

Cute’s good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it’s, Who are you as a person?

That’s the advice I would give to women: Don’t look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart. Look at the soul. Look at how the guy treats his mother and what he says about women. How he acts with children he doesn’t know.

And, more important, how does he treat you? When you’re dating a man, you should always feel good. You should never feel less than. You should never doubt yourself.

You shouldn’t be in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t make you completely happy and make you feel whole. And if you’re in that relationship and you’re dating, then my advice is, don’t get married.