Really Newsweek?

Tasteless parody or senseless Poe?

No fucking way.

I wonder how different the effect on women and men would be if that image was more representative of the 40+ #s overweight many women are, and the right age too, not too many that young are "powerful women" yet.

Just saying.

of the average and the majority of females on this planet. On the other hand, magazines are photoshopping the hell out of women today to make them all look 85 lbs.

I'm trying to say that by sexualizing it in such a way, they are implicitly suggesting that wanting to be dominated is something to be striven for.

I think if it was more representative of reality, more women might think, yeah, sometimes but yuck, no not something I want to strive for nor be "okay" with.

... to make it in the media, show business, and often politics.

It's a very sick world we live in.

I wish I could rec this.

As a woman you're either June Cleaver or a whore. Nothing in between.

that write and edit magazines. Maybe called Newsweek. Can we crawl down into their pants with a camera? Maybe they could have at least found a woman that looks more like the average working woman and not a supermodel. I know they are going for the stupid affect, but really do they have to include all the faulsauce together on the cover? Speaking of that, why cover her eyes? Just to give it that S&M look?

Oh right, that was the whole point...carry on.

Pathetic, I would rather beg for cash if it was me.

their pants while writing this?

to feel powerless, they could have picked any number of visual situations besides sex to put on the cover...the fact that they went for the bondage look, meh dunno I am a guy and that was my first thought. Maybe they are into bondage and super models!?

I think it is to sell magazines.

nt.

Then there's that whole plain girl making a career out of picking on the pretty girls thing...

She's royally fucked it up, too... And I'm not saying that just because a she's British.

I've asked some women friends about the article and issue, and they think the thing is fucking demented, and totally out of touch. However, I'll betcha anything this issue is selling like hotcakes among men who get off on that.

Men who are more interested in fashion stories and the British royal family than actual news, maybe.

I'd be extremely curious to see if you find any hard demographic data to back up that assertion.

pose?

I think the cover is an attempt to get males to buy Newsweek (a la Maxim).

What happens after that, is hopefully that they'll get interested in whatever Newsweek happens to feature that week.

A week ago, Newsweek was being hailed as brave feminist fighters for standing up for "puffy" Ashley Judd against the terrible male gaze misogynists at US magazine, with its 80% female readership.

Saying "it's designed to appeal to men because obviously it's designed to appeal to men" is an opinion, but not much else.

Maybe in your neighborhood, that's "sexy". Not mine.

I think the 50 shades of grey readership is OVERWHELMINGLY female, and that's what the inconvenient article with its inconvenient assertions is about.

The tie is a reference to 50 shades of grey, which has been enormously popular with female readers, despite the inconvenience of that fact to some small remaining islets of aging 2nd wave feminists.

I guess those women who like that book, the woman who wrote it, the woman who wrote the article for newsweek and the woman who publishes it, didn't get the memo.

I haven't read "twilight", either, and it's been over a decade since I had sex... with a republican.

I'm sure many who read this post are much more, er, worldly in those regards than myself...

All I know is, I should have been a writer of low brow fiction.

I think she's following the trend, not leading it. I saw this shit on TV a few days back.

She's Lady Midas In Reverse; everything she touches turns to shit

It's bondage news week!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Brown

Sorry, but ever since her Daily Beast took over, Newsweek has been a swirling vortex of suck.

Unless you like fashion stories and endless amounts of blibber-blabber about the British Royal Family.

I figured the editors were reading one too many comic books with the impossible women as their inspiration. I believe it was about two decades ago (now that I've had a night to think about it) that I recommended an article out of Newsweek to somebody. At one time, it was a halfway decent magazine.

Seems so long ago.

nt.

Newsweek fail. I see many complaints leading to a sold out issue however and the acceptance by the mainstream that all women want to be raped, kind of, this is so fitting with the repuke drive against women. I thought Newsweek was trending a tad more liberal..

Seriously, that was hilarious!

Okay, no, but what the fuck is this? When has Katie Roiphe ever been relevant? HBO's Girls and Fifty Shades of Grey are fiction. Fiction! Why is it being presented as reality in the cover of a so-called news mag?

You just have a different point of view.

As I do when writing this kind of inanity.

seriously doubt women are wanting to be overpowered regularly any more than men are regularly wanting to be overpowered by women. Besides, the same thing every time would seem boring as hell.

The overpower thing could just be the idea that the guy is "so into" as opposed to "not that into" her

Good one.
GAC

Why wouldn't the same dynamic work for women. According to various kinky people, subs outnumber doms across the board, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. That makes a certain amount of sense--after all, there are always more people in the audience than on stage, and more readers than writers.

I often wonder why large groupings of people make me apprehensive, the thoughtlessness of the follow the leader crowd and why it all seemed so foolish. Must be some inbred genetic trait i was lucky enough to miss

People on the submissive side of BDSM often do so as an escape from having to make decisions and being "in charge".

waiting outside the school in their minivans were reading that book while they waited , and a cadre of women were all giggling about it and talking about it as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I reached for the remote--I just didn't want to deal with that foolishness.

Point is, though, Newsweek isn't operating in a vacuum. I guess that War On Women is being fought on many fronts...?

It's been years since that last happened.

When did the National Enquirer buy the name?

I recommended an article out of Newsweek. Nope, drawing a blank.

when it glammed up Paula Jones and made her cover girl. It's been circling the drain ever since.

I guess not. But, it looks like they should have.

They know getting the media to analyze a trend to death (and give them an excuse to run this kind of provocative cover) will continue to sell the books of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy.

Vintage is behind all this chatter (and coverage) ... pure and simple.

I think we have a winner$$$$!!!!!

for the first time in our lives.

string of expletives deleted.

Bad enough if a man designed and approved this cover. Worse if women signed off on it.

Media crap for profits.

I haven't read the book, but apparently it's a HUGE hit among women. Has anyone read it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/books/fifty-shades-of-grey-s-and-m-cinderella.html

This S-and-M story about a virginal college student and the handsome young billionaire who binds her sounds racier than it is. Mostly it’s an updated throwback to scandalous novels of the past, including “Jane Eyre” and the 1920s desert rape fantasy “The Sheik.” The main difference is that “Fifty Shades of Grey” and its two sequels, “Fifty Shades Darker” and “Fifty Shades Freed,” are set in modern-day Seattle and mix sexting with spanking.

In other words, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is to publishing what Spanx was to the undergarment business: an antiquated product re-imagined as innovation. When Sara Blakely, a former office equipment saleswoman, wanted control-top pantyhose without the hose and figured that other women might too, she started her own company, Spanx. Women embraced her light-weight girdle — once known as a foundation garment — as a body-shaping breakthrough. Ms. Blakely is now on the Forbes list of billionaires.

Similarly E L James, the British author of “Shades of Grey,” a former television executive who became an author by posting fan fiction online, wrote a typical romance novel, added some atypical sex and became an Internet sensation. Lots of women who weren’t used to reading erotic novels discovered “Shades of Grey.” And downloading was a huge part of the books’ success: readers who heard of the book from friends or Facebook could check it out instantly, cheaply and most of all, privately.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” doesn’t defy taboos in the way that other recent and much-talked-about books and magazine articles have, be it Toni Bentley’s ode to anal sex, “The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir”; Kathryn Harrison’s account of incest, “The Kiss”; or Daphne Merkin’s revelation of her spanking fetish in The New Yorker. Those accounts shocked mostly because the authors were well-known writers confessing to unseemly sexual vices. MORE

And nothing new, really. I think it's pretty common knowledge that sexual fantasies can be born out of what happens in day to day life. Is Newsweek implying there are no business men who are submissives or have that fantasy?

Her personal experience applies to ALL of us women, dontcha know. She speaks for every woman who ever had a job. And the fact that a bunch of women read "Fifty Shades of Grey" means that we ALL long to be submissive in our real lives.

Nice cover by Newsweek too.

I hope I don't need to put the sarcasm thingy.

Bleh on her and all stupid "trend" articles.

and there it is. If circulation is down, put a naked woman on the cover. Problem solved. A writer can be found to write any foolishness needed to sell magazines.

Uff da!

Wtf Newsweek.

A submissive man on his knees kissing a woman's foot in a black leather stiletto boot.

Fuck Newsweek and its projections.

Kinky sex is as old as the hills, and it comes in far more flavors than "submissive female".

"Surrender is a feminist dream" my ass. Everything any woman anywhere does any time, does not equal "feminism", for fuck's sake.

I mean, uh, you know, for research purposes only. Honest.

Many people on the submissive side of things in the BDSM world enjoy that aspect because during the rest of their lives they have to constantly be taking care of others, working, running a house, raising children. They get overwhelmed with having to be constantly making decisions about everything that they use this sexual choice as an escape.

I am not making a judgement as to whether this is right or wrong, I am just relaying the reasons behind the choice for many.

It's sex. People's sex live are complex and private and individual. I'm not sure what the intent of this article is b/c I don't really care about reading it. I would hope it mentions somewhere that these fantasies are fairly common amongst powerful men as well.

It's not exactly rocket science!

As long as the participants are willing ones, that's their business.

The power. Aside from that, sexual fantasies are just that - fantasies. Most women's fantasies aren't anything they would ever want to live out in real life, threesomes being a good example. Reality would look a whole lot different that fantasy in most cases.
Newsweek is psychoanalyzing a bit too much here.

I will even go so far as to say that I will graciously permit adult women to decide for themselves what sorts of books they choose to read, what kind of erotica they wish to view, and how they choose to get off.

Aren't I reasonable? I know, I'm skirting the bounds of making Jesus angry perpetuating the male gaze heteronormative phallopressive oppresionotronic, wisgrovenikul patriarchy, but really, if this is what the soccer moms want, shit, that's their business. Same as if Dick Morris wants to suck a toe. Just leave me out of it.

That said, I've heard the writing in these books is atrocious.

or in their erotic literature does NOT automatically mean wanting to be "dominated" in the workplace or in the world at large. If Katie Roiphe doesn't understand that, she should STFU.

Also, the notion that women are now in charge of things when we only make up about 15% of Congress (and an even smaller percentage of CEOs) is just plain silly

Of course, as noted elsewhere in the thread, strong successful men seem to have a higher preponderance of sub sexual orientation, too. And given that the "strong, dominant man" in these 50 shades types stories is often one of these strong successful alpha types (who in reality is possibly more likely to be looking to be on the other end of that Power exchange) its quite possible that this sexual power dynamic is something akin to a cat chasing its own tail.

Off the subject, though, patti smith rocks.

Unless I'm directly involved. But Katie Roiphe is a freaking sloppy thinker and I'm really done with her.

Patti does indeed rock!

Nor am I all that interested in reading the book in question.