New Woman, September 1997

Dig out your Union Jack tea-towel dresses, girls! This time, Lucy is leading the way through a magazine that’s channeling all the Girl-Powered benign anarchy of Spice World: The Movie. It’s New Woman, September 1997. 

Join the discussion HERE. And if you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can do that HERE.

Lucy Douglas 00:00 

Thinking of splashing out on your very first mobile phone? Are your dinner parties a disaster? Do you want to spy on your boyfriend? Well, this podcast might just change your life.

[Theme music]

Lucy Douglas 00:11 

Hello and welcome to Mag Hags, the podcast here to help you spy on your guy. I'm Lucy Douglas. 

Franki Cookney 00:17 

And I'm Franki Cookney. Together, we're diving into the glossy archives of women's magazines to find out what's still hot and what's definitely not. 

Lucy Douglas 00:28 

Just a quick content warning. In this episode, we will be talking about weight and body image and how women's magazines have dealt with that issue. The conversation comes in around the 26 minute mark. So if you'd rather give that one a miss, please do. We'll also put the timestamp in the show notes so you can see when it's coming up and skip ahead.

Franki Cookney 00:46 

Hi Lucy! 

Lucy Douglas 00:48 

Hello! 

Franki Cookney 00:49 

I'm not gonna lie, I am really excited for this week's episode. 

Lucy Douglas 00:53

I know. And what's cool about it is, when we recorded this episode, we were pre general election.

Franki Cookney 01:00

We were! We recorded it back in June. 

Lucy Douglas 01:03 

Right, so we were still in a state of sort of semi mythology around the year 1997. 

Franki Cookney 01:10

As millennials, definitely. I think we have mythologised the 97 election, you know, an era of hope, a Labour victory, the likes of which we've never seen again. 

Lucy Douglas 01:20

Until now. 

Franki Cookney  01:21

Until literally two weeks after we recorded the episode.

Lucy Douglas 01:24

And Oasis are the biggest band in the UK. 

Franki Cookney 01:28

Oh my god, you're right! 

Lucy Douglas 01:30

However, I have to say that is where the similarities between 1997 and 2024 end. 

Franki Cookney 01:37

Okay, why don't you tell me where we're at in history for this week's mag? 

Lucy Douglas 01:42

Okay Franki, it's a sad day. The nation is in mourning. The optimism and celebrations ushered in by Tony Blair's landslide election victory in May, bringing an end to 18 years of Tory government has come to a screeching halt. You are, like the rest of the country, in shock at the tragic news. Diana, the people's princess. has died in a car accident in Paris. 

Franki Cookney 02:08

Oh wow, that is a moment I remember very clearly. 

Lucy Douglas 02:13

Yes, same. Although, to be fair, the magazine we're talking about would have gone to print some weeks before the tragedy took place, so it's actually not that relevant to our discussion today. As you say, it's a very definite moment in history and I feel like it's the first sort of time. that people our age had one of those really sort of defining, remember where you were when that happened, like events within our lifetimes. 

Franki Cookney 02:41

Yeah, totally. 

Lucy Douglas 02:43

So let's just leave that dangling there and turn our attention to New Woman, September 1997. Are you ready to check out what's on the cover? 

Franki Cookney 02:52 

I am. 

[Music break]

Lucy Douglas 02:55 

To wed or not to wed? That's the question and we've got the answer; spy on your guy; Star fashion; Scoop! Britain's tastiest TV talent strike a pose; hair update: the latest looks with the least hassle; Feeling flabby? Why your ideal weight isn't what you think; Stamp out work stress: time to take a serious chill pill; Dodgy dinner parties and how to avoid throwing one. 

And then a little footer at the bottom of the pages. "Plus! Scotty Totty Robert Carlyle, spooky beauty and broody blokes." So yeah, there's, there's a feature about men discussing fatherhood. 

Franki Cookney 03:35 

Forget new woman, it's the new man!

Lucy Douglas 03:38 

I mean, I want to get into how men are presented in this magazine because it's fascinating. Like, how men and women relate to each other. Like, we are extremely in our Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus era. 

Franki Cookney 03:53 

Also, just to say, totty! Totty isn't a word we hear anymore. 

Lucy Douglas 03:58 

I know, Scotty Totty, Robert Carlyle. Robert Carlyle? 

Franki Cookney 04:02

I do remember people fancied him. 

Lucy Douglas 04:04 

Do you? 

Franki Cookney 04:05 

Yeah, The Full Monty came out in 1997. 

Lucy Douglas 04:07 

Was he fit? Was he ever Totty? 

Franki Cookney 04:10 

But do you know what, Lucy? He would be on one of those, uh, ratty little heartthrob roundups that I sent you the other day. 

Lucy Douglas 04:18 

Oh, he would he is a hot rodent boyfriend. 

Franki Cookney 04:22 

Exactly. 

Lucy Douglas 04:23 

So really, we've come full circle, is what we're saying.

Franki Cookney 04:27 

We have come full circle, as is so often the case on this show. 

Lucy Douglas 04:31 

Okay, so we have got the cover girl who is a model, she's like Simone from Elite Models or something. She could not look more 90s, I don't think, and specifically like this end of the 90s. She is blonde, she's got a kind of shoulder length bob that's sort of poker straight but like feathered around her face a little bit, à la Rachel Green, who was the ultimate, and I'm gonna say possibly only hair inspiration at the time.

Franki Cookney 05:03 

I would say it's a little bit more low key than 'The Rachel,' like the actual Rachel haircut. It's like a little bit more like All Saints, like Appleton sisters. 

Lucy Douglas 05:13 

She kind of looks like an Appleton sister as well actually. She looks a bit, she looks a bit like Nicole Appleton. Anyway, and she's wearing like a little sort of black dress, like a little black slip dress with sort of spaghetti halter straps. It's very 1997. 

Franki Cookney 05:30 

I think it came from Bay Trading. 

Lucy Douglas 05:34 

I can tell you where it came from, I think. It's from Kookai.

Franki Cookney 05:39 

Kookai.

Lucy Douglas 05:42 

I mean, what a blast from the past. 

Franki Cookney 05:44 

That is a name I haven't heard in a while. 

Lucy Douglas 05:46 

Yeah, so that is, that's our cover model. And yeah, this magazine is like working really hard. They've managed to somehow plug 11 features on this cover. And we've also got like very big promises. We've got the strap line above the masthead that says, "Warning: This magazine could change your life." And then on the spine it says, "Get the life you want." 

Franki Cookney 06:10 

This is, I mean, this is big 1997 energy, isn't it? Like it's really, it's giving Labour landslide. It's giving Chumbawumba. 

Lucy Douglas 06:19 

It's giving Chumbawumba. 

Franki Cookney 06:23 

It's giving, you know, Martina Hingis becoming the youngest top ranked tennis player in history. Much as I hate to admit it, Lucy, it's got a lot of girl power, this magazine. 

Lucy Douglas 06:34 

So I really sort of feel like, if you're kind of looking at this magazine, it's context of like, it's sort of, it's point in time of like, feminist history, we've sort of come through like, the sixties and seventies era of kind of women going out into the workforce and women's liberation and, and that whole movement. And then we kind of had the eighties with power dressing and big suits and you know, Margaret Thatcher. And then I think by the nineties we've kind of moved into this area where like women kind of can do anything that men or, you know, women believe and feel they, you know, they, they are doing anything men can do. And suddenly, it's not just about like finding a husband. It's about like having career success and having a good relationship. 

Franki Cookney 07:21 

Yeah. Having a laugh. 

Lucy Douglas 07:23 

Having a laugh, having great friends, like having a lot of, having good sex, like, and fashion and beauty and all of these things.

Franki Cookney 07:31 

It's like, we don't need to worry about feminism anymore, we can just have a laugh. 

Lucy Douglas 07:35 

And yeah, there's this, there is definitely a sense I think in this magazine that like, that like men are for sex and dating and that's cool, but like your girlfriends are the people who are really like there for you and those are the people you love, and that feels super girl power-y. And we are, obviously, we are tits deep in Spice Mania. ‘97 was the year that Geri wore the Union Jack tea towel. 

Franki Cookney 08:04 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 08:05 

I learned on Friday, listeners, that Franki hates the Spice Girls. 

Franki Cookney 08:11 

I mean, you're, you're saying that like you're dropping this huge bombshell, but I think there are a lot of people in the world who are not fans of the Spice Girls.

Lucy Douglas 08:18 

Yeah, I'm sure there are, but like, not millennial women! 

Franki Cookney 08:20 

They're called people who like music. 

Lucy Douglas 08:24 

Not millennial women, Franki! 

Franki Cookney 08:25 

Yes, millennial women! Oh my goodness, me, I need to, I'm paging all my fellow Britpop fans right now, just being like, come and back me up! Having said that I was not into the Spice Girls and the concept of girl power, which I found like... even though at the time I couldn't have articulated to you that it was clearly like a marketing gimmick, it felt gimmicky to me and I just didn't like it. That being said, I don't hate the energy of this magazine. 

Lucy Douglas 08:54 

No, I love it. 

Franki Cookney 08:55 

It is fun. 

Lucy Douglas 08:56 

It is so fun. 

Franki Cookney 08:58 

Yeah, I honestly do feel like with this magazine, things can only get better. You know what I'm saying? 

Lucy Douglas 09:03 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I do. 

Franki Cookney 09:06 

This magazine is going to smack my bitch up, Lucy. 

Lucy Douglas 09:09 

It definitely is. So getting back to "warning this magazine could change your life," I think it's doing a really good job of like fulfilling that promise. Like right up the front, we've got nine pages of reader Q&As. This whole magazine is really kind of, it's telling you how to do stuff, and it's telling you how to do stuff in a way that is meant to be, like, fun and friendly, and, like, it's definitely sort of pegging itself as your wise best friend, who's also very funny.

So, at the top, we've got nine pages of reader Q&As, and they cover, like, everything. We've got love life, we've got men, we've got health, fashion, beauty. We've got friends, which I really liked. I don't think we've really seen like friendships sort of tackled as a sort of subject that needs tending yet in any women's magazine that we've talked about. And then a lovely little quarter page feature on this friends Q&A page, we've got this thing called "She's great, my mate," where a reader can just write in and say something really nice about her friend and then they publish it in the mag. Isn't that adorable? 

Franki Cookney 10:23 

That's so cute. 

Lucy Douglas 10:25 

There's, uh, oh yeah, there's one on work and there's one on money as well. And I just want to read you something from the money page because I fucking loved it so much. "How to be a phony. I'm definitely the last 20-something in the world without a mobile phone. I don't want to look like a sad fool with no social life. How much would it cost me to get one of these most desirable gadgets?" I'm not going to read the entire response because it's like a couple of hundred words, but it basically says like, don't bother. 

Franki Cookney 10:57 

Finger on the pulse, clearly. 

Lucy Douglas 10:59 

But yeah, so the copy is really fun and really silly. Like it's full of like colloquialisms and asides. And it also kind of feels very Bridget Jones. Like, to the extent that I got my copy of Bridget Jones out to like, compare the tone. 

Franki Cookney 11:15 

I also love that it's so kind of, I want to say, you know, we were in sort of, like, ladette culture at this point, but it's, it's like we were saying earlier about we're having a laugh. Like it, it there's, um, on that friends Q&A page, the top question, somebody who's written in worrying because her friend's are real flirt and she's about to introduce her to her new boyfriend. The answer is basically saying, what are you worried about? Don't be daft. But the way it starts is like, "Let her stick her tongue down his throat and have done with it!" I feel like you have to read everything in a Denise Van Outen accent. 

Lucy Douglas 11:49 

Yes. Yes. Or like Melanie Sykes in the Boddingtons adverts. The other thing, the other noticeable characteristic of this magazine overall is that this magazine is horny.

Franki Cookney 12:02 

New Woman is DTF. 

Lucy Douglas 12:04 

It's readers are shagging and they enjoy it. 

Franki Cookney 12:07 

Good for them. 

Lucy Douglas 12:07 

I mean, they are only shagging men. Like, there's absolutely zero allowance made at any point in this magazine that the people that it's readers are having sex with might not be men. 

Franki Cookney 12:19 

Well, you know, give them another 10, 15 years, they'll get there. We all did. 

[Music break]

Lucy Douglas 12:23 

It is good to stalk. Or, "Everything you ever wanted to know about snooping on your man, but were too PC to ask. Sarah Bailey turns private dick." So yeah, so this is our 'spy on your guy' feature from the cover. It's basically a feature, like the slug says "spying for beginners." 

Franki Cookney 12:42

I don't suppose professional spies buy New Woman, do they, for their spying tips? So that tracks. 

Lucy Douglas 12:48 

I don't suppose they do. But yeah, the slug is like the little signposting few words at the top of the page and that says spying for beginners. So basically this feature is like, If you suspect that your boyfriend is cheating on you or lying about something, here's how you can hire a private investigator, what sort of information they might be able to find out and how much it's going to set you back, or how to do it yourself.

Franki Cookney 13:12 

Extremely normal. 

Lucy Douglas 13:14 

So a journalist, so Sarah Bailey kicks off this feature with this anecdote about how basically, she, she's, she gets woken up one morning by some bailiffs coming around to like repossess her boyfriend's sports car. And then it turns out that he had a house that had been repossessed somewhere. And then it transpires further that he actually is, has a fiancée somewhere and he's, he's been lying to her for ages. I actually like, I'm going to have to read you this because it's so in keeping with the amazing tone of this magazine. " To be honest, I didn't give a flying monkeys that his sports car had been repossessed, but the realisation that the big lump of flesh I'd been swapping saliva with for the last year, who turned out to be a skint accountant, typical, just my luck, was more crooked than Jonathan Aitken, was completely devastating. After the repo men incident, things went rapidly downhill for the accountant and me. I found out, through a friend, that his six bedroomed house up north had been repossessed. But he didn't need to worry, as I then discovered there were some freshly changed sheets waiting for him at his fiancée's cosy semi in Kent."

Franki Cookney 14:27 

I mean, Kent, that is, that's the real insult, isn't it? 

Lucy Douglas 14:32 

"Just who was this shyster I've been sharing my bed with?" So yeah, so that's our kind of our way into this feature. And I mean, I love the, the, I love that she's like turned this into a commission at all. Like everything is content. And I love that she's turned it into this commission specifically. It's not like a kind of confessional. It's like, no, here's how you can avoid this happening to you.

Franki Cookney 14:59

Yeah, it's kind of all her sort of like revenge energy going into this feature. 

Lucy Douglas 15:03 

What stood out to you about this feature? 

Franki Cookney 15:05 

I mean, definitely the language, like you say, "swapping saliva." I mean. 

Lucy Douglas 15:12 

I know. 

Franki Cookney 15:13 

Yeah, I just feel like, that is, people were swapping saliva or, and you know, or another expression you used to…

Lucy Douglas 15:18 

Tonsil tennis.

Franki Cookney 15:20 

Tonsil tennis! Yeah, I was just like, but yeah, it was always this, these kind of like, actually when you think about it, objectively quite icky expressions. 

Lucy Douglas 15:29 

Yeah. 

Franki Cookney 15:30 

I mean, I'm really kind of, I was a little bit dumbstruck by this whole feature because they really get into it. There's some quite serious tips.

Lucy Douglas 15:39 

She's fully reported on like how to hire a private investigator. 

Franki Cookney 15:44 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 15:44 

And what that experience is going to be like and what to look out for and, and how much it'll cost. I really like love the box. There's a box out at the end that's like equipment that you might want to get if you want to start doing your own private investigation and every everything's like, two grand. But it's obviously a joke. Like one of them is like an, an ashtray transmitter. So it looks like an ashtray, but it has a little bugging device in it. It costs 18 grand.

Franki Cookney 16:16 

Yeah. And it's got lie detector, but then it's like, “Sadly, you need a licence for one of these babies. Start dating a government official immediately.: We're just having a laugh. I feel like I'm going to say having a laugh about 20 times in this episode.

Lucy Douglas 16:28 

I mean it. It is having a laugh and I've got to say I, I love it for that.

Franki Cookney 16:34 

I also think I was really waiting to get to the part where they sort of stopped asking, but is it legal? Which is obviously a pertinent question, but the more crucial thing I wanted to know was like, is it legal? Is this a good, is this healthy? Is, is, are we, are we condoning this? And there is finally the very last few parts, the very last section of it is basically sort of saying, maybe not. Maybe there are better ways to handle your suspicions and deal with your paranoia. But it really is kind of an afterthought, isn't it?

Lucy Douglas 17:10 

But that's not really like. That's not really what New Woman is about. New Woman isn't about wondering if we should or shouldn't do something. It's not, it's not about dwelling on issues. It's about telling you how to do stuff. It's about giving you the life you want. 

Franki Cookney 17:26 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 17:27 

By helping you do the things that you want to do.

Lucy Douglas 17:29 

And if what you want to do is work out if your boyfriend is cheating on you, then New Woman is going to help you do that. 

Franki Cookney 17:36 

If what you want to do is both ethically and legally dubious, far be it from New Woman to stand in your way. 

Lucy Douglas 17:45 

No, exactly. New Woman is your ride or die. She will, she will help you bury the bodies.

Franki Cookney 17:51 

That is absolutely the energy, isn't it? 

Lucy Douglas 17:54 

Yeah. No, I love this feature. I also, because it felt so like apparent to me how serious this feature would be. If a journalist in 2024 who worked for women's magazines had had a similar experience, had been woken up one morning by bailiffs coming around to repossess their boyfriend's car and then it all unravelled and it turned out that he'd been leading this double life, that would be a personal essay about deceit and trauma and what it feels like to be betrayed like that. 

Franki Cookney 18:31 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 18:32 

And so this just felt like a really, I hate to say it, but it did feel like kind of a refreshing, like tongue, tongue in cheek response to something that's objectively quite shit. 

Franki Cookney 18:44 

Yes, definitely. And I think also like, it's really important that to point out that it is obviously tongue in cheek, as you say, it's not entirely taking itself seriously, it's that fantasy. It's, yeah, it's sort of a wish fulfilment, isn't it? Of like, this shit thing happened to me. Let's imagine an alternate world in which I'd managed to, like, suss the bastard out and get him. 

Lucy Douglas 19:09 

Yeah, exactly. So, let's talk about men a little bit, because, because I think, like I said before, I think the way that men are portrayed in this magazine is so interesting.

Franki Cookney 19:21 

I mean, this is the point at which I wrote down, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". 

Lucy Douglas 19:26 

Is it? Yeah.

Franki Cookney 19:27 

Which you obviously mentioned in the intro. Uh, that book came out in 1992 and I, I think that sort of narrative of like blokey behaviour versus 'us girls' is very apparent, certainly in this feature, but I, I, I think throughout. Like, it's quite detached, isn't it? You know, like you said earlier, it's like men are these people that we shag and we have a bit of fun with. And like, maybe we go in their racy sports car, maybe go out for dinner. 

Lucy Douglas 19:57 

But we don't really understand them. 

Franki Cookney 19:59 

You know, our real soulmates are our girlfriends. 

Lucy Douglas 20:02 

Yeah. 

Franki Cookney 20:02 

Yeah, but also doesn't seem very interested in understanding them.

Lucy Douglas 20:05 

Yeah, yeah. 

Franki Cookney 20:06 

Like, interested in knowing what they want in bed so that we can have more fun there, but not very interested in bridging that gap. 

Lucy Douglas 20:13 

No. 

Franki Cookney 20:14 

Or the perceived gap, let's say. 

Lucy Douglas 20:15 

Yeah, I totally agree. So there's a whole section in this magazine called "Bloke" um, it's a 10 page section and that's where we've got our 50 sex tips. That's when we've got this feature called "the bugged beer glass" where they apparently get a load of men together, give them a topic to talk about, give them pints and then like record the conversation and publish a transcript in the magazine. It's like, Oh, you can't, you can't just, you can't go out and speak to men yourselves. We, we, you need us to like translate them for you. You need, I find this whole, like this whole presentation of men as a, as a foreign species who we, can observe and like learn a bit about, but we probably won't ever fully understand really fascinating.

Franki Cookney 21:06 

In terms of sort of finding the thread, you know, from then till now though, you know, we're reading this feature and the way they're talking about spying on their guy, it sounds completely fucking bonkers. Obviously, you know, they're talking about like mission impossible style kind of tactics. But actually, if you think about it, in some ways it's like worse now, you know, I'm thinking of all the sort of red flag dating discourse and like the, 'Are we dating the same guy?' Facebook groups where women come together to essentially sort of share conspiracy theories about the people they're dating and try and dig up dirt. And it, you know, that whole scene just to me feels almost more toxic than this, which is obviously kind of silly.

Lucy Douglas 21:53 

I feel like there's a whole sort of spectrum of like spying for want of a better word now. And I think what I often think about that, and I absolutely like don't want to sound like I'm being uncaring about or being flippant about people's bad experiences when it comes to dating and wanting to kind of be a little bit vigilant if they've been like hurt in the past. However, I do think, and I say this as somebody who has been single for a long time and gone on a lot of dates, if you go looking for like reasons not to date somebody enough, like, you will, you will find one, you will find some, something that could be as a red flag if you go looking for it

Franki Cookney 22:40

Yeah, 100%. I mean, one of the things that says in this feature is, you know, they speak to some people who actually run a private detective agency for exactly this sort of thing, don't they? And one of the women from that agency says, "Trust your gut." If something doesn't seem right, and you, you don't have a history of always thinking things aren't right, then you're probably sensing something. And I don't think that's terrible advice. I think the problem today is that we take that gut feeling, we put it on the internet, and then we solicit the opinions of like hundreds, thousands of strangers that then spin it all out of proportion and then we're no longer listening to our gut. We're listening to this absolute shit show of, of people just kind of wanting to get involved in the story.

Lucy Douglas 23:28 

People who are bringing all of their own stuff and their own context and their own experience that you've got no idea about and almost certainly like projecting some of that onto your situation. 

Franki Cookney 23:41 

It spirals out of control.

Lucy Douglas 23:43 

Yeah. Have you ever spied on a boyfriend Franki? 

Franki Cookney 23:45 

Um 

Lucy Douglas 23:47 

I don't think I have. 

Franki Cookney 23:48 

No, I don't think so.

Lucy Douglas 23:51 

You know, just a, just a healthy little social media stalk, but nothing, uh, nothing that could be construed as spying.

Franki Cookney 23:58 

Yeah, in the early days of dating somebody, I always do a little social media stalk and a little Google. But yeah, I wouldn't say that was spying. No, I don't think I have. No. 

Lucy Douglas 24:07 

Lucy Douglas: Now you know how.

[Jingle]

Franki Cookney 24:10 

Oh, Lucy, I feel stuck. 

Lucy Douglas 24:12

What's the matter, Franki? 

Franki Cookney 24:14

I want to be wild and free. I don't think I want to be exclusive... with my eyewear. 

Lucy Douglas 24:21

I hear you, and you're in luck. If you're not wild about having to wear spectacles all the time, boy, does Specsavers have an offer for you. 

Franki Cookney 24:30 

Really? 

Lucy Douglas 24:31 

Oh yes, they've launched a free contact lens trial with no strings attached.

Franki Cookney 24:35 

That sounds like just the freedom I need. 

Lucy Douglas 24:38 

For five days you can discover just how comfortable, convenient and inconspicuous soft contact lenses really are. And if you're not convinced, we'll leave it at that. No pressure. 

Franki Cookney 24:48 

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I'll love them. 

Lucy Douglas 24:51 

Well, that's why they feel able to make such a remarkable offer. So lose your inhibitions now and be free. 

Franki Cookney 24:57

Now I can believe my eyes. 

[Jingle]

Lucy Douglas 25:01 

Oh Franki, I need some advice. I think I need to make a statement. 

Franki Cookney 25:06 

Would you say you want to declare your independence, Lucy?

Lucy Douglas 25:11 

Yes, something that the conformists won't like. 

Franki Cookney 25:15 

How about the new Peugeot 106 Independence? Its range of metallic and pearlescent vibrant colours are too disturbingly different for some.

Lucy Douglas 25:25 

That does sound edgy. 

Franki Cookney 25:27 

On the outside, the special badging, characteristic tilting, glass sunroof, individual body coloured skirts, and unique tile glass will do little to appease them. 

Lucy Douglas 25:39 

How racy! 

Franki Cookney 25:40 

Too racy, some would say. What with its five speed gearbox, special cloth trim, the stereo radio cassette, the engine immobiliser, and plip central locking, not to mention the power assisted steering.

Lucy Douglas 25:56 

Are you just listing the features of this car? 

Franki Cookney 25:59 

Furthermore, the freedom to choose between three or five doors, 1.1 litre petrol engine or a 1.5 litre diesel five door will flummox even the most broad minded. 

Lucy Douglas 26:08 

I'll tell you what is flummoxing, using the word ‘furthermore’ in an advert. 

Franki Cookney 26:12

Enough about conformists. Visit your local Peugeot dealer. 

[Jingle]

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Lucy Douglas 26:17 

All of these adverts are horny, Franki. There are so many horny adverts. I would like to just draw your attention really quickly to one of the most egregious examples, I would say, of like, horny advertising, "Is that le Highland Spring in your pocket?" For bottled water!

Franki Cookney 26:38 

My god this magazine! 

Lucy Douglas 26:40 

I know, it's so good. 

[Music break]

Lucy Douglas 26:44 

Three of these women are technically obese, but which ones? They all weigh 10 stone and none of them looks fat, so what's going on? 

Franki Cookney 26:53 

What is going on? 

Lucy Douglas 26:55

As our headline and standfirst suggest, we have got eight women who all weigh 10 stone. They're all slightly different heights. And the crux of the feature is that they have all had a like body composition analysis, I guess, just to kind of see the percentage body fat. And if they have more than 30 percent body fat, then they are considered obese, apparently. And then, yeah, they kind of reveal which of the women are obese. And we've got a nutrition consultant, Alex Kirchin, and personal trainer, Marco Bellagama, who kind of weigh in and give them some recommendations on their diet and exercise routines and, you know, what they can do, sort of thing. As an aside, I think, I guess for like uniformity of this feature, they've wanted to get all these women in similar but not identical outfits. So they've put them all in jeans of like the same shade of blue and a white top and I have to say some of these jeans are absolutely hideous.

Franki Cookney 28:05

I was more upset by the shoes. 

Lucy Douglas 28:07 

Yeah, they were in black sandals. Some of them are sort of quite thick sandals and some of them are very sort of thin straps. 

Franki Cookney 28:16 

Yeah, just seeing those shoes in a lineup made me feel really sad about the 90s. That, the shoes specifically, not the rest of the feature, no, no. 

Lucy Douglas 28:24 

Yeah, I know. I mean, shall we get into it? 

Franki Cookney 28:28 

Well, we have come to our first sort of proper diet and weight loss feature and it feels like quite a big responsibility, doesn't it? 

Lucy Douglas 28:39 

Yeah, it does a bit. So, so the structure of this feature, so we've got like a little box for each of the case study women that has their height, their percentage body fat, and then it says the average day's diet, their exercise regime, what she says herself, what the nutritionist says, and what the PT says, what the trainer says. 

Franki Cookney 29:01 

And presumably there's a bit of a reveal about which ones turn out to be obese. 

Lucy Douglas 29:04 

Yeah, yeah. There's a little, there's just a little badge on them that says, "technically obese," with a little, with a little exclamation mark, with a little screamer. And actually, I mean, one of these women who is technically obese, I mean, she goes to the gym, goes swimming and plays squash once a week. I find what they say about themselves really interesting because it's like they all say, " Oh, I would love to lose some weight. Like I would, I would love to have a slightly smaller bum. I would love to lose some weight off my bum and thighs." Claire says, "I feel slightly overweight, but aside from my hips and bum, I'm happy with my body. I eat really healthily." Her, her body fat percentage is 26%. She plays squash. I mean, there's, there's a lot of squash going on in this. What happened to squash?

Franki Cookney 29:56 

I think some people still play squash. I don't fraternise with them. But yeah, it's really striking how they all have something negative to say about their bodies. It really reminded me of that Sex and the City episode. You know, where they're all going round…

Lucy Douglas 30:10 

Oh, yeah. "I hate my thighs." 

Franki Cookney 30:13 

And, you know, Carrie's like, "I don't like my nose," and Miranda says, "I don't like my chin," and then Samantha sits there just like, "What? I happen to love my body." I mean, it was just such a big part of the culture. It was, it was almost like a sort of bonding ritual. Like, and I think that's just changed so much. There is no world in which I could sit here and sincerely talk about things that I don't like about my body. That would just be considered so toxic.

Lucy Douglas 30:41 

But also, do you not think that in itself is kind of a weird sort of policing? It's almost like, has our relationship with our bodies actually improved, or do we just have to like pretend that it has? 

Franki Cookney 30:52 

Literally that. So, Farrah Storr, who you will know of, she's a former editor of Elle and Cosmopolitan and Women's Health. She wrote about exactly this recently in her newsletter. She wrote a sort of personal essay about her own relationship with her body and her kind of weight loss, weight gain. She was talking about being a Gen Xer. And growing up in an era where not only did you want to be thin, but talking about wanting to be thin was like sort of a passport to being considered like a normal woman. You know, it was just like, what's wrong with you if you don't want to be, if you're not trying to lose weight, if you're not aspiring to this. And then she says she sort of woke up one day and it was like the mid 2010s. And you were just magically supposed to suddenly be happy with your body. 

Lucy Douglas 31:36 

That's fascinating.

Franki Cookney 31:37 

And, you know, she writes about how she would be in editorial meetings suggesting things and how this sort of silence would descend and people would be like, "it's a bit problematic." And she was suddenly like, what? How do I, and I think this probably goes for us as well as millennials, how do we make that transition from growing up in a culture where it was so normalised that every single person, as you pointed out, in this feature has talked about an area of her body she doesn't like, to suddenly being completely fine with it and happy and never speaking about it. And I think you're absolutely right. I think there's just an awful lot of people out there feeling shit, but feeling like they can't talk about it. 

Lucy Douglas 32:15  

That's so interesting about that idea of like, it's like a common language that women have, breaking down a barrier and being like, you know, being friendly with, with other women. It's almost like men talking about football. It's just like a really quick, easy way to like, "Oh, lol, dieting. Am I right, ladies?" You know? 

Franki Cookney 32:34 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 32:35 

So we kind of mentioned her in passing earlier when we were talking about the copy, but Bridget Jones. I was kind of thinking about the jokes about the, the weight entry in, in Bridget Jones's diary, the book does kind of get flagged now when anybody's sort of talking about, about it as like a really, really like problematic element of it, of, of the book. It, which always kind of pissed me off because I was like, for fuck's sake guys, that's the joke. 

Franki Cookney 33:06 

That's what she's calling out.

Lucy Douglas 33:08 

That's the joke. It's not that, like, Helen Fielding thinks that women who are nine stone or nine stone two are fat. The joke is, like, nobody thinks that Bridget Jones is fat except Bridget Jones.

Lucy Douglas 33:24 

Yes. 

Lucy Douglas 33:25 

Like, the joke is that even somebody, even a woman who is as objectively slim as this nine stone woman still permanently on a diet and thinking that she's fat. That is like the insane standard that we have got to in society in the mid to late 90s, that women are kind of constantly like policing what they eat and having a go at themselves.

Franki Cookney 33:56

Yeah. Yeah. Also, we should point out that the book came out in 1996. So when we say that this is Bridget Jones era, it really is Bridget Jones era. 

Lucy Douglas 34:07 

Yeah. So definitely like that diet culture is very prevalent.

Franki Cookney 34:12 

What did you think of the advice? 

Lucy Douglas 34:15 

 I mean, so we've literally got like a couple of sentences like per box so they will have been heavily heavily edited. So yeah, what we've ended up with like feels a lot more blunt. They've obviously been told to like say, you know, what, what could so- and- so do differently in order to lose that extra bit of weight? So there's a lot of like, "to deal with these problem areas, to tone up those thighs to get rid of that last little bit of belly fat." I mean, now it just feels so icky. 

Franki Cookney 34:46 

It does, but I think exactly what you just said, I don't, I, I'm not sure we can get mad at them for fulfilling the brief. Like... 

Lucy Douglas 34:54 

No, I don't think we can.

Franki Cookney 34:55 

They were asked to respond, on these terms. So that's what they've done. And I think the diet and nutrition advice is, is not bad advice. I mean, it's actually quite boring because ultimately it's just the same advice over and over again, which is eat a wide variety of whole foods, lean towards the plant-based ones. Drink plenty of water. 

Lucy Douglas 35:20

Yeah, try not to drink so much alcohol. 

Franki Cookney 35:22 

Yeah, and actually if you think about, you know, if you sort of forget all the mad, like, paleo, like, kelp smoothie culture that's happened in between 1997 and now, not that much has changed in terms of nutrition advice. Like that is still the sort of NHS guidance on eating healthily.

Lucy Douglas 35:41 

Well, I mean, I actually think that's part of, like what you've just kind of alluded to what you've just said is part of like the pervasive diet problem because at the end of the day, like, advice around good diet is kind of boring and we all know it. 

Franki Cookney 35:55 

Yeah.

Lucy Douglas 35:55 

It's exact, it's exactly what you just said and you can't keep writing that feature every day, week, month in newspapers, magazines, weekly supplements, whatever. You have to find a way of jazzing it up and people want a solution. So if you sell them a book that where you're breaking down a diet that does something slightly differently, or you've got a program that does something slightly differently, or you've whatever, you know, that's something new to write about. And that's something people can maybe get into that feels novel and exciting. 

Franki Cookney 36:32

So on that point as well, there's something about this. Like, I get why they decided to report on this, because, you know, disrupting the idea that you can tell anything about a person's health from the way their body looks is quite interesting, and actually, in a weird way, positive.

Lucy Douglas 36:54 

Yeah, I think, so I think they are kind of meaning for this feature to be positive. I don't think this magazine would ever explicitly, like, be telling its readers to lose weight necessarily. Like, it certainly wouldn't be shaming people for wearing, like, a larger dress size or, like, having a bigger body. I think, I think it is literally meaning to be, like, you may not know that you're unhealthy because you look really slim. But actually your highly processed diet and your sedentary lifestyle and your drinking habits mean that you probably aren't actually very healthy. 

Franki Cookney 37:30 

Or not as healthy as you think. The way it's written as well is actually, I thought, quite careful. I think sort of once I got over what I was looking at, which was, you know, we're basically being encouraged to like, look at these women's bodies and sort of appraise them, the actual copy, you know, it's quite balanced. When it talks about ideal body fat, ideal is in inverted commas. You know, it says, "You're carrying around more body fat than current medical thinking says is healthy," and that's quite temperate, I think. 

Lucy Douglas 38:05 

It is careful. 

Franki Cookney 38:06 

It's also the truth, like that, that is what current medical thinking says is healthy.

Lucy Douglas 38:11 

Yeah, exactly. And like also the nutritionist isn't like, like I, I thought I was going to be really appalled when I read the nutritionist comments. I kind of went in like girding myself for something that was going to make me really angry. And actually I didn't think it was that bad. You know, a lot of like he said, a lot of what he says as well is about like staying hydrated and like why you might experience a bit of an energy slump in the middle of the day.

Franki Cookney 38:37 

I was going to say a lot of it is about energy levels and how to stay feeling good throughout the day. I mean, I feel the same way. I had a bit of a reckoning reading it because I went in thinking, Oh my God, I'm about to sort of have like flashbacks to the nineties. It really wasn't. It really wasn't as toxic as I thought it was going to be.

Lucy Douglas 38:58 

No, no. Having said that, like, Janet does get a bit of a telling off. 

Franki Cookney 39:03 

Okay, so the first thing we need to know about Janet is she's an administrator at a record company, which sounds like a very high probability of beer and cocaine. 

Lucy Douglas :39:15 

Yeah, exactly. And at the first line of Alex, of what Alex, the nutritionist says is, "I'm not surprised that Janet feels sluggish late nights working out in the gym and the low micronutrient status of her diet are a heavy burden on the body." It's like, yeah, Janet's out pissing up five nights a week. 

Franki Cookney 39:33 

She's 27, let her live. Yeah, I mean, obviously he's, he's, he's, he's told her off for burning the candle at both ends, but the actual diet advice is kind of fine. "She could increase the whole foods in her diet, try to eat less meat, increase her intake of fish, rice, beans, tofu, and high fibre foods," Tim Spector would approve. I didn't know many people eating beans and tofu in 1997 though, I have to say, I think that would have been a bit, you would have been sort of out on your arse at dinner parties, wouldn't you? 

Lucy Douglas 40:01

I mean, we certainly weren't eating tofu in the Douglas household in 1997. 

[Music]

Lucy Douglas 40:05 

Hello, Lucy here. Just a quick one to say, if you've not yet signed up for our newsletter, you definitely should. You can read the features that we talk about, see all the amazing adverts and get access to loads of other bonus bits. Plus, it's a really good way to support the show. Find us at maghags.substack.com.

[Music]

Lucy Douglas 40:29 

Our fashion tip of the week, "Big girls have more fun. Your size shouldn't stop you wearing the colours and the styles that you want." So yeah, in the interest of balance, I found a very body positive fashion tip.

Franki Cookney 40:41 

Oh, fantastic. 

Lucy Douglas 40:42 

While not being especially revelatory, it does feel like quite pleasingly at odds with the feature that we've just looked at. It is from our fashion readers, Q&A page at the front. The question, as everything else in this magazine, is beautifully written. "I'm a size 18 and love loud prints, bright colours and so on, but I tend to curb my passion when shopping because of those niggling little voices in my head saying that black is slimming, prints accentuate size and all that. Are these just myths? Or do I really have to resemble a shapeless nun?" And the answer says, "Your size shouldn't stop you wearing the colours and the styles that you want. It sounds like you need a bit of a confidence boost to make the most of your assets." And then it recommends this book called Big Living by image consultant Angela Sandler.

Franki Cookney 41:30 

Um, well, thanks for that. I, I will go forth and wear patterns with abandon. 

Lucy Douglas :41:35 

Beauty tip of the week. Apparently I've been doing shampoo all wrong. So apparently we should be changing our hair care routines regularly. According to hairdresser and top session stylist Philip Fennah, it's a good idea to change your hair products every couple of months. "Hair gets used to the same old products. After a few months, you don't get the same effect as you did in the beginning. Switching brands seems to have a revitalising effect, but there's no need to swap every time you wash." 

Franki Cookney 42:04 

There's no need to swap every time you wash it. Oh gosh, okay, thank you. That sounds like an awfully convenient thing for somebody working in the hair care industry to say, doesn't it?

Lucy Douglas 42:13 

Well, it does a little bit, doesn't it? That's what I thought. 

Franki Cookney 42:15 

I definitely, I think I have internalised that message to some extent though.

Lucy Douglas 42:20 

Oh, have you? I'd never heard that before. 

Franki Cookney 42:22 

Not so much with hair care. I hadn't really thought about it in terms of shampoo, but I definitely had sort of, heard of it in the context of skincare, like, oh, your skin can build up tolerance to products and they can stop working. So again, it rings like people who want to sell more shit.

[Music break]

Lucy Douglas 42:46

How to throw a disaster free dinner party. "If Jesus did it with a few fishes and loaves, we sure as hell can do it with ready washed letters from Marks and Sparks. Fiona Gibson shows you how to work miracles." I mean, what a perfect stand first. 

Franki Cookney 43:02 

Yeah. 

Lucy Douglas 43:03 

I love it. So the opening, the opening spread of this feature, the opening two pages of this feature is like a bit, it's like a picture of a, of a dinner party of like a round table with a bunch of people sitting around it. And then it's sort of got little annotations on it, like a little diagram that's kind of showing you the features that you should include and the features that you should avoid of a dodgy dinner party. 

Franki Cookney 43:26 

It's split down the middle, isn't it? So one page is what not to do, but it still looks coherently like one single table.

Lucy Douglas 43:33 

Exactly. Okay. So on the, on the. what not to do. We've got like, Twister has been sprawled out and it's like, after dinner entertainment, you know, but like, that's a no no is playing kind of vigorous games after you've had a heavy meal. 

Franki Cookney 43:46 

Oh, thank God. Yeah. Terrible idea. 

Lucy Douglas 43:48 

And like big flower arrangements so you, that are like clustering up the table so you can't see your friends at the other side. Not having enough wine, that's a no no. I absolutely adored this feature. It felt kind of innocent. And I don't really know how to explain that. I think, I think it's because I really felt like if I was reading this magazine in like Stylist or something today, there would be loads of, like, at least two pages of associated like shopping pages with it with like telling me which, you know, which new recipe books to buy and which new pan to buy and fucking, like, centerpieces, you know, from some like bougie independent Instagram brand and, you know, like perfect little like napkins and stuff like that. And I quite liked that this didn't really have any of that. This wasn't trying to sell me anything. This was just trying to make sure that I had a nice dinner party.

Franki Cookney 44:47 

Yeah, because I was thinking, would we get a feature like this now? Like, would it be presented in this way? How would you do it now? And I was thinking like the place where you'd find this, this kind of feature now is really like the home and interior sections of the magazines. So when I worked on the now defunct Homes and Holidays magazine at the Sunday Mirror, we would sort of do like Christmas dinner table features and like summer barbecue features, which were mostly about decor, but there were also tips on like creating ambiance, how to plate up, serve your food, recipes. I actually joke on my CV that I've written more summer barbecue pull outs than I've been to summer barbecues. But yeah, there's not a lot of shopping. There's also no kind of expert opinions in it, which is really interesting, but it's also what makes it really fun, isn't it? I mean, I think this is the most Bridget Jones-y feature of the lot.

Lucy Douglas 45:37  

I was gonna say it, it feels so Bridget when she's talking about, so, so the journalist kind of, it's sort of written in a very first person way and she talks about how she wants to, she tries to throw a dinner party to christen her new flat and she really fucks it up. 

Franki Cookney 45:55

The first line of this feature was actually the one that I googled to find out if it was a quote from Bridget Jones because it goes, "At last, I'd arrived. I was having my very first dinner party, a proper grown up affair with real wine drunk from glasses with stems instead of from the bottle." And I was like that literally could be from Bridget Jones. I also just really enjoyed the tip, "never attempt anything that has to be brought to the table in flames."

Lucy Douglas 46:22 

I know. 

Franki Cookney 46:24 

Okay, yeah, I shall take that one on board.

Lucy Douglas 46:27

It's all just so silly. "We scoffed pasta, got extremely rowdy on homemade margaritas, and persuaded the local minicab to replenish our fag supply from a nearby petrol station." 

Franki Cookney 46:37 

Perfect. 

Lucy Douglas 46:38 

"A friend managed to lock herself in the loo with my cute downstairs neighbour and came out with her dress suitably rumpled."

Franki Cookney 46:44

Honestly, Lucy, I feel like, more than anything, I feel like the 90s cued up the idea that that's what my early 20s were going to be like. 

Lucy Douglas 46:53 

Oh yeah. 

Franki Cookney 46:54 

Sort of locking myself in loos with my friend's hot neighbour and coming out with my dress suitably rumpled. It was a bit disappointing.

Lucy Douglas 47:02

Same. I've still not arrived, But yeah, I definitely want to go to one of these dinner parties. They sound really fun. Very, very happy to go and be served a bowl of pasta and homemade margaritas. 

Franki Cookney 47:16

So of the tips, which ones do we think still hold? I liked "fresh herbs instantly up your credibility rating." Who'd have thought? 

Lucy Douglas 47:27

"Don't feel obliged to serve three courses. Ice cream is a good standby. Pick something luxurious like Sainsbury's Indulgence raspberry pavlova. Simmer some raspberries in a little water with sugar and dribble over the top." That is quite a Lucy Douglas move as well I have to say, like ice cream and some berries. What more do you want? Another thing that I, that gave me a lot of joy about this feature was the fact that the ad opposite the last page is for Viennetta. At last, a sensational combination of smooth ice cream and crunchy biscuit. 

Franki Cookney 47:59

At last! I have arrived! So in quite incredible timing, because we were sort of talking about like, you know, would we see a feature like this now? How would it be different? Three days ago. The New York Times published a massive "how to party" feature.

Lucy Douglas 48:16 

Oh my God, about dinner parties? 

Franki Cookney 48:18 

Not specifically about dinner parties. No, like all kinds of parties. A lot of them sound like sort of stand up canapes type parties. Sit down dinners are included in there. And I think, because I was thinking like, where would we get this now? And apart from in this sort of interiors, mags and interior sections, the only other place I could, I was able to imagine seeing it, you know, a particularly sort of headed up this way, like 'how to throw a disaster free dinner party,' was one of those like slightly ironic G2 features. 

Lucy Douglas 48:49

Yeah. 

Franki Cookney 48:50

Possibly with some slightly wry celebrity news hook. But then this New York Times one came out and I was like, yes, this is incredibly New York Times. The way they've done it is basically just a lot of quotes from experts, people in the know, chefs, restauranteurs, event planners, and there's a few sort of journalists thrown in, and there's probably some like New York society people.

Lucy Douglas 49:14 

Chic people who go to a lot of parties. 

Franki Cookney 49:17 

Yeah, chic New York people whose names mean nothing to me. And so yeah, I think this is a really good example of how this feature would be done now, basically with the people in the know, insider tips kind of thing. 

Lucy Douglas 49:29

Yeah. Yeah. 

Franki Cookney 49:30

Rather than somebody's like funny story about burning the dinner and you know, yeah. Soggy blinis and all the rest of it. What's very funny obviously about the New York Times piece and um, this is clearly deliberate, is how many of the insider tips just contradict each other?

Lucy Douglas 49:48 

Oh, really? 

Franki Cookney 49:50

You have one person saying, don't, don't talk about politics, religion, or sex. Other people being like, don't be insane, it's 2024, nothing's off the table. So if you were reading this feature, looking for actual advice, um, you would come away probably more confused than you went in. But it's an entertaining read. Overall though, really prefer the New Woman feature. 

Lucy Douglas 50:11 

Oh, great. Perfect. 

Franki Cookney 50:12 

"That's when I realised dinner parties aren't about pretending you're posh. You don't have to bake your own rolls, make dinky little butter balls or fiddle with filo pastry. All you really need is decent music on the stereo, a steady supply of sluggable wine, and a gang of people who actually want to spend an evening together."

Lucy Douglas 50:29

It feels very, um, Cold Feet, doesn't it?

Franki Cookney 50:34

Oh my god, yes! 

Lucy Douglas 50:34

Do you know what I mean? 

Franki Cookney 50:36 

Yes! 

Lucy Douglas 50:36 

Like, that very, like, unpretentious. Get your mates round. This isn't glossy. This is fun and loving. 

Franki Cookney 50:45

You know what I'm gonna say, Lucy, don't you? We're just having a laugh.

Lucy Douglas 50:49

Just having a laugh. 

Franki Cookney 50:50

Having a laugh. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

[Music break]

Lucy Douglas 50:54

What's hot and what's not in September 1997. 

Franki Cookney 50:58

It's gotta be having a laugh. Throw a dinner party, get your mates around, stick with the girls, stalk your ex, having a laugh.

Lucy Douglas 51:06 

And what is not? 

Franki Cookney 51:08

I'm not sure that anything's not hot in 1997. Whatever you want to try, whatever you want to throw yourself at, New Woman's got your back.

Lucy Douglas 51:17 

I tell you what is not hot in 1997, mobile phones. 

Franki Cookney 51:21 

Oh yeah, don't bother. 

Lucy Douglas 51:22 

They're not going to take off. 

Franki Cookney 51:24

Just a fad. 

Lucy Douglas 51:25 

Just a fad.

Franki Cookney 51:30

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed today's show. 

Lucy Douglas 51:33 

If you did, please consider leaving us a glowing review and smashing that five stars button. It'll help the podcast grow. 

Franki Cookney 51:40 

We hope you'll join us again next time on Mag Hags, when we'll be meeting the world's most wanted bachelor. Bye. 

Lucy Douglas 51:46 

Bye.

[Theme music]

Mag Hags is written and hosted by Franki Cookney and Lucy Douglas.
Editing and audio production by Franki Cookney.
Our theme music is Look Where That Got You, Mattie Maguire. Additional music: Leotard Haul, Dez Moran. Both courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com.