It's a VANITY af-FAIR

Magazines are a passion and love of mine, and if you do not know that by now, then you must not know me very well (but that's okay - we can hang out together at Borders periodically. You can learn a lot about a person based on the magazines they read). Some people collect dolls, others books, or DVDs, but I own and collect hundreds of magazines. When I miss a very special one, like the Vogue Italia's July 2009 Black Barbie issue, I search Ebay in hopes to buy them at their inflated price difference. Some of my favorite titles are;
Vogue, Surface, Clear, Wallpaper, Essence, Metropolis, Dwell, V, Arise, Elle, People Style Watch, New Beauty, Fader, Women's Wear Daily...I can go on, and on.

Magazines are palpable pretty little concise reference guides and reports of current popular culture perfectly packaged and bound for your viewing pleasure and convenience. If you ever want to understand the zeigiest of a time, the easiest way to do so is to grab a magazine or the style/culture section of a newspaper, which I prefer than being detained by the Style Network that only satisfies a tenth of what I need for my thirst. I also collect them because I appreciate the art of writing about fashion, beauty, and design, and the beautifully creative fashion spreads and editorials that communicate trends through themes and stories. I even buy books like, Mag-Art: Innovations in Magazine Design, by Charlotte Rivers, to indulge in the latest of what's going into the art of creating what I like to refer to as, "little jeweled reports of doorstep culture - things that go in and out". What I love even more about magazines is the experience that is associated with obtaining them. 

Its an expensive monthly ritual making my destined trip to the local bookstore. It begins with me previewing the magazines that I'm picking up online first, checking my calendar for the local CVS shipment days to make multiple trips to various stores (usually on the second Thursday in my neighborhood) because not all newsstands carry the same titles, and grabbing my special tote that has a bit of stiffness to help keep my covers and pages straight, neat, and undamaged during the trip back home. 

It would be ideal that I subscribe to all of my favorite magazines, but I love the experience of going to the bookstore, scoping out the latest cover from afar, gliding my hands across that smooth glossy cover, flipping and fanning the pages to catch a whiff of fresh ink and perfume samples with my nose, glancing through quickly at what's in store for my fashion senses, placing the one I looked at back in the front and picking from the back of the stack for those covers free of someone else's finger prints, and letting those economically tempting, experience ruining subscription cards fall to the floor to trample and mangle on my way out - left there for someone else to pick up. 

Magazine subscriptions threaten my monthly escape and rendezvous - my affectionate first date with 10 of my new coveted mag-men. The one-year subscription that I committed to in 2004 with my favorite magazine in the whole world, Suede (isn't that a sexy name), was short lived (publication ran out of money) and ended terribly after the fourth issue - I never got my money back and would rather had "spent as I went" with that relationship! (I'm still scarred over that one.) A subscription is the jealous third wheel that come between me and my many loves that may or may not reach my house at the time they're supposed to - I hate to be stood up on the first date. Subscriptions are never polished and in the mint condition that I want them to arrive.  The wear and tear of travel, and the possibility of a postal worker snatching them up and molesting them in the bathroom while on break is horrifying to me. I want them pure in their plastic packaging, and untouched. Forget about the hundreds of dollars that I'll save in a year, nothing will come between me and the newsstand - I'm a sugar momma, and I'll spend the cash. And No! I will never subject myself or be satisfied with online viewing and dating - I'm an old fashioned girl that like good 'ole face to face conversation. I'm addicted and obsessed, someone please help me with my Vanity Affairs.