CultureShock's Full Review: Real Simple Magazine Subscription
First, the pros—beautiful photography and layout design, excellent paper stock choice.
Now, the cons.
I have been eyeing this magazine at my grocery store for quite a while now and finally decided to take the plunge a couple of months ago. After reading three issues, I am definitive that it’s not getting any better. It is extremely slick looking and totally devoid of any substance. I smell empty promises.
Real Simple purports to embrace simplicity in life, home, body, and soul. It encourages people to live “simpler” lives and supposedly shows us how to accomplish that goal by keeping to-do lists by our telephones, rearranging our closets, refusing to fret daily over our 401(k), and letting go of past grudges. What a novel idea. Now why didn’t I think of that? I don’t need to spend $3.50 USD for a magazine that shows me thirty different trashcans to choose from as I attempt to simplify my life. I sure as hell won’t buy a $200 chrome can recommended by Real Simple when my cobalt blue plastic can from Wal-Mart (priced under $10) has done me quite nicely over the years.
Real Simple’s problem stems from falling under the spell of what I call the Cult of Oprah. Oprah is constantly telling her viewers that they can simplify their lives by making a week’s worth of dinners on Sundays, skipping the eyeliner, and refusing to allow anger to well up inside them when their husbands choose to watch sports all weekend long. One thing that is blatantly evident is that the demographics for Oprah and also for Real Simple are women 30-45, married with children, homeowners, upper middle class. These women only pretend to want simple lives. They want to weekend at their lakeside rustic cabins (with full electricity and plumbing, of course) so they can relax in their cashmere sweaters by the fire. Oh, yeah, they drove to their cabins in their Mercedes SUV. They can then proclaim to embrace simplicity because they made a hearty soup with homemade bread for dinner. Sorry, I’m not buying it.
Simplicity is not about keeping to-do lists. It’s not about foregoing a fancy brocade comforter for a plain white one. Simplicity comes from your personal philosophy of living. A simple life is a life of smelling the flowers, watching the sunsets, telling your family and friends that you love them, and accepting what you can and cannot control in your life. It’s about letting go of psychological barriers to happiness and contentment. Simplicity is not an aesthetic and it doesn’t necessarily come from a desire to walk away from materialism or capitalism (and yet Real Simple subconsciously embraces said capitalism--no wonder this magazine fails to execute its premise).
I don’t want to sound like I’m overreacting, but I think this magazine is unproductive and not healthy. Real Simple gives us a mixed message. One page shows us a list of environmentally friendly household cleaners and the next page is an advertisement for a Cadillac SUV. Can you drive a SUV and still want to help protect your environment? Of course you can, but you’re fooling yourself if you don’t see the duplicity.
If you truly want to truly simplify your spiritual and physical life, buy a copy of Emerson or Thoreau and study them front to back. Ignore Real Simple and its 21st-century facetious version of simplicity.
Real Simple is the magazine about a simpler life. Each issue of Real Simple magazine includes practical methods and approaches to making life easier i...More at Magazines.com
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.