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Home :: FEELING & LOOKING GOOD :: Midlife Journeys :: Foible Gal - Wendy Reichental :: Don't Judge a book by it's cover
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Don't Judge a book by it's coverDon't Judge a Magazine by it's Cover - or it's ReaderBy Foible Gal (Wendy Reichental)  I’m a firm believer in not judging others until you’ve spent a day in their tired slippers. So here’s what’s happened since I last posted, my mother has been in and out of hospitals, and there are many things going on right now. Throughout it all, there remains one constant helping me navigate my way back to some kind of normalcy……and yes in addition to it being my dear husband, I owe a great deal of thanks  to trashy magazines! That’s right, all you “Nay Sayers” out there, who “pooh pooh” these sordid exposé and dismiss them as nothing but trifle absurdly pathetic money-making machines that exploit the naivety of susceptible readers and fuel the pockets of the paparazzi industry have never had to sit in a hospital waiting room or be by the side of a loved one all day! What I have discovered lately is that these explosive pages are actually portable life savers!I am unabashedly that passionate about these glossy trashy magazines. While keeping my mother company for hours by her hospital bed, we both would flip through these pages of scandal and gossip and for that brief amount of time, we become transported into a land of pure exhilarating escape. And as an extra bonus I learn about different ways to don a skirt or top where my bust line can look bigger while my waist line can look smaller, I ask you can The New York Times do that? When your life seems riddled with challenges and your brain just needs to rest and pause, these magazines offer you an opportunity to do just that. I even believe that these magazines are purposely placed next to the check-out counters in stores, because these magazines are letting you literally know they are here for you so you can mentally check-out! So as I spend this time with my mother and find her looking seemingly lost, I don’t bring her flowers or chocolates, instead when I know she needs her spirits nourished and her day brightened, I lavish her with an assortment of People, Star, Us Weekly, HELLO, and occasionally even the National ENQUIRER, and somehow all becomes a little better or even shall I dare say OK! I see her devouring each juicy  story and details of newfound romance and malevolent tales of gossip and revenge with a much-needed rehabilitated zeal and she slowly starts to act like my old mother again. She comments on which actress’s face looks haggard and this leads in …to which hairstyle I should try, and for this one hour, I, and her, seem blissfully unaware of anything else. And it doesn’t hurt that in reading these magazines you sometimes have a sense that at least someone else’s life seems more disrupted and distorted than your own. A positive therapeutic outcome in itself. So next time you see me wiping clean a newsstand of anything non-Pulitzer eligible please don’t judge me, I’m just trying to bring my mother and me a little jolt of joy already conveniently packaged. Cause sometimes you just want to be a little less intellectually informed and out of touch with your own realities and a little more just simply “in Touch”!Read Wendy's other Blog posts and articles about Wendy's choices as one of the 'sandwich' generation.
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