Cranky Old Lady Weighs In On Music Press

I'd been reading Alternative Press at Barnes & Noble for a couple of months, so when I went to the local date of the spring AP Tour and they were offering free subscriptions, I wrote down my name and address on one of the cards. I've gotten two (maybe three) issues in the mail now, and I'm starting to regret it. Somehow the things I find offensive about it are much less offensive when I'm reading it in B&N than when I'm reading it in my own home - as if I can handle it in a public space, but not when I've invited it into my own personal space.

Top three things I find offensive about AP:

• Sexism. The fact that this is such a male identified space grates on me. This month they additionally had a question they asked pros and fans about why there aren't more women in music, and the answers generally made me cringe in the way they relied on stereotypes about women and ignored the systemic nature of oppression.


• Blatant consumerism. Okay, I get that the point of magazines is to sell advertising, but the only other magazines I read with any regularity are The New Yorker and The Yoga Journal, both of which have some high-minded ideas about their advertising; The New Yorker's ads tend to fit with the aesthetic of the magazine as a whole (and sometimes add extra entertainment to your reading, such as the issue that was entirely subsidized by Target, or the recent issue that was plastered with ads for how Canada was a great place to do business), and The Yoga Journal's ads are all yoga-related, which gives it a different vibe. This means that the ads in AP are really, really glaring to me - as are the "articles" that are really just selling you something. There are a surprisingly large number of these that are selling you something other than music.


• Design aesthetic. This is where my inner cranky old lady really stands up and shakes her cane at the kids on her lawn: being "edgy" doesn't have to mean being hard to read. This is one of the main reasons I stopped reading Bitch even though the concept (feminist response to pop culture) is right up my alley. I find it even more annoying when I'm only half interested in the topic.