h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

She - June 2001

As far as I remember, "She" was a magazine for young working mothers. This edition seems rather pre-occupied with sex. (Who are they kidding? Working mothers are on the go 16-20 hours a day.)

It is also all about blondes. Can't think why I bought it then.

Near the beginning there's a humourous column which is Not Funny Any More. Odd how some comedy dates and others are eternally amusing.

The Blonde theme starts with a series of pictures of Z-list celebrities trying out blond wigs. Actually, the photos are very good. They all found that blond people get looked at more. We are reminded of famous blondes - from Cameron Diaz to Goldie Hawn, Meg Ryan, Gwynneth Paltrow, Dolly Parton. They don't all look genuine in the stock photos on that page...Pamela Anderson is surely wearing a wig...

Going deeper into the effects of hair colour - they try, unsuccessfully to disprove that being blonde makes you ditsy, redheads are temperamental. However, these generalisations only apply if the colour is dyed. Natural redheads are usually quite subdued. The unnaturally red-headed are the explosive kind. Says Peter Stringfellow. Now, if I was going to interview him, I'd probably have other questions lined up than any on people's hair colour.

On health - apparently too much light causes breast cancer. Wearing sunglasses might reduce the risk.
Closing your eyes for a minute is good for improving your vision.

Psychology: If you have a stressful event coming up, e.g. making a speech or holding a talk, you are bost left alone to prepare it, a study shows. Working on it with a friend causes even more stress.

Pot plants in the office improve the air quality.

An interesting article on "the Allergy Epidemic". The number of allergics in the UK is increasing by 5% per year and allergies are being triggered by more and more substances. It explains the difference between allergies and intolerances - something I often ponder on.

Allergy: "The immune system perceives it's under attack and starts secreting histamine" "An allergy is an adverse reaction to substances that are normally harmless"; "An allergic reaction can be life-threatening".

Intolerance: "There's no reaction from the immune system. You become food intolerant if you're missing a digestive enzyme... The symptoms, which are mainly uncomfortable rather than dangerous,.. become more severe over a period of time..."

Why are allergies on the increase? We are exposed to more chemicals these days, and come into contact with more toxic substances."

Of course, research may have come up with more on this in the past 15 years.

Can't comment on the results of going blond, but I can report that shaving makes a man more approachable. I have worn a beard consistently since my late teens--that's fifty years now--and the one time I shaved it off (for a joke, along with a bearded friend) I found I got noticeably more cheery treatment at checkout counters and other random interactions. But the beard came back (on me, though not on my friend).

Did it make a difference if the approacher was male or female?

Did it have a prize crossword? Many, many years ago I won a set of saucepans and thought the magazine was called She, but perhaps not. As a result of a small windfall, I have today bought a new set to replace them. If they last as long, they'll "see me out".

I might pick up a similar magazine tomorrow, and see how it compares under each of the headers you've mentioned.

I don't know any men who dye their hair. Some don't have much hair to dye anyway.....

I used to love She magazine, my mum bought it through the 70s and I bought it later.
But I stopped because it used to advertise itself as the magazine for "jugglers" (working mothers, to be specific) and I found there was too much emphasis on the trivial and not enough on the interesting parts of life.
I always think it's a lot like Brigitte over here. There are the occasional really good issues/articles but generally it's faffy tat.

Thanks for the difference between allergies and intolerances though. That's one of the more interesting parts of the mag.

The second section...

Aah. Here come all the articles about sex. The real-life couples and their woes and successes, the humourous article ("Is your love life more M&S than S&M?")

The media pages are full of the new film out "Captain Corelli's Mandolin". I loved that film, but those who have read the book weren't quite so beguiled. I didn't realise that Christan Bale was in it. (He was the cuckolded husband, so he wasn't in the story very much). And, apparently, "Blow" - the Johnny Depp film - was only just out then, too. An utter classic now!

June 3rd is World Naturist Day. I wonder if it still is. What do the people in the Southern Hemisphere think about that?

Oooh look - an ad for Billy Elliot "on video". Jamie Bell must still have been a kid back then!

Must-see TV included the Mayor of Casterbridge with Ciaran HInds - that series had me spellbound, even though, of course, I had read the book. I can't remember how I managed to see it back in the days before Youtube.

Haven't come across any prize crosswords yet, but they are giving away copies of the book of the TV series "Sex and the City" - I think I've heard of that - and 9 other summer favourites.

There's an article about an actor called Iain Glen. He seems to have remained out of the spotlight, despite havng affairs with people like Nicole Kidman and acting with big names like Helen Mirren, Angelina Jolie, Jack Davenport, Sigourney Weaver et al.

More about sex. How it changed through the 1970s to the 2000s, especially in relation to the way people dressed. We are embarrassingly reminded of the shoulder-padded 1980s, which apparently, made women want to be on top (pun intended) and not even care who it was servicing them. (Don't ask me - I spent the 80s having babies)

Then they move on to confidence. "5 tips for instant confidence" include -

- don't gabble or mumble - people will think you are nervous or scared
- Bach flowers
- smile
- stand up to make difficult phone calls or hold awkward conversations

Other advice includes the obvious, such as "slow down", "posture is important" "don't hold your breath" "choose a confident role model". If you think "If I had the confidence, I would do such and such" , you are getting it the wrong way round. Practice makes perfect.

"June 3rd is World Naturist Day. I wonder if it still is. What do the people in the Southern Hemisphere think about that?" [TC]

I expect that anyone interested in naturism in that hemisphere would schedule their naturist days six months later -- December 3, perhaps.

In which case "World naturist day" is, as usual, incorrect.

So, at the risk of now being swamped by dubious e-mails and google suggestions, I looked it up.

According to https://thenaturistpage.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/world-naturist-day-the-naturist-page/

>>World Naturist Day was first celebrated on June 4th 2006. Though, depending where you’re from, the date will be different depending on your geological location.<<

I'm not sure I'm convinced by people who don't know the difference between "geological" and "geographical."

Anyone who's really interested will be bothered enough to remove that "s" themselves. Sorry all the same.

"Did it make a difference if the approacher was male or female?"

Yes, I should have said, I got a lot more female smiley attention when I shaved. No difference in attention from men, though perhaps I just wasn't noticing.

It's quite correct about the differences between allergy and intolerance - that's pretty enlightened for the time.

As a chemist I am rather about being exposed to 'more' chemcials. Everything's a ing chemical, stuff is made of molecules, salts etc, for anything to be not a chemical it either has to be non-existant or some sort of plasma. I genuinely don't understand what on earth people mean by this, presumably those 'dangerous' chemicals, whatever that nebulous concept is. Every 'chemical' is dangerous based on dose - drink enough water and it will kill you.
Sorry - pet bugbear of mine. Immune response is generally induced by something big enough (in molecular terms) to be recognised either by anitbodies or white blood cell receptors. In biological chemistry we induce this (antibody based drugs are a big new thing - etanercept for example) by attaching a large molecule - usually a protein - to your target - in order for a creature to start raising antibodies against it. So tiny molecules just won't get a reaction - they are (potentially) poisonous/toxic in other ways.
Most likely (though it's not really known for sure), the 'cause' (if there is just one cause) - we now are so 'hygenic' that our bodies just don't get exposed to microbial and viral toxins as much as we used to be back in t'olden times. Hence our immune systems which are geared to attack foreign bodies react increasingly to other things and we get these weird immune responses to otherwise non-threatening things. Possibly also, it's recognised more now - how much allergy is there in places still exposed to horrific plagues like malaria, sleeping sickness etc.? When scarlet fever, meningtis, measles, cholera, diptheria, polio, smallpox etc were very common - maybe we just weren't looking or weren't concerned by such thing.

Sounds like a cool find - I like reading old things like that. Doesn't have to be a Victorian manuscript or the Anglo Saxon chronicles for it to be interesting.

That's typical Sho: always going for the juggler.

"we now are so 'hygenic' that our bodies just don't get exposed to microbial and viral toxins as much as we used to be back in t'olden times." [Orcus]

I pat myself on the back for exposing myself to plenty of microbes by not keeping my house clean.

I keep a broom handy. I do sweep the floor a few times a year.

>>That's typical Sho: always going for the juggler.<<

you know me so well!

Juggling is something I wish I could do better.

I picked up this magazine again today to find out why I had stopped trying to summarise it. It (still on "She from June 2001) still has quite a bit of mileage in it.

Next up is an article on how girls bond with their fathers. It also goes into the benefits of having a strong relationship with your mother. Of course, too close a relationship can get claustrophobic or dangerous, but they give a few examples, mainly celebs, who seem to benefit from their leaning towards one parent or the other. This subject is impossible to generalise on, anyway, so the article seems a bit hotch-potch, but is quite well structured.

It reminds us of such gems as "Mandy (Smith) has had a string of well-publicised failed relationships while her mother married Mandy's ex-husband, Bill Wyman's, son. This is an example of the opposite case - like mother, like daughter. Both women just screwed up all along the way.

Basically though, good relations with your father will teach you how to cope with (some might say manipulate) men and, with a male companion always to hand, will make you less desperate to go out and grab a partner.

Good relations with your mother will help you focus and make you less competitive when involved with other women.

Either way, bad relations with your parents makes you less able to cope with relationships later in life.



Here comes the astrology bit. (I hear )

It is a report on how the different star signs relate to each other. More and more I have come to notice that people's characters very often do comply with the general rules for their star sign. As a Scorpio, I "bear grundges for ever" - that is not because I bear grudges, but because I can't forget. I am not much fun for shopping outings. My best friends would be Pisces and Cancer (apart from other Scorpios, with whom I can develop Siamese-twin type relationships). This fits in exactly with my little group of 4 friends at school - we were inseparable for the 7 years at Grammar School. Sorry, a little self-centred non seq there. Other details on request. Make sure you really want to know if you're an Aries!



Then a "juicy" article on what PA's have to do for their male bosses. E.g. making excuses to their wives and covering for mistresses. The constant deception, in addition to the betrayal to the "sisterhood" really got this one girl down. She left the job in the end. The article was less sleazy than you'd think, and, again, well written. I'm beginning to hope that the girls who wrote for this publication got decent jobs elsewhere when it packed up.

A few possible collaborators were interviewed - hotel receptionists, taxi drivers, florists, lingerie salespeople. Men know their girlfriends' lingerie sizes better than their wives'. A hairdresser said "Affairs are good news for hairdressers. If a man goes off with a mistress, the first thing his wife wants is a new look - often the same look as the mistress to try to win him back."


More to come.