Girl, what are you reading?

After a day of tough contemplation, sometimes the intellect just needs a rest. And for literate folk like you and me, popular magazines can serve as that perfect mindless diversion. \nFor us women, fashion magazines of the Cosmopolitan and Glamour ilk allow us to spend our mental downtime with important information about sundresses and lip gloss. Unfortunately, it's usually the same information repackaged and regurgitated every single month. "The hot! new! love-making" innovations are the same boring moves they unveiled in the last issue -- give or take a few weird ones. (Page 177 of this month's Cosmo has you licking his armpits and squeezing the webbing between his fingers.) \nThe clothes are exclusive to the 2 percent of the population who can both afford them and fit in them. The hairstyles are unachievable for most human heads. \nThe truth is, even the testosterone-driven equivalent that is Maxim treats us better than Cosmo does. Consider the February issues of both magazines:\nTo read this month's Maxim, you would have to tolerate photo spreads of exactly 17 near-naked models. But check out Cosmo's "Looks That Make Men Fall in Love" section, and you will also find photos of women that are not only scantily-clad (in $360 clothes made by Luca Luca) -- but are also much skinnier than the models in Maxim. \nThumbing through Cosmo, you will also encounter one advertisement for Botox treatments, another one for a chemical peeling procedure, and two more for those Bloussant pills that supposedly make your breast tissue grow. There are eight separate "before and after" ads for fad diet products, one which announces at the top of the page that "a nice personality only goes so far." Two more ads boast tummy-flattening and stretch mark-removing gels. And for the girl who already has tried and failed the aforementioned products, a whole page is dedicated to liposuction and breast enlargement surgeries that cost thousands of dollars.\nIn Maxim, there are only two ads telling men that they should be different. And they're "male enhancement" products, which is just funny. \nLet the comparison continue.\nThis month's Maxim "how to" section teaches you to ride a bull and build an aquarium. Cosmo's "how to's" only offer to transform your "wimpy lashes" and get you more PDAs from your man.\nMaxim asks Jimmy Kimmel unduly hip questions, i.e. "When you were on Win Ben Stein's Money, did you ever just take any of it out of his wallet?" Cosmo calls Sandra Bullock a "Fun Fearless Female" and asks her if she's had any "wacky" fan mail. \nA guy writing to Maxim's question-and-answer forum wants to know want antimatter is. A woman writing to Cosmo's Q and A section wants to know if there's a problem with entering her third relationship with a married man.\nIn Maxim you learn that Wes Craven named Freddy Krueger after one of his grade school bullies. In Cosmo you learn that if your boyfriend has a "funky face" on his cell phone, he's probably "trendy, outgoing and assertive."\nIn Maxim, you can cut out a Mardi Gras name tag that tells authorities who to return you to when you pass out. The only thing you can pull out of Cosmo is a perfume ad -- which of course, has yet another scantily-clad model on it.\nMaxim's got funny jokes. Cosmo's got lame euphemisms for menstruation.\nSo what should you do when you're faced with your next literary decision? Your best bet would be to go to the library and read a damn book. But if you are in one of those moods only a magazine can satisfy, make sure to pick one that treats you right. When someone offers to pour chemicals on your face, remember, they're usually the enemy.