It’s in the mag

I grew up reading the estrogen-rich pages of Cosmo, Marie Claire, Glamour, and the now defunct Mademoiselle. A few years ago, I stopped cold turkey.

I swore to myself that I would never again open those bibles that spoke so fondly (and in great detail) of climaxes, cleavage-enhancing, kegel exercises, recipes that will make him swoon, celebrity dramas, etc. I decided to limit my bathroom reading choices to British Vogue (rich in fashion), British Tatler (problems of the rich), W (all about being rich), and my new friends Details, GQ and Esquire (rich, rich, rich with men).

Why the sudden veto? I was sick of talk on how to gauge if it’s time to mess up the sheets together or whether he was cheating. Men’s magazines were a welcome change from the world of love, true confessions‚ and horoscopes. They are filled with intelligent, if not sarcastic pieces, on certain personalities, men’s hygiene, sartorial concerns and the malfunctioning world. I liked how men talk, their dry, no-nonsense brand of humor. The absence of xlitol-laced sentiments was refreshing. Perhaps this is why I have more men friends than women.

This occurred to me a few hours ago, While on vacation for Christmas in San Francisco, I was caught with nothing to do in the evening. I mean, why dress up to go to a bar that has its last call at 1:30 a.m. and then makes you smoke out in the cold. No way baby, I’d rather cuddle up with my digital TV and catch up on shows which I’ve never had a chance to watch at home due to well...having bars back home that never close and let you smoke like a chimney.

Suddenly, after watching a year’s worth of Felicity and suffering the anguish of seeing that godawful haircut, I was caught at 3 a.m. with nothing to do. I noticed a drugstore bag my mother brought home. Inside were my long lost pals — the Marie Claires, the Cosmos, the People Weeklys and thank God, Mom still had the taste not to buy Glamour. Blech! I tentatively started reading and I was lured back into the world of the hottest eyeliner, the absolute killer heels, the make-him-die moves and how to spot a man-stealer. It was like seeing a friend I’ve lost touch with.

Being a woman is, of course, more than just hemlines and dating tricks. I won’t even expound on that because we are all secure enough to know what we are all made of and I’m not talking sugar and spice and everything nice. Nuh-uh. In the movie Adaptation, the ditzy bro of Charlie K., Douglas, says: "You are who you love, not who loves you." It has always been my formed opinion, that my relationship with my mother has a lot to do with my relationship with myself and how I see others. My relationship with my father (two father figures actually — my grandfather and my father) has a lot to do with my relationship with men. My grandfather died way too soon and my father was simply too passive despite his goodness. Needless to say, my relationships with men have been tricky. I’ve always relied on boyfriends to take care of me. "Take care" means being my life support. It’s fine in high school and college, rookies are allowed to flub psychotically after all. Then it gets dumb (or rather psychotic scary) just around the time when you hit your first job, and then the plot thins like wet tissue from hereon.

You’ve probably made your own manifestos on relationships, perhaps around the time you finished seeing your first Meg Ryan or Woody Allen flick. You point out the neuroses, the potential scandale bombs, the horror-d’oeuvres, what you will put up with and what you won’t, deal-breakers and the qualities you would insist on your partner. As time passes by, you see those little rules broken one by one. Of course, this epiphany comes in the most painful manner. It opens you up and shows you blood in places you least expected. It shows you anger in the brightest of avenues. It shows you forgiveness in the darkest alleys. You rely on bullet-pointed tactics on how to score and follow bullet-pointed tactics on how to cope when he dumps you — priceless information that only a monthly subscription can bring. You live through countless romantic apocalypses. You now understand why these glossies talk at great length about waterproof mascara.

You begin to understand that jealousy is being in denial of insecurities, that sacrifice and forgiveness are the rawest forms of love, that vanity will kill a relationship faster than calling out the wrong name during — you know. You learn, you see, you feel. Then you realize that being a woman is being that dynamic cocktail of emotions, some sweet and some deadly, but the amalgamation is always intoxicating.

After a mistake marathon, I took a break from being a B-movie romance junkie and just dated as they came. I had fun dating, it made me feel independent, secure, confident and gave me a reason to buy a new outfit (don’t we all need an excuse?). I enjoyed thinking only about myself, nursing my fears, coddling my emotions and constantly seeking for my own comfort. Then comes a time where it gets very silent and you find out you’re all alone.

Escaping from emotions is an act of emotional suicide mistaken as preservation. It’s a lot like freezing a steak in the freezer forever, and when it finally gets thawed, it is an arid slab of meat. It loses all the things that made it delicious — all because you wanted things to just stay the same. It’s easy to bring out the white flag when you’re in a funk. But I realize that when one brings out the white flag, it’s surrendering on oneself.

I began unfeminizing myself from a chauvinistic point of view. I shed off seemingly trivial emotions, Byronic concerns and now I’m left with a steely hull that is impenetrable. When fate had it and declared that I was to fall in love, I went against it. I became callous, self-centered and thus, safe.

In a bid to survive grandly, I almost lost, not only my partner, but my confidence, my sensitivity. I almost forgot the joy of caring and loving somebody else. I wanted to mold myself into a indestructible brand of perfection — instead, I almost self-destructed. I realized that the reason I loved men’s magazines aside from their kick-ass articles by Horacio Silva as opposed to Dr. Love (and yes, I prefer trivia bits over true confessions) is because when I indulged in them, I never once had to think about anything that oscillated around emotions. It was all about cool things, scandale events and fantastic prose on how a tux is made. I wanted to live emotion-free in order to preserve myself and not make the mistake of yore and lose my head over some guy. I never wanted to remind myself of self-esteem issues, being a girlfriend on the edge, or seeing myself as the stalker who killed her lover’s family. Same with purely fashion magazines, the only emotions involved were envy (that thin bitch!) and guilt when you drop three months salary on a bag that Giselle was toting around. I welcomed my devils in my earlier days. Now, I hide from them.

As you head out to a more complex lifestyle, you program yourself not to get bothered by trivial things. In putting too much pressure on yourself, you begin not to let anything faze you. That’s as unnatural as a pair of purple Bausch and Lomb contact lenses. But you do it anyway. Tears are a sign of weakness and surrender is only for fugitives. By putting a short leash on my emotions, I lost control of them (Cosmo says the same thing about men). I thought the mature way to have a relationship is to put feelings in the sack and just have dinner together. I forgot that that only applied if you were thinking of running for president. I realized that to be a completely modern woman, you should never forget your soft, loving and caring side. We are still women and should never strive to grow a penis. Sounds like something your lola would tell you for sure.

However, with all the femmes literally losing heart, all I see around are lip-glossed robots busy becoming bionic women. We lose the purpose of our hearts. The heart becomes something that make us function, but not live. By giving some time nurturing our emotions and not immunizing them from feeling, we become the strong people we wish to be. They say you only know the intensity of heat when you get burned and anything below that is simply theoretical. It was never progressive to be a theoretical person. See how a couple of Dr. Love articles could open your mind? You forget the essential things when you forget the simple things. The quest for the so-called perfect life is uncomplicated. It is not surrounded by luxurious trinkets.

Somewhere down my backpacking tour of the Isle of Jadedness, I started to hate Oprah and all those people who urged me to make a gratitude book. Feelings and emotions were all corny in my eyes. Cool chicks did not need love, they needed the right shoes...or so I thought. Not that I would still make a gratitude book. I think my thanks are in check, but I now welcome cheesy emotions like a spankingly scandalous pair of Loboutins. After familiarizing myself further with seven more moves my tongue can make...I realize what it takes to be a fun, fearless female. Love (or at least believing in it no matter what) can really make your tongue do that and so much more.