More, More, More

I like More.

More is designed for me, the women with less. But really, don’t we all have less than More. More makes us content that there are others, thousands in fact, that turn to More to determine exactly what it is that they have less of. More is for you. More is for me.

If you don’t know, More is a magazine geared to you and me, the ladies of a certain age. You know, that certain age being somewhere after the decades of blind aspiration and delusion and somewhat before the ravages of resignation and depression. More has pictures of all the things you want and should deserve at this point in your life, but probably don’t have. Maybe you have the husband, but not the big house. Or you too many or little or no children. Or you have more money and less happiness. Or more thigh and less waist. Too much sex, too little time….on and on.

More speaks to all of this. And More can double speak in such a way that you think you have more already, but setting the ground for dissatisfaction even as the sentence is uttered.
“Guaranteeing your Retirement: you have your first million socked away, now what?”
“Whittling your waist away without wasting away – how to back up from the anorexia precipice” and
“What to do if ‘Too Much Love’ is your problem.”
Okay, I exaggerate, but if on one page there’s an article telling me to accept my body and my life, and on the next there’s an ad showing an impossibly good-looking couple sailing their yacht into the sunset, isn’t there a contradiction in terms? I know mags survive on the ads, I’m not naieve, but what slim percentage of the population are they targeting.
Maybe More is not for me.

Now don’t get me wrong. When I first held a copy of More in my hand, I thought “I have found my people.” More told me I was no longer GenX, that Madonna and me were Generation Jones, that women my age start running (and never stop), that the whole world needs to know their bra cup size, and I shouldn’t have married my husband according to the money matters poll. All affirming my great and wise superiority.

More is better than less.

Most of the time.

What More misses is that if you’re leaning on the excess button 24/7, you know, something else might be coming down the chute, and that might include more despair than you’ve dreamed of. You want it all? You have to be ready to take it all, because an essential part of you having more of everything is that somebody will be having quite a bit less of the thing you’re stockpiling. Less pie, less clean water, less jobs, less dignity, less fair and square and lest we forget, less living. The rule of our capitalistic excitement is not ‘winners for all’: it’s may the best game-player win by cornering the market on more.

I can hear all the ‘la-la-las’ while well dressed women stick fingers in their ears, preferring to shop for sweatshop bargains and flush Martha Stewart paint thinner down the drain. Or the mounting shouts of ‘un-American!’ as dedicated imperialists decide that more oil and less foreigners are in their best interests. And don’t forget Christian Right-off-the-Edges, claiming holy right to dominion over the earth because God said to kill all the species and turn the planet into a Walmart parking lot. Liberty and freedom for all = more for all. Or at least the all that is just like you.

I also hear the chants, affirmations and daily mantras of the ‘there is enough in the Universe for everyone’ crowd. In their whoo-whoo land of abundance and focus and power from the Everlasting, it’s my own fault if I haven’t lifted my consciousness away from the fray enough to realize my full potential. God or OM or Big Smarty Pants in the sky doesn’t want you to suffer, so claim your happiness! Why should you go out low when you get go out high? Not often is this idea supported by the idea that happiness could be primarily based in giving and kindness: Uh – that’s doesn’t really sound like More. At least in this Millennium.

Now I’m coming up with more reasons for you to tell me to be quiet, and enjoy the Gucci while it lasts. I’m just a spoilsport reading this mag in a coffeeshop, typing away on my laptop while sipping a latte before I jump in my mini-SUV and go off to the gym, merely comforting myself with the increase in my guilty conscience and my increased awareness of life’s paradoxes. And as I flip the pages of More, secretly strategizing for the mutual fund success, for the abs, and for the fulfilling relationship, I realize that until I stop reading junk like this less, I won’t have time to enjoy life more. Gotta go.