Farewell, People

I have read People Magazine from the very first issue - March 4, 1974. I was 13 years old and still remember what I felt spending 69 cents on a magazine. I stopped and looked at the magazine - just stared at it - finding it hard to imagine I was about to spend money on something that was so 'not a need'. I bought it and took it home - my mom was a bit surprised - but I had my own money from babysitting, etc. I know now, with teens of my own constantly withdrawing from the Bank of Mom and Dad, she was probably glad I had money to buy stuff for myself. I read the issue and every issue after before bed every night. I could make the weekly issue last all week until the next one came out. I loved reading it.

I have never missed an issue. Never. I've subscribed since they started offering subscriptions (for a long time, they only sold in stores - no subscriptions). It was a lot of $ to subscribe - a weekly magazine, 52 issues, is expensive in subscription form. I renewed for three years and paid in four installments. The past few years, I've just renewed annually.

My interest in the magazine has been declining for some time. It's just a 'tabloid' these days - full of pictures and 'snippets' and one or two 'articles'.

The most recent edition to clutter my mailbox has Heidi Montag on the cover. This stunning, beautiful, TWENTY-THREE YEAR OLD girl had TEN plastic surgery procedures at once. She was beautiful BEFORE the procedures. She's still beautiful. The magazine devoted SEVEN full pages to the article - to before and after pictures; to pictures of Ms. Montag in an ambulance after surgery going to a posh after-care facility. Details how she 'stayed in hiding' for seven weeks while healing, telling family and friends she was 'ill'. Not a lie, really - but she was ill because of self-inflicting ten procedures on herself for sheer vanity.

This week's edition was preceded by the front-cover news that Kate Gosselin got hair extensions. Wow...I slept so much better after seeing her 'fresh start'. $7,000 for hair extensions. Twenty hours of time in a stylist's chair for hair extensions.

This is a sad statement on what we've become....and I realized that they publish this crap because people buy it.

But not me. Not us. Our subscription is actually under Mr-Mrs - because my sweet mother wanted to give me a subscription one year for Christmas but it was so expensive, she had to call me back and ask if it would be OK to make the gift for both me and J. Hence my subscription became our subscription. And we've left it that way, all these years....sort of in memory of her.

We canceled this evening. Refund in process. We'll take the refund money and send it to World Vision for help to Haiti. I had two payments left on this year's subscription - and I'll send that money to World Vision also. What I would have spent on 'fluff' can go towards helping those suffering huge tragedy. It's the right thing to do....and it is something I would have done anyway - but now I can send what we were sending PLUS my savings from no People Magazine subscription.

If People ever starts printing the kind of stories that warm my heart, teach me something or are at least informational in a way I'm interested in, I might reconsider. But in this age of 'Twitter' and 'Facebook'; where people want quick 'sound bites' of info vs. 'the rest of the story' versions that my generation prefers, it is unlikely I will be reading much of this magazine anytime soon. I can catch up in hospital or doctor's office waiting rooms....and read crap for free.