I am a reader.  Let me rephrase that, I am a voracious reader that has rendered my husband significantly poorer than he would have been if had married someone more sane.

Because I read so much I have to often find different mediums because let’s be honest there is only so many romances, so many biographies, so many health conscious stories before I just get bored.  There is only so many times you can read about the same romance formula before you just skip pages to get to the good parts (you know what I am talking about).

So occasionally, I bring home magazines.  I started doing it when I would go to the beach because I didn’t want to get my books wet (this was before electronic books).  Now, I honestly read them because my son needs to find pictures that start with “k” or some such letter to glue to a piece of paper for kindergarten.  I read my magazines for my child’s homework projects.  Weird.

So there I was this weekend reading my magazines, and wondering if there was going to be something new and different this month, compared to every other month.  I tend to read Women’s Health, Shape and Self.  I like them all but really the repetition can get old.  I know I am supposed to work out, I know that blueberries are good for me…please!

But this time I noticed something strange.  Maybe it was because I was bored with the articles, or maybe this was this first time…I don’t know.  Anyways, on every third page was a beautiful, glossy photo of a mostly naked woman selling diet pills.  Diet pills?  I couldn’t believe it.  In magazines supposedly devoted to the health of women were ad after of ad of diet pills.

I don’t have any problem per se with diet pills, I have even been known to take a few in my life in the vain hope that they would transform me without my having to get off the couch (they don’t).  Even celebrities who I would normally consider sane and healthy have pushed diet pills (think Jillian Michaels).  But to have advertisement after advertisement trying to push a short cut just doesn’t seem like giving the public the best choices.

Maybe the magazines need the money, maybe the magazines need to fill the space.  I would even be okay if the ads were on separate sections or pages away from the healthy articles; but to put an article about running right next to a diet pill seems simply unethical.  Don’t promote a healthy and well-balanced life style and then give me an ad showing the exact person I want to look like with the promise of all my dreams coming true if I just take this little pill; it’s wrong.

I don’t know if these magazines will ever change, and although I hope that I have enough will power to continue to fight the idea that there is a miracle pill out there, it is possible it will snag even me, and then I will probably really get mad.  And then of course, you all will have to read it!!!

Here’s to our sanity.