Magazines capture a more innocent era: Nine days ago
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

By the time light from a distant star makes it to Earth, the star itself might have died long ago. What we see is an image of something that no longer exists.

That's how I felt at a bookstore yesterday, when I happened to glance at the magazine rack. Aside from the weeklies out with their post-attack editions, the covers told the story of a very distant planet.

One that existed nine days ago.

How cavalier we were back then. Nothing - not killing, not death, not even evil - needed to be taken seriously. Words that have since regained their meaning - words like ``terror'' and ``deadly'' - were no more than candy used to lure a public as interested in reading about the 118 men who died in the Kursk submarine as they were in learning how to firm up their bellies.

In the Men's Journal on the stands now, ``Terror Under the Sea'' plays second fiddle to ``Build a New Body: Basic Steps to a Flatter Stomach, Stronger Abs and a Bigger Chest.'' And indeed, which was the bigger story in a country obsessed by appearance?

In Cosmopolitan, meanwhile, relationships were the stuff of life-and-death: ``The one word he's dying to hear during sex,'' a current cover line reads. (Turn inside to learn that word is ``you,'' as in ``you turn me on.'') In People's Best and Worst Dressed 2001 issue, sharing rack space with the magazine's special tragedy edition, readers learn about ``7 deadly style sins.''

The magazine readers of that long-ago land also seemed to think that killing was, if not funny, at least highly entertaining. Premiere's cover promotes both ``The Ultimate `Godfather': A DVD Collection You Can't Refuse'' and a piece in which Helen Fielding - the author of ``Bridget Jones's Diary'' - rewrites ``Pearl Harbor.''

The fun continues inside, with a feature called ``The Ripper Schlepped Here.'' It's a story on how to tear through London ``like a madman'': ``You can spend two hours strolling around the actual East End locations where the mysterious murderer gutted five prostitutes in 1888,'' the copy reads.

The cover of Adweek's New England edition shows three guys who work for the firm Holland Mark. ``Marked Men,'' the caption reads.

Inside, in a story about tough times for ad-school grads, we learn about the ``day everything changed'' - only in this case it wasn't, technically, everything, but rather the job prospects for a few aspiring art directors and creative types.

Perhaps the most shocking thing on the magazine stand wasn't the suddenly offensive frivolity of Shape magazine's ``9 proven moves for your sexiest hips and butt,'' but the relative tameness of the supermarket tabloids.

In The National Enquirer, Hillary was cheating on Bill (and the ex-prez found out), Lisa Marie was involved in some kind of shark attack ``terror'' (with exclusive photos inside) and Julia was begging her married lover to leave his wife. Even an appearance by the country's most recent boogey man, U.S. Rep. Gary Condit, was no match for actual events. ``Gary Condit's Daughter Stole My Husband,'' reads a strap at the bottom of the page.

Before last Tuesday, of course, all of this - Oprah's love crisis (Star), Our Unhealthy Obsession with Jennifer Aniston (Talk), How Stars Lose Weight Fast, and Keep it Off (Us Weekly) - was just escapism.

The only question is, before Sept. 11 - before we knew how bad things could get - what exactly were we escaping from?