My colleague Bridgette Sheridan has been complaining about The Atlantic coverage of gender for the past few years. So she forwarded with delight a spot-on column “The Intellectual Situation” in n+1 , a literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, and essays. The editors at n+1 begin:
Listen up, Ladies
Every time a plane flies over New York, we think, “Oh my God — is it another Atlantic think piece?” We mean, “an Atlantic think piece about women.” The two have become synonymous, and they descend upon their target audience with the regularity and severe abdominal cramping of Seasonale. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” “The End of Men,” “Marry Him!”
Read their piece all the way to its logical conclusion:
So far, this strategy seems to be working. The Atlantic had its first profitable year in decades in 2010, and in 2011 made more than half its ad revenue from digital sales, while print ad sales were the highest they’d been in years. In fact, since we married our deadbeat boyfriend, quit our job, and accidentally had quadruplets through in vitro fertilization (all boys, thank God!), we’ve realized we could use some of that cash, so we’re thinking of pitching an article: “Why You’re Failing the Daughters You’ve Never Had and Probably Never Will.”
Will definitely read more from n+1.
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