Jane and the Sex and the...

Jane magazine is kaput. Well, that's kind of too bad. The general feel from girly blogs is a heaping cup of "I told you so," mixed with a pinch of self-loathing and remorse. Which is perfect, because that's pretty much the magazine's demo.

People wanted to love Jane, but it was just so unloveable sometimes. At least it gave us Gawker something to talk about, on a few occassions.

As for me, I came in late on the whole subversive girls' magazine thing. I never read Sassy when I was young, I read Ym and Seventeen. (Although looking back, I thik that Seventeen may have tried to cop what Sassy was doing right just a teeny tiny bit.) In college I started to read Bitch and Bust and Jane. Hands down, Jane is the most mainstream, celebrity-obsessed, and anorexic model propagatin' out of the three. But truthfully, I think it was my favorite for all of those reasons. I hate the goddess quality of some feminist writing, and the uber-awareness of that brand of "response to pop-culture." I mean, I'm glad that it exists, but it just gets annoying sometimes. I loved Jane for its shallowness. And I kind of loved that it wasn't even self-aware enough to embrace its own shallowness. It's the same reason I love Sex and the City. Even though I think Carrie is the worst female prototype out there (not to mention a terrible friend--and I hate it when girls think they are the "Carrie" of the group...I won't even get into girls who move to NYC to fulfill their Carrie daydreams: "I'm just a designer-wearing, shoe-loving single girl with a penchant for writing about relationships! Whee!" And while I'm not getting into that I also won't get into my deep hatred for the word "penchant." Is this the longest parenthetical phrase ever yet.), I will watch that stupid show every freaking time it's on.

I guess what I like about Jane is that it let me figure out what was stupid, sexist, or totally intolerable within its pages for myself, without preaching it to me. So yeah. We'll miss you, Jane.