response to Graydon Carter and GOOD magazine's post The 51 Best* Magazines Ever
MADEMOISELLE
Commented on February 26, 2007 by - melb
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response to Graydon Carter and GOOD magazine's post The 51 Best* Magazines Ever
Commented on February 26, 2007 by - melb
How could you not include Mademoiselle during the Betsy Talbot Blackwell/Edie Locke years? [Disclosure: I was a Guest Editor in 1971 and on staff from 1973-79.] The mag. was intelligent, funny and, unlike Cosmo, talked about sex and the single woman in a way that made you feel liberated and smart. Poetry, fiction and non-fiction included the likes of James Dickey, William Kotzwinkle, Joyce Carol Oates, Joyce Maynard, and an excerpt from Susan Brownmiller's "Against Our Will." The Guest Editor program introduced us to Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Betsey Johnson and Ali McGraw among others. Articles were about the women's movement, abortion, eating disorders, and sexually transmitted diseases when these topics were considered taboo by most women's mags. Photography by Duane Michals, Deborah Tuberville and Arthur Elgort. Then there were the columns: The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Sex, started by Lillian Roxon and continued by Karen Durbin after Roxon's death; Mary Cantwell's Eat, which had a cult following as much interested in the words as the recipes; and Fran Lebowitz's first main-stream mag. column. And what woman's mag. at the time would have been so cheeky as to ask the likes of Andy Warhol and John Simon what they loved most for a special issue on love? Unfortunately, after Ms. Locke was shown the Conde Nast door, someone decided young women were only interested in clothes, makeup, diets, and how to correct flaws to attract a man, eventually leading to MLLE's demise.