The Plaid Pladd

So Steven buys so much Coke that we have more Coke points than those polar bears. If only we could pay rent in Coke points. If only Coke points gave you anything I actually want. Alas.

In the category of things I don’t actually need, but now have because of Coke points, is a subscription to Cosmo. I have something of a sick fascination with Cosmo because I can’t believe they’re getting away with pretending to be “fun and fearless” while the underlying message of every single thing in their magazine is “Change yourself to be like everyone else.” Change yourself because you’ll never be happy with that haircut/makeup/boyfriend. Change yourself, because your irrational and underlying fears about your life are TRUE. Change yourself, because it’s your job as the woman to “decode” the men in your life, who, by the way, are always strange 1950s/Cave Men archetypes. I’m always surprised at the new angles they find to make women feel bad about themselves.

For instance, my personal favorite part of the January 2011 issue is a chart titled “What Your Ex’s Next Girlfriend Reveals About You”, which lists categories of women he might choose, and then explains what that reveals about you and, most importantly, what about yourself and your dating style it shows you need to improve. From this chart I also realized that Cosmo would categorize me “The Plain Jane” which is defined as someone who wears jeans and a t-shirt and “her idea of a beauty routine is a quick shampoo”. What does that say about the people who choose to date me after Cosmo’s apparent target audience? “His bland choice means that your beauty (and brains) intimidated the hell out of him.” I love how they worked that parenthetical implication that not wearing make up is for stupid girls in there. Anything to sell more sparkely eyeliner.

Anyway, since I am the bland choice, I do not actually want to keep these copies of Cosmo around to cherish for all time so lately I’ve been coming up with ways to recycle them in an artistic manner. I’m used pictures/words from them for collages and things before, but I wanted to do something that would knock a good chunk out of the stack. Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas I want to try involve a glue gun, but then I found this tutorial on how to make a tabletop Christmas tree by folding pages. Yay! Easy enough to accomplish while watching Arrested Development!

Okay, so it's more like a Christmas cone, whatever

This did require folding every page, so it took awhile, but other than that it was super easy.

The covers were a little harder, that's why there's a slight gap in the back

Just in time for my book club’s holiday party tomorrow!