I used to love Essence Magazine...when I was 16. Back then it was like Cosmo for black teens full of articles about famous people, lifestyles and hairstyles that I could never quite pull off. There was also the occasional article about sex which made reading the magazine seem like a very grown up thing to do. I always looked forward to seeing who would be on the next month's cover and then gobbled up the issue in no time flat.Flash forward more years than I care to reveal and the magazine is still around, only my feelings for it have changed.
As a girl growing up reading the magazine I guess I thought it would grow up with me but this is clearly not the case. Everything about Essence is the same as it has been for twenty years. It looks the same, weighs the same, talks about the same "safe" celebrities ad nauseum and features damn near the same articles month after month.
You always know what you are getting with Essence and maybe that's good enough for some readers but it's like boring sex. Everyone has it at some point, but if it's always the same it might be time to see a therapist.
To be fair, Essence is really the only magazine of its type out there. It has a healthy circulation and doesn't seem to be starved for advertisers. Its closest rivals might be Jewel or Heart & Soul but really, the former is still too green and the latter makes me feel like I'm reading a browner version of Redbook.
After it became clear that Suede was never coming back from its hiatus, I secretly wondered if some Suede's fresh attitude would eventually start to invade
Essence but it didn't. Suzanne Boyd left the company and it was back to business as usual.
So what about that content? There's usually an "inspirational" letter from the editor that I don't read, some beauty products shot against a white
background, a page or two of hairstyles, the ubiquitous "I'm in an interracial relationship" article, one page confessional essays, the cover story, a poorly
shot fashion layout sometimes featuring an America's Next Top model contestant, some recipes,and another "inspirational" essay by former editor Susan Taylor.
The end. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I guess their philosophy is "if it ain't broke why fix it?" I'm sure there are a lot of Essence readers who like it just the way it is. I'm just not one of them and I refuse to believe I'm alone in that.
One particular issue of Essence that stands out in my mind is one that featured Lil' Kim on the cover some years back. At the time I was surprised that Essence would put a rapper of Kim's particular niche on the cover so I snapped up the issue only to get home and find that there was no interview with Kim in the magazine. There were just details from the 10 hour plus photo-shoot and an "open letter" to Kim written by an editor. Not even a write around, just a letter saying nothing new about her provocative image. It was, in a word, lame.
That pretty much sums up what Essence has become to me. A pretty cover photo to draw you in and not much going on between the sheets.
Will I buy this month's issue featuring Erykah Badu? I don't know, but I won't lie, I will probably page through it at the grocery.