All about Frankie magazine

"My battle with magazines" is definitely a memoir subhead contender; I've written here and elsewhere several times about growing up with Minx mag, living on top of a pile of glossies and then having a breakthrough, a few years ago, about how plain bad most of the mainstream women's magazines were (around the same time I left journalism for social media...). How insidious. But trying to quit buying those big mags has been tough. Most people drunkenly buy Bacon Fries from the shop on the way home from a night out; for me, it's likely to be Grazia, and I'll feel just as bad in the morning.

The indie publishing scene still seems to be going strong, though, and the content's reliably great; just look at The Gentlewoman confidently putting Angela Lansbury on the cover or Lula's ever dancing skywards cover price. I always thought Frankie was going to be a little twee for me, but I should have known better; perhaps I was Australian in a previous life? Two things learnt from the latest issue:

1. In Japanese, the word "aware" means those fleeting moments of fading beauty before inevitable decay, like the end of cherry blossom season or the last decent holiday with someone who you know will chuck you soon. In the same piece on untranslatable words, "ya'aburnee" in Arabic means "you bury me", the sweet assurance that you'd rather your sweetheart dies second as you couldn't live without them. 

2. Grazia would never, ever, include the phrase "cock forest" in a sentence about how male dominated recent literary awards shortlist have been. 

Gorgeous graphics, great, intelligent features that match the blogs I read, beautiful stuff to buy that isn't ludicrous priced ("these £3000 shoes are a must-have"); it's not too much to ask, big UK mags with all that influence over teenage girls. Don't make me start thinking about that mag idea I had again...