Mia Freedman

Having been a high-schooler and regular reader back in the days when Mia was editor of Aussie Cosmo, this was a highly nostalgic read for me. I appreciated her feminism and focus on positive female body image at the time, and haven't been able to enjoy one of those magazines since. She is aware of how ridiculous the magazine industry is, and explains some of her more controversial decisions as well as the more standard inner workings of a magazine (hint: it's all a farce).

Being 9 months pregnant myself, I adored the birth stories. They felt real, rather than the either terrifying or miraculous tales I've read elsewhere. I've miss Mia's honest and relatable writing style and I think I'm going to have to go check out her blog now- though I wish she'd make a grown-up magazine. I miss magazines.… (plus d'informations)

It says something about Mia Freedman's chatty, relatable style that she can even make an anecdote about suspecting her children's nanny may be stealing her designer clothes sound like the kind of everyday life occurrence that might happen to anyone. So convincing is her professional everywoman persona that it was only after I'd finished the book that I began to wonder why I hadn't slammed the book shut at that point. Freedman's memoir, Mama Mia[Image], chronicles her childhood fascination with magazines and subsequent rise through the ladymag ranks to become editor of Cosmopolitan, her transfer over to the Nine network to produce the quickly-axed The Catch-Up and her struggles with miscarriage and infertility.

There's some intense subject matter included and Freedman writes with sincerity and good humour. It's a page turner. It's also very much like reading a copy of Cosmopolitan. Apart from the aforementioned nanny episode I could barely remember a thing about the book after I finished it. Her stories about the publishing and television industries are carefully calibrated to give the appearance of telling it all without actually including anything that might offend her former colleagues. She makes it clear that she was miserable during her time at Channel Nine but doesn't offer much of substance to explain why. To hear her tell it, you'd think she failed as a TV executive because she allowed a newspaper to publish a slightly unflattering photograph of her.

Like Cosmo Freedman is good at maximising the drama of otherwise uninteresting stories. A newspaper wrote that she asked her work experience girl to buy bananas. Woe. She put a reality show star on the back cover of the magazine and some people didn't like it. Woe. She splashed a headline about oral sex on the cover of the magazine and the supermarkets didn't want to sell it. They had a sticker made up to put over the headline. Woe followed by relief. These kinds of stories only serve to make me suspect that the magazine industry is very dull indeed if these are the most exciting events of a years-long career. Freedman tells them engagingly although they don't add a great deal to the narrative. To write this review I even had to flick through the book again so quickly did these anecdotes disappear from my memory once I'd closed the book.

Tales of the bubble-world of Sydney Eastern Suburbs media types clearly have a market. Goodness knows, the media loves to write about themselves, to review each other and to invite each other on their TV shows. As someone who lives entirely outside that world there were many, many things in this book I could not relate to at all. Having a bikini wax before giving birth is not on my list of things to do. Nor is packing hair straighteners in my hospital bag. Nor do I think that shopping is something all women bond over. That's a fantasy that comes straight from electric ladymag land where the main preoccupation is persuading women that consumerism and empowerment are the same things.

Freedman talks a lot about body image and photoshopping and it's clear that in the highly conservative world of magazines she really was something of a boundary pusher. She successfully put models up to size 16 in every issue of her magazine. As she notes she was able to do that because she was selling lots of magazines. Women's magazines today, like newspapers, seem like relics of the time before everyone was on the internet. They've increased their picture-to-word ratios to the point where they should probably be sold next to the picture books instead of the magazine section (seriously, have a look at a Cosmo/Cleo from 1983 and be amazed that their movie reviews take up entire pages not just three sentences) and they cling on stubbornly to their decades old formula of sex stories, celebrities, diets disguised as health advice and the-world-is-your-gynecologist fashions.

I don't buy magazines much anymore. I used to read them at Borders until they went out of business (probably because of all the people like me who refused to buy their overpriced books and came in solely for the magazine reading). Now I just skim through them at the supermarket. I bought Freedman's memoir with a Border's gift card but if I'd paid actual, real money I'd be disappointed. As it is, it was just right for what it was: well constructed entertainment, easily digested and easily forgotten. Just like Cosmo.… (plus d'informations)

I was looking at this book on my shelves, wondering why I bought it. I find Mia's columns okay, but sometimes a bit smug...was I trying to re-create my uni days (when she was editor of Cosmo)? Did I just have a burning desire for more FF points that day? Anyway, I plucked this book from my shelves to read to and from work only. That stopped after a few days - this book was interesting, funny and honest. I got the lowdown on the Cosmo I grew up with. There were also some dreadfully sad moments as well some funny ones and some 'too true' comments.
This is so much better than her columns and The New Black. Mia, come back and edit a magazine one day. I'd definitely buy it.… (plus d'informations)