“Congratulations on publishing the fifth edition of Live it! Magazine! Creating a magazine to highlight people, places and things in west central Minnesota is a great idea. … (However) there is a clear pattern of blonde women featured on the cover.”
She’s right! Here are the covers for our first five issues.
This is an excerpt of a letter from a reader, similar to a few other comments we have recently heard verbalized.
To answer the question: “Is this to show readers that being a blonde woman living in west central Minnesota is ideal, perfect or the model citizen?” No!
That is definitely not our intent. Actually, we get so wrapped up in the current issue we are working on, we hadn’t even realized it until my husband pointed it out to me, just the weekend prior to us receiving our first outside comment.
To put things in perspective, we select story ideas based on a topic — not on the source of the subject matter. Once we receive a contact name, we are not in the habit of asking: “Are you blonde?”
That just isn’t the first question out of our mouths — nor the last question.
More blondes!
It is purely coincidental that many of the women featured in past issues — and this one — happen to be blonde.
Is it because they have more fun? We’re not really sure. Maybe something to check out for a future issue?
But we do appreciate hearing from our readers and, as always, we can learn a thing or two from them. We are at least now aware of it, even if we are not willing to ask someone to change their hair color for us.
Thanks for your comments!
–Sharon Bomstad, Live it! Editor
