I’ve never actually worked for money before, only for free beer, so I was looking forward to my internship with trepidation and wee bit of excitement. People have told me in the past that working life is hectic, and I won’t be able handle it, so I was curious as to how it would play out.
On the first day of my internship, I was supposed to reach the office at 8am and report to the editor, but I ended up waiting until 11am. Thankfully there were some fellow interns so at least I wasn’t sitting alone like some sad doofus.
Working in a women’s mag was easier than I thought it would be; it was certainly less stressful than studying. However, it also shattered some illusions I had about the industry.
I haven’t had any experience working in a newspaper before, but the magazine I was with has a pretty incestuous relationship with the other magazines under the same umbrella company. By incestuous I don’t mean office sex, but the way the conduct business.
As we all know, women’s magazines have staff recommendations of products. At my mag, they don’t actually canvas for opinions from customers or readers, but insteasd pass the products to fellow colleagues for testing. When they need models to go for makeovers, they recruit either relatives, friends or, you guessed it, fellow colleagues again!
While this certainly makes the job easier, I feel that the magazine exist in its own little world with very little interaction with the real world, as the opinions are of those working for women’s magazines only. Objectivity is also compromised as their own people are getting the benefits.
There’s no actual survey of feelings and opinion on the grassroots level in Malaysia, which is different from the way the Singapore version is done. The Singaporean edition looks for customers of the product or the product’s competitors for opinions and recommendations, while makeover models are actual members of the public who submit a photo with reasons why they should be selected for the makeover.
At least there’s at least some semblance at transparency and objectivity, compared to the Malaysian edition, where the beauty claims made are often dubious at best. It certainly made me question whether the mag placed an equal importance on selling more copies and credibility, though perhaps in the world of women’s magazine those 2 terms are mutually exclusive.
The writers employed at the mag also a tad disappointing, as over the two-month course I’ve heard senior writers being berated by the sub-editor for lifting material from wikipedia and other websites without checking the veracity of the text.
There were also writers who were unable to tell the difference between an active and passive sentence, and did not know when the usage for each was appropriate. She was also unable to differentiate between an apostrophe and a quotation mark - she used quotation marks for an entire article when she should've used an apostrophe.
Now lest I be accused of only seeing the glass as half empty, here're the good bits.
It was eye-opening to work for a women’s magazine as we get to go and loan stuff from shops that I normally won’t enter.
On one trip with my editor, I was holding more than 50k worth of goods in my bony little arms. That was a surreal and overwhelming experience, and also very scary. I kept hoping I wasn’t going to trip or drop any of the stuff and end up paying damages, as I don’t have enough kidneys to sell to raise 50k.
It was also a learning experience to find out what goes on behind a photoshoot, and the work needed to organize one, from loaning products to arranging for models, and slotting time for the studio.
Personally, the most memorable experience was to go for a professional hair makeover and then posing as a model for the mag’s makeover section. I’m a geeky gamer, so getting made up and looking pretty was a change from the norm. I was uncomfortable at the photoshoot though, and can finally say for sure that modelling may be for some people, but it’s definitely not for me.
This job wasn’t exactly a challenge in terms of writing, but it was a good learning experience, and it has encouraged me try working in other kinds of publications to get a feel of how things might be like.
