SELF Magazine Is Closing, and We Don't Have Stories to Spare

When I was maybe ten or eleven, before I knew I could write, I was convinced I was going to be a fashion designer. Or maybe a makeup artist. The plan changed weekly. What didn't change was the ritual: cutting up magazine covers, doing my own makeup on the models with whatever drugstore eye shadow I could get my hands on, and plastering them across my bedroom walls like I was curating something. SELF was always in that pile. 

I found out this weekend that it's closing after nearly 47 years, and I am genuinely sad.

Here's the thing about SELF that I'm not sure anyone is saying: it wasn't just a health magazine. Growing up, amidst Allure and Glamour and Cosmo and Teen Vogue (RIP to another legend) — all those glossy, aspirational universes telling us to be smaller and prettier and more palatable — SELF was always just... there, telling us to get stronger, to understand what was happening in our own bodies, to show up for our own care. It was a different message, and over nearly five decades, it shaped how a lot of us learned to think about ourselves in ways we probably couldn't have named at the time.

The gap between what women actually experience health-wise and what the media bothers to cover is enormous, and it doesn't close itself. Every outlet that takes women seriously makes that gap a little smaller. Every one that shuts down makes it wider. And we don't have stories to spare.

For nearly 50 years, SELF trusted women to handle the truth about their own bodies. That's rarer than it should be, and it always showed.