Our Jane-ness Tested, We Come Up Short (and Sober)

In “Letters,” June/July, Brandon Holley responds to a thirty-year-old reader’s lament that the magazine seems solely focused on women in their twenties.  To rebuff this criticism, the editor-in-chief (age thirty-nine) offers a handy quiz to determine whether age or temperament makes the ideal Jane reader.  Here’s what she says:

Take this simple test to see if you’re still one of us.

For a magazine so constantly declaring its uniqueness, this certainly reinforces a stereotypically cliquish attitude. “One of us,” huh? Guess you can’t read Jane if you don’t match one of these two criteria.

Option number one:

If you (a) can pound shots at a show and still make it to your 9 a.m. meeting or...

Oh, do you drink a lot and/or at inappropriate times? ‘Cause that totally makes you a Jane girl. (There are many, many references to drinking in this issue—including a road trip whose theme is dive bars; to be fair, the writers lined up designated drivers, but still, anyone else see a problem with this idea?—and this is the sex issue and not the alcohol issue. Unless Jane is trying to link alcohol consumption with sex, which is a completely different unhealthy thing to promote.)

Option number two:

(b) love Kurt Vonnegut as much as the tabloids

We’re guessing this means that your typical reader should love Slaughterhouse-Five as much as she loves Star, not that she loves Mr. Vonnegut as much as Us Weekly loves him.  But that’s just semantic nit-picking, since we can’t recall a single Vonnegut reference in Jane.  Ever.

Unfortunately, our test score reveals that we are not now, nor have we ever been, what the editor-in-chief would define as a Jane reader. Does this mean she doesn’t want our money?  Pity, because with what we save by not pounding shots on weeknights, we could subscribe until we’re Brandon’s age.