Chinese Marie Claire

The Chinese Marie Claire is REALLY heavy. I mean, it's physically humongous, carrying it in your arms is like holding a baby. I feel so cheated because after all the trouble of flipping through that encyclopedia, I was only reading 10 pages of it.

First, there are hundreds of pages of advertisement, printed on very massive thick paper, and then followed by a ton of articles on what the latest fashion trend is, what clothes you should buy, how to do your make-up, what kind of make-up you should buy, what kind of new gadget you should buy, the newest LV or Hermez bag, etc. Then, a few columns on sex therapy. And then, a teeny tiny 5 page section is dedicated to editorials. Oftentimes these things emphasize on the insignificance of material things, like "how to save your money", "spiritual life vs. the material life", "Why taking a higher earning job may not be good for you".

 I am really confused by these authors... because it seems like after all that effort of making you carry a magazine the size of a 2-year-old and flipping through all those pages, they in the end just wanted to tell me "Hey, all the stuff you just read was crap, don't buy anything. In fact, don't even buy this magazine anymore."

So, what do they really want??
I'm going to sound totally random, but this kind of reminds me of the concept of 本音と建前 (concept from Japanese psychologist Takeo Doi, that society or people often have a visade, covering up the truth).
At first, it seems as though the tatemae (visade) of Marie Claire is the colourful pages of ads, and honne (true intention) is a the message for people to have substance and not attached to material things. But really, I think those hidden articles are the tatemae, they are there to give an impression of substance. This might a sort of strategy to attract more readers, and oftentimes those readers might just be the ones who make enough to afford the LV bags.