The annual ratings of the healthiness of U.S. Cities for men and women have been released by the magazine Men's Health (2008) and spin-off Women's Health (2008). Madison, WI was named the overall best city for men, while Salt Lake City, UT was rated best for women. San Jose and Anaheim, CA topped the "healthiest" lists for both men and women.
The two features are very much written in tandem. The Women's Health article notes: "women don’t live in a vacuum--they also want to know where the healthiest, happiest, and fittest men reside". Perhaps reflecting the spin-off/spin-ee relationship, the Men's Health article doesn't link to the women's list, although the maps are identically formatted, including links between the two.
The stylistic differences between the two articles are what I really wanted to point out, here. The men's article opens with a rhetorical question: "Is there a more romantic icon than the songwriter enamored of the road?" The women's, with a sentence I can't really classify: "We’re huge fans of GPS technology, but it’s pretty much useless if you want to pinpoint the Best & Worst Cities for Women." Is that a joke? A complaint? A veiled insult? The men's article is full of bullet points, lists, subheadings. The women's article is a lot shorter, and talks mostly about shortcomings in other lists, and then veers off to promote the men's list.
Am I reading too much into this? Perhaps it's just the 21-year old magazine's established style is more comfortable to me than the 3-year-old spin-off's product placement.
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