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Book Reviews
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PLENTY Magazine
(Environ Press, Inc.; 2004)
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Let’s face it, people: environmentalism’s never been broadly celebrated as cool, sexy, hip, or chic. The most common options citizen-consumers are offered tend towards the seemingly self-deprivational (the anti-style style) or the dorky eco-alternative (the Honda Insight, shapeless hemp clothing, Birkenstocks). It’s an oft-mentioned conundrum: How do we sell this movement?
Enter Plenty, a new magazine launched last November. With its Ford agency cover models, profiles of ecotourist destinations, and glossy pages, Plenty attempts to equate being green with being a fashionable and educated, globe-trotting hottie — voluntary simplicity not required. “If we, as individuals and as a society, make the right choices, we can still have a world of PLENTY,” the premier issue’s editor’s note proclaims.
In a way, Plenty’s namesake philosophy is a permaculture mainstay at its best: we live in a world of abundance. All this scarcity talk is merely the fascist outcome of short-term, profit-driven decision-making. It’s about time a mainstream magazine put two and two — style and concern for the planet—together; our lifestyles are more complicated than Glamour or E magazine can alone address. “Smart living for a complex world,” Plenty’s tagline boasts. And indeed, where else can one read a cover story on peak oil and a few pages later find where to buy a hemp/silk blend charmeuse slip dress?
The implications of injecting environmental issues into mass consumer culture are potentially huge, and Plenty presents a broad array of topics. The cover of issue one has a wide-eyed Drew Barrymore look-alike pointing a gas pump at her blond head. An article in the second issue details Boeing’s model fuel cell airplane, and a commentary posits global warming as “the greatest problem we face today.” May’s issue has four top stories even the most omnivorous magazine connoisseur would be hard-pressed to locate in any other fashion rag — from a feminist training camp of Kurdish guerrillas to New York City’s “green” skyscrapers to the Republican assault on the Endangered Species Act to contaminated drinking water.
The fashion spreads are notable for showing off revamped vintage styles, clothes made from organic fibers, and faux leather-heeled boots. One issue has six pages devoted to PVC-free raingear (“Don’t let the rain wash away your convictions!”). “Animal-free tested” make-up colors the eyelids and high cheekbones; one model is draped in diamonds from a producer of “environmentally friendly, conflict-free gems.”
Plenty is itself a rare jewel in the magazine world in that it highlights solutions but avoids political partisanship and self-righteous advocacy, while even being — yikes — fun. By putting the spotlight on individual choices, from sporting a corset constructed of recycled tires to joining a CSA, Plenty is shifting everyday environmentalism from fringe to familiar.
Though the union between green and glamorous is worthy of applause, the magazine’s slick pages gloss over tremendous demographics, serving, overall, to dampen its pioneering spirit. Or perhaps, with Plenty’s general lack of people of color and almost exclusive devotion to upper-class pursuits, it is a more accurate reflection of environmentalism than many of us would care to admit.
Features on sustainable haute cuisine, sustainable Third World tourism, and sustainable ski lodges are valid and well written, but if you take away the “sustainable” part, you’re left with a lifestyle beyond the wallets of most Americans. I mean, a “bistro table” for $5,000? A $64 bath towel made with “low-impact, eco-correct dyes”? I’d rather use a cheap sarong. Equating environmentalism with overpriced luxury goods designed for bougie yuppies ain’t changin’ nothin’. And though overconsumption is a huge environmental malady — maybe it is purposeful that its target readers are the folks with the funds — Plenty’s heavy emphasis on product profiles and brand name fetishism make it little more than a greener Organic Style with some vital stories thrown in.
Plenty reminds me of the Toyota Prius, marketed to the educated class as a product much more eco-relative to its competitors, yet one that’s definitely not addressing the heart of the problem. If the main solution is to consume not-so-ecologically-bad products rather than to consume less in general, and with a sense of equity, is Plenty anything more than a stop-gap magalogue? It begs the question: how much is really plenty?
Yet then again, as Alex Steffen, an environmental journalist, put it on worldchanging.com, “We need to systematically juxtapose ecologically-conscious and sexy affluence with crass, unhealthy and sexually-repugnant polluting lifestyles.”
Do literate consumers have enough on the newsstands without Plenty? Ultimately, no. Even if its niche is small and elite, its omissions grand and unfortunate, it is still a much-needed beginning. When the revolution comes, at least some of us are gonna look good, our second-hand Prada pumps, organic silk bomber jackets, and all.
Katie Renz
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