The Worst Magazine Cover In History?

My wife found a sad contrast between two magazine covers targeted at kids and shared it with me: one telling boys to dream big, and the other telling girls how to "wake up pretty." Soon after, the same contrasting covers exploded into the media thanks to one mom's posting on Instagram that was shared by Amy Schumer and Blake Lively.

The even more interesting part of the story, though, was the adamant defense of the cover from Girl's Life editor Karen Bokram. "It's okay to like lip gloss or be interested in fashion," Bokram said during an interview. "I don't know how [the problem] became 'either you like lip gloss and clothes or you like being an astronaut.'"

She has a point about the false choice, and it is worth taking seriously. The trouble is that her own cover is the thing making the choice for its readers. Boys get told to dream big. Girls get told how to wake up pretty. Nobody had to argue that the two are mutually exclusive, because only one of them was ever offered.