Doormat II

I made a promise to give Nova a second chance and, well, the second issue of the magazine appears just as dominated by the you-form as the first one: "Here's why your surroundings don't love your new self".

The direct address is quite a standard convention in this type of magazine, I suppose, and it's meant to be friendly-but-firm with you. I really don't like it. And it seems ironic that five different women, including Leonora Christina Skov, 30, as the youngest among them, have been asked to write a letter to their younger selves, that is: they've been asked to use the first person singular to address themselves in the second person singular, and they do so mainly with encouragement and comfort (don't worry, you'll be fine!), but also with reproval. In fact, journalist and writer Lone Kühlmann, 61, brings out the topos of the doormat again as she tells her younger self in a friendly-but-firm tone:

If you lie down and make like a doormat, don't be surprised if someone comes and wipe their feet on the back of your neck.

It's just a hackneyed phrase, I know, but with so many phrases to choose from---isn't it striking and somewhat appalling that a woman will address another woman by the title of doormat in two out of two issues of a brand new women's magazine?