REVOLVER

I refrained from piling on to that new girls' tattle-rag version of the Bible, called Revolve, mostly because I try not to just be a knee-jerk critic of everything new. I like new stuff generally. I like to stay somewhere within earshot of the cutting edge of societal evolution. So I waited, tended to other issues, etc.

I should've just let the knee jerk until it broke off and careened through a plate-glass window though--Revolve is one wacky tome, written by some Biblical illiterates:

In a sidebar titled "Top Ten Things to Know About a Revolve Girl," rule number one is that "Revolve girls don't call guys." In a September 14 interview in The New York Times Magazine, [Laurie] Whaley [one of its authors] tried to defend this rule by saying: "There's no indication from Scripture that Mary Magdalene ever picked up the phone and called Christ."

Um, right. She was among the first to visit Him at the tomb, though, and among the first to figure out what had happened to Him. Surely that should count for something.

The press folks assigned to write stories about this gem aren't exactly theologians either:

But interviewer Deborah Solomon [of the New York Times, no less] outdoes Whaley's anachronistic phone analogy. In an unmistakable sign that she got her Bible knowledge from that reliable historical source The Last Temptation of Christ, Solomon tells Whaley: "But Mary Magdalene, who was Christ's girlfriend, favored low necklines and loads of jewelry," and "You could argue that Christ was drawn to [Mary Magdalene] precisely because of her flamboyant clothing."

The paper of record employs a dunderhead who thinks Jesus had a girlfriend, to whom He was drawn because she wore slutty clothes, based on a heretical film? The mind reels--what sort of qualifications does one need to work for the Old Gray Liar nowadays? A PhD in Utter Cluelessness, with a prior Masters in Fabricating for Fun and Profit?

Whatever, Revolve ain't your daddy's Bible. Instead of no graphics, or a bunch of maps of the journeys of Paul or the boundaries of the Davidic kingdom of Israel, Revolve is full of...hot chicks?

Wait a minute! What then are all these cute girl models—some of them braless, some baring their midriffs, some pouting their lips, a few striking provocative poses, a few in bikinis, all with seemingly spotless complexion, only one of them with braces, 98 percent of them skinny—doing in the photos adorning Revolve? Since Revolve blurbs praise "modest," "conservative," and "classic" style, one has to wonder. Telling girls that their body type doesn't matter also seems to contradict the impression they might get from the photos. And the drawings of women in the Bible bios—images over which the magazine had more control than the stock model photos—show them as very thin, with disproportionately tiny, sometimes bare, waists. What's with that?

Whaley pointed to two photos in which the girls don't look like models, adding that, "what we've done is scattered realistic images of people having fun." As for the artwork, done by one of Transit's designers, "it's very hip, it's very in touch with what girls like and gravitate toward, and they're all the same size. Since you say they're disproportionate, then they're all equally disproportionate. We've successfully shown girls as being really happy in life."

Gives the phrase "adoration of the babe" a whole new meaning.

I'm a pretty modern guy, don't get me wrong, who appreciates an attractive female as much as the next straight guy (though inserting pictures of them into my Bible isn't a good idea). And I realize that Revolve isn't targeted at my demo. But it seems to me these people have gone too far for a good cause.

As for the Times, it just needs to hire writers with two brain cells to rub together.