• NYT, Monday, October 8, 2012 3:03 PM

It's a tight political race this year in women's/celebrity mags' coverage of the presidential candidates' wives, at least in a Family Circle bakeoff: "Michelle Obama’s white and dark chocolate chip cookies beat out Ann Romney’s M&M’s cookies by 287 votes, about 3 percent of all the votes cast," writes Christine Haugney. Other stories include Good Housekeeping's feature on how the Obamas exercise together, and Us Weekly's reporting Michelle's guilty pleasure: French fries.

Is this evidence of how fluffy women's magazines still are (celeb mags are, of course, the very definition of fluff), or just a symptom of how issue-free the media's general coverage of the race is? According to Hearst Magazines editorial director Ellen Levine: "As women’s magazines have steered away from controversial political topics like abortion, they have become even safer destinations for candidates to share their views."

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