Book title: Jane Raphaely Unedited: True tales of a fun, fearless female
Jane Raphaely
Associated Media Publishing
Jane has been relevant in a candy-floss world where appearance overshadows substance.
After Jane Mullins married
her “Jewish prince”, whom she met as a student at the London School of
Economics, she could have settled into 1960s apartheid suburbia as a
privileged stay-at-home mother.
Instead, Jane accepted an offer by
Nasionale Pers as launch editor of Fair Lady, one of the first English
glossy magazines for women in SA.
Putting
any lingering self-doubt aside, she built up a reputation as a
glamorous, intuitive, no-nonsense editor in a chauvinist, Calvinistic
industry – one that insisted on appointing a male editor-in-chief over
her.
In 1984, after almost 20 years as
editor of a magazine selling 216 000 copies a fortnight – Jane left the
company’s patriarchal clutches to launch Cosmopolitan in SA.
Today, Jane Raphaely is a powerful
media icon in what has grown into a saturated, recycled market. She
chairs Associated Magazines, a family-run empire that publishes an array
of coveted titles from a building, dominated by women, opposite
Parliament.
Through the years, the unflappable
“JR” has resolutely got on with the job. She survived the odd banning
order from the Publications Control Board. She fobbed off critics – from
feminists to chauvinists – “with a polite smile and wave”; and the odd
stiletto-sharp barb.
Her career never thwarted her
traditional family aspirations – she and her husband Michael have four
children. This led many women, particularly from her generation, to
wonder how she did it.
This partly motivated her to pen her own cover story, Jane Raphaely Unedited: True tales of a fun, fearless female.
The
meticulously self-edited autobiography is a “personal odyssey”, laced
with dollops of Oprahesque advice about friends, motherhood, work and
her adopted country, SA.
Her early years are vividly
recollected. Conceived in 1936 on a rubbish dump to a “struggling Irish
welder” and a “Jewish alpha female who was a chronic optimist”, Jane
grew up in the “armpit of England”. Half-Jewish, she often felt like an
outsider.
Jane digs deep to unearth family secrets around her conception, her parents’ marriage and an esteem-bashing, abusive aunt.
In her 20s, Jane followed Michael
to SA, where she got a job as an advertising copywriter. Married a few
years and pregnant with her second child, this “media nobody” became
Fair Lady editor.
Her only journalism credentials
were a Cape Times shopping column and two irreverent articles on food
and fashion translated into Afrikaans for Sarie Marais magazine.
Jane describes Naspers as “a
conservative God-fearing apartheid engine”, the last place a
“subversive, pregnant Jewish rooinek should have embedded herself”.
Jane
gives readers a peak between the frothy covers of the magazines she has
edited over five decades, including Fair Lady, Cosmopolitan, Femina and
O, the Oprah magazine.
A control freak and perfectionist,
Jane trusted only her company to publish her book. While she reveals
fascinating insights about her upbringing, her later years of success
are covered with broader strokes; a more airbrushed depiction, not
unlike the industry over which she reigns.
Jane is tactful, discreet and a
fastidious networker. She does not burn bridges. She also understands
the art of masking flaws, hailing from an industry renowned for
sculpting fantasy images of women.
She has dealt with stroppy
celebrity publicists who demand sign-off before publication. She has
negotiated exclusives with the Barbara Barnards of the world and beyond –
according to similar rules of compromise.
The chapter on Charlize Theron,
who guest-edited an issue of Femina and collaborated on Jane’s
hard-hitting “Real men don’t rape” campaign, has a superficial,
varnished feel. The reader is also left wanting in the chapter on Oprah
Winfrey, whom Jane convinced to start an SA edition of O.
The dynamics of running a family
business is a no-go area (her husband operates behind-the-scenes as a
shareholder, their second child Vanessa is editorial director and third
child Julia managing director).
But
Jane is generous to readers in other areas. Revealing her own fragility,
she dwells on her experience with grief – especially over the death of
her father-in-law. She also reminds readers that in life, “it is what
you didn’t do that will haunt you”.
She recalls her failure to expose a
first-hand account of atrocities in the SADF during apartheid. She
wishes she had fought earlier and harder for gender equity, if not for
herself then “for the other people on my team”.
Jane has flirted with politics and
used her position to make a difference. She has been relevant in a
candy-floss world where appearance overshadows substance.
She speaks out on violence against women and children, venturing into territory many younger colleagues don’t care to follow.
Through the years, she has
injected journalism and pithy feature writing into the grit-deficient
formula dished up by the industry.
At her book launch, Mamphela
Ramphele paid tribute to Jane’s feminism – her campaigning role to
encourage SA women to believe in themselves. This self-belief runs
through the book. Aimed to motivate and uplift, the book reflects Jane’s
own polished image. It falls short of the whole truth, but we get an
absorbing self-portrait of the pioneering life of JR.
Note: I spent
three years as features and deputy editor at Femina a few years before
it closed down. This book review first appeared in the Cape Times http://www.capetimes.co.za on July 27 2012
