The Mystery of Glitterature: GlitterMOB Magazine

By Natalie Jeffery, 2018-19 managing editor

I always looked forward to the number candle placed atop my birthday cake. The years without it always left me with a twinge of disappointment. Sadly, individual memories of birthdays and cakes and candles from childhood have begun to dissolve; however, the memory of loving this one type of candle stays concrete.

Nostalgia came swarming as I clicked the “issues” tab on the GlitterMOB website where 11 different colored, patterned, and numbered candles appeared—each candle to represent an issue of this eccentric online magazine. The pastel candied border, hot pink glittering cover photo, and abstract art will capture your attention before you even reach the content. GlitterMOB brings fun and flashy to a world not always described as so.

Instantly consumed by the appearance of the website, I wanted to find out more—more about the editors’ inspiration, how they started GlitterMOB, anything really. The magazine is published three times per year with no apparent stipulations on the type of content they desire. Other than that, I was left with mystery. Hidden among all of the bling appears to be a sense of simplicity. The “about” page is home to a quaint list of four editors and two past readers. If you stay on the page long enough, you’ll notice tiny hearts flash colors of the rainbow as they float from the top of the page down.

Not only have creators blanketed who they are but also what they wish the magazine to be.

Even Google didn’t have answers for me, but I liked the mystery.

I traveled to the homepage to explore GlitterMOB’s 11th issue. Twelve tiles filled with different illustrations act as the face of each literary piece. I must admit to “judging a book by its cover” when it came to deciding which piece to read first. I was drawn to an unconventional watercolor-like illustration of a bare woman with short dark hair. I noticed her holding her breasts, and then I took in her black eye, bandaged legs, and discolored skin. I clicked the illustration and it brought me to “Luxury, II” by Bailey Pittenger.

She wrote about dreams…

You know those bizarre dreams you simply have to tell your friends about? When I have these dreams, I share them with my best friend. She is someone who experiences far more bizarre dreams, and hence has a lot more to share than I do. Our exchanges are very uniform. The first response is usually an “Omfg!!! That’s so weird.” Then, as the conversation unfolds, we pick apart each other’s dreams until we can identify parts of our life that are being mirrored—things we’ve been stressing about, recent experiences, new happenings now surfacing in our dream state.

“Luxury, II” does just that. Pittenger uniquely depicts a conversation between her and a friend who have recently experienced odd dreams. “She says I must have dreamed my dream,” Pittenger writes, “because the sound of a chainsaw somehow reminds me that the sound of foam exiting a can is how the sound of making out is narrated.” I couldn’t help but feel I was reading my own lived experience but in a much more artistic and manicured way.

From one click to the next, my mind was consumed by poems that required me to step out of my comfort zone. My little knowledge of poetry especially influenced a feeling of misunderstanding, as if I’d missed something in each intricately crafted work.

In a world that has to know everything, GlitterMOB‘s reticence is refreshing. The editors don’t have to paste their mission statement to the “about” page—because everything you need to know about GlitterMOB can be found through the telling content and design.

I like the mystery of the glitterature. I like the mystery of it all.