Evie magazine’s critics are wrong. Allow me to mansplain why.

Recently, on my internet travels, I have come across numerous mentions of a magazine called Evie. Because of the name, I assumed it was for women.

But I also noticed that Evie has generated a fair amount of pushback since it was founded in 2019. Woman on both sides of the political spectrum seem to have a problem with it. Whenever it comes up, they roll their eyes and snort with contempt.

Now I really wanted to uncover the truth about Evie. Was it a boring trad-life women’s magazine? Or a fascist, male supremacist call to arms?

For this reason, I assumed the worst. It must be a cringe lifestyle magazine. Or maybe a New Age yoga blog. Or something like Gwyneth Paltrow’s famously weird lifestyle platform GOOP.

Just yesterday, I heard someone mention it again, this time on a right-leaning podcast. The female host, in a sneering, exasperated voice, said: “Don’t get me started on Evie!” As if Evie were the most awkward, annoying, embarrassing development in contemporary female culture.

Buy-curious

Because of this, I decided to look at Evie. And here’s what I found.

First off, Evie looks exactly like an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine circa 2005. Or Mademoiselle. Or Elle. Or any of those semi-trashy glossy women’s mags I remember from my youth.

I actually used to like those magazines. Especially when they indulged in classic “listicle”-style pieces like: “7 Sex Tips to Drive Your Man Wild!” “5 Ways to Seduce that Hot Guy at the Gym.” “6 Signs Your Boss Wants to Sleep with your Husband.”

I loved the dumbness of these articles. And how you felt compelled to read them anyway. And how funny they could be, if the writer struck the right tongue-in-cheek tone.

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Marital embrace

My curiosity aroused, I decided to read a full article in Evie. I found one that caught my eye: “How to Plan a Date That Actually Leads to Sex.”

Wow, I thought. Evie really is like a modern-day Cosmopolitan! (The old Cosmo being extremely “pro-sex.”)

But as I read through the article, it didn’t make sense. Why was the writer talking about her husband?

So then I went back and read the title again, and saw that it actually said: “How to Plan a Date Night That Actually Leads to Sex.”

That was a lot different. A “date night” is, of course, a date between a husband and wife. So what this article was actually about was how to get married couples to have sex with each other.

This would suggest that Evie is trad. And conservative. And pro-marriage. But then why are conservative women so embarrassed by it?

Maybe because it’s conservative in a boring way? Was it too trad?

Sex and the single girl

So then I Googled Evie, to see what other people thought (and why nobody liked it). It turns out Evie openly calls itself “a conservative version of Cosmopolitan magazine.”

So Evie was definitely doing the trad thing. But it was doing it in a very wholesome, 1950s way. It was more for women in the Midwest, women who were not super in touch with their bodies. Which was why it had a lot of articles about baking pies. And homemaking. And dealing with your husband’s sleep apnea.

That’s probably why sophisticated, younger women didn’t like it, even if they agreed with its politics. It was too corny. It was sexually repressed. It wasn’t “smart” enough.

Fun fascism?

So then I looked up Evie on Wikipedia. And I was wrong again! It turns out that Evie is not boring at all. It’s the ADVANCE GUARD of a FASCIST TAKEOVER OF AMERICA!

According to Wikipedia:

Evie published conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific content, and anti-vaccine misinformation. … Evie is an antifeminist publication. It has been characterized as alt-right and far-right. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified Evie as a preeminent publication supporting the male supremacist politics of the hard right. In 2025, The New York Times described Evie’s content as promoting “positions that are fringe even within conservative circles — criticisms of no-fault divorce and I.V.F., for example — packaged in a fun and approachable format.

Wow. So Evie was actually radical caveman conservatism! Like men hitting women over the head with clubs. And then dragging them back to their cave!

But Evie was apparently even worse than that. According to Futurism magazine, as quoted by Wikipedia, Evie is full of:

harmful content including … a bevy of wildly unscientific assertions about women’s health, anti-trans fearmongering, unsupported “psyop” conspiracies, and pro-life messaging that often includes false claims about safe and effective abortion drugs …

Boob noob

Now I really wanted to uncover the truth about Evie. Was it a boring trad-life women’s magazine? Or a fascist, male supremacist call to arms?

I resolved to read deeper into Evie. I began to explore the archives. Some of the articles I read:

• 5 Reasons I Regret My Boob Job
• I Taped My Mouth Shut Every Night for 2 Years — Here’s How It Changed My Life
• Men’s Favorite Types of Dresses on Women: Does the sundress really live up to the hype?
• Why So Many Women Feel Worse after Therapy
• The Wife’s Guide to the Morning Quickie He’ll Think About All Day

All of these articles were pretty fluffy and insubstantial, as you would expect. But they weren’t exactly “far-right male supremacy” either.

I’ll Tumblr for ya

Then I read an article called “The Resurrection of the Tumblr Girl.” This piece stood out from the rest. It was longer and more thoughtful.

This article discussed the pre-2014 Tumblr era, when young people (mostly young women) shared their “aesthetics” on Tumblr. “Aesthetics” meaning their favorite music, art, fashion, poetry, etc.

This sharing and intermingling of people’s individual tastes was the exact opposite of the environment young people live in now. Where everything is politicized, all thinking is black and white, and people are required to yell, scream, and assault one another over the manufactured controversies of the day.

This article made the great point that Tumblr‘s “aesthetics” culture was a far healthier and more organic youth movement than the political hysteria we see today. Especially for young women.

“Resurrection of the Tumblr Girl” was calling for a revival of the aesthetics movement and signs that it was coming back. It actually gave me hope.

So that’s my take on Evie. It’s a chatty, somewhat superficial, Cosmopolitan-style women’s magazine, with a clearly conservative perspective.

But also, like the original Cosmopolitan, there is some intelligent, insightful writing hidden in there as well. So I would warn against dismissing it.

Also, if you enjoy a good “morning quickie” article — and who doesn’t? — there are plenty of those too.