GRoM&LA Ch.7: Glossy magazines: The horror! The horror!

I mean, WHERE do they come from? It's as if they were a spreading cancer, sprouting from every newsstand, inserted into at least one newspaper every week, streaming to my office, settling into haphazard heaps, clogging the damn place: Avenue, Lifestyler, Nuvo, okanogan home, ecoliving, Rendez-vous en France, Backbone... Vanity Fair?... Esquire...?
   Obviously any discussion of the slippery things must begin by boring everyone to death with Socratic definitions: what exactly IS a glossy magazine? All of them? Is it useful, perhaps do distinguish the freebies from those with a price-tag?
   Such a dichotomy may seem natural, but is easier in theory than practice ...