NEW YORK–Aloft in her midtown Manhattan office, with a view overlooking Central Park and surrounded by the offices of such magazines as Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping and Bazaar, Autumn Madrano sometimes feels the urge to let out a scream.

But she has to watch herself. That’s because Madrano, who hails from Gresham and grew up cringing at the sight of cover lines like "Bye-Bye Butt and Belly, Hello Bikini!" on women’s fashion magazines, is now an editorial assistant at CosmoGIRL!, a publication aimed at boy-crazed teenage girls that screams such lines on its own covers.

The irony is not lost on Madrano, who minored in women’s studies at the University of Oregon and is avowedly feminist, that she now works for an offshoot of Cosmopolitan–a publication that, at least at first glance, mocks nearly everything she stands for.

"At first I was embarrassed to say that I even applied here, let alone worked here," says Madrano, who a year ago was helping coordinate Eugene’s annual "Take Back the Night Rally" to raise awareness about violence against women. "I fully came from the school of ‘women’s magazines brainwash women into thinking they’re worthless without makeup and a man,’ and actually hadn’t read a women’s magazine in years."

Ironically–the adverb most apt to describe her career so far–it was an internship last summer at Ms., the feminist magazine founded by Gloria Steinem, which Madrano says changed her thinking about women’s magazines.

"Ms. made me realize that if we really want to advocate women’s issues then we have to have feminists at all publications, not just feminist publications," Madrano says. Noting that "120,000 feminists read Ms. while 850,000 girls who are at an impressionable age read CosmoGIRL!," she asks: "Who has more power of journalism?"

CosmoGIRL!, which launched just last summer, is similar to most magazines aimed at teenage girls. It features a horoscope–a long time staple of Cosmopolitan–and swarms of back-to-school, boyfriend-or-crush scenarios, and teen fashions. The latest issue has Britney Spears on the cover and comes complete with photo stickers of the pseudo-punk rock group Blink-182, whose new CD is called "Enema of the State."

Still, CG! seems more mature (even if its intended audience isn’t) than YM or Seventeen, two of its chief competitors, and stands out with sections like "Inner Girl," where budding females are taught to love themselves in a society that increasingly values looks and beauty above all else.

Nonetheless, Madrano has no illusions about what kind of business she’s in.

"What sells magazines is boyfriends and beauty and make-up," she says. "I’d love to see a cover line like, ‘How to Love Your Body’ sell issues, but it doesn’t. Girls don’t buy magazines for that reason. They buy them for the ‘get your crush to worship you’ stories–but they’ll remember the story on how to love your body. That’s my mindset."

Like many young women these days who hold feminist views but find themselves in jobs that are anathema to their ideals, Madrano’s subverting the paradigm from within–a Susan Faludi who decides to start her career as a feminist author by writing romance novels. It is the kind of move that would have turned a feminist of an earlier generation into a pariah.

But since graduating from the University of Oregon last summer and getting hired at CG! in October, Madrano, who is 23 and single, has been living the high life in New York, making an eye-poppingly huge salary with a sumptuous, rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, at night hitting all the trendy restaurants and clubs….

Well, not exactly.

Truth is, Madrano works anywhere from 65—75 hours a week, chained to her computer, in the admittedly lowly job of editorial assistant–"about as unglamorous as you can get," she says–the bottom of the magazine rope. After work, usually late, she catches the subway at 57th and Broadway and heads downtown to her dorm-sized, third-floor studio apartment in the East Village, where she pays $1,100 a month to be treated to a late-night soundtrack of car alarms and police sirens.

"Yes, things are crazy here," she says. "Living in New York is amazing. Every single cliche about the city is true, for good or evil…. I swore loudly at somebody for stealing my cab the other day. I think that’s when I knew the city was really rubbing off on me."

Madrano still sounds like she’s from Oregon, though, and before she made it to New York she came equipped with an impressive array of journalism skills.

Madrano started out as the editor of her high school newspaper, the Gresham Argus–"my journalism teacher there, Janet Owens, was amazing," she recalls–and went on to become the managing editor last year at Flux Magazine, the UO’s award-winning student publication.

In between, she wrote freelance articles for the Oregon Daily Emerald, the UO student newspaper, and in two years hop-jumped from associate editor to executive editor of the Oregon Voice, a general-interest student magazine, where she also wrote about women’s issues. At her commencement in June 1999, she was named Most Outstanding Magazine Student for 1998-99.

What made Madrano want to go into journalism?

"Don’t laugh," she says. "Murphy Brown. She was my idol, even at age 11. She was so smart, so together, so sarcastic, so beautiful, so dynamic. I wanted to be all of those things. She was a journalist, so I wanted to become one."

Murphy Brown was also a TV character, and Madrano’s first real love was acting. Before graduating from Gresham High in 1994, she got accepted into the renowned Boston University theater school, but couldn’t afford it and opted to go to the UO instead because it had the best in-state theater program, she says.

For three years she focused on acting–studying with a troupe of 17 actors in London at one point–but the UO’s top-notch journalism school stayed in the back of her mind, and as it turned out, getting accepted to the UO was serendipitous for her.

"After I gave up on becoming an actress, I realize looking back how perfect it was that I had to go to my ‘second-choice’ school," she says. "It wound up being the best choice possible."

She credits her professors in the School of Journalism and Communication for preparing her for the "incredibly demanding and amazingly competitive" industry she’s now in the thick of. Tom Wheeler, the former editor-in-chief of Guitar Player Magazine and one of Madrano’s former UO professors, is someone she particularly singles out.

"Wheeler is great. I just learned so much from him, not just about editing, but the magazine business. He helped me prepare for work at a major publication so that when I walked into it I wouldn’t make a fool of myself."

Where does Madrano see herself 10 years from now? Right now she’s working on CosmoGIRL!’s September issue, but is unsure about where she’ll be in the magazine business later on down the road.

"Writer-wise, I don’t know," she says. "But I do know that it’s important to me to still be working in women’s issues–not necessarily even at a women’s magazine, but still something dealing with women or girls."

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