Staff from 18 leading women's weeklies are taking industrial action, in protest at plans to make headlines 15% less misleading, and stories 25% less salacious.
Janet Hopper, a 52-year-old housewife from Kettering, used to read 12 women's magazines a week.
She admits she now resorts to rooting through bins to find scraps of paper which might tell her how to please her man.
Mrs Hopper said: “This strike has had such a crushing effect on me. I wake every morning trying to remember any of the top ten turn-ons for men from the most recent Take A Break.
“I think one tip was to buy him a Scalextric set, but there's no way of knowing for sure.”
Claire Harding, a 37-year-old marketing consultant from Hereford, has gained three and a half stone since the strike began.
“I followed the magazines' diet tips religiously, even when they contradicted each other, like when New! advised eating two apples a day, at the same time as Closer was telling me I'd get ovarian cancer if I so much as touched a Granny Smith.
“Now, I don't know what to eat and drink. Lately I've been eating soot for breakfast, jay cloths for lunch and Febreze for dinner. It's just what I had in the house.”
The Women's Magazine Writers' Union has been criticised for threatening another strike at the height of the summer season, when demand from women for fluffy drivel is at its greatest.
But Heather Robinson, shop steward for the WMWU, defended its position.
She said: “If your doctor went on strike, your headache might last a bit longer, but as this strike has shown, women simply can't do without our magazines.
“Women's magazine writers are the glue that keeps 21st Century Britain together and it's time our entirely reasonable demands were met.”
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