Jezebel
Imagine a scenario in which a powerful, self-made, self-possessed woman deigns to follow the orders of a much-less powerful, egomaniacal foreigner and crash-diets herself to aesthetic "acceptability" so she can appear on the cover of an American magazine available to the public for, at most, 4 weeks. That scenario is exactly what happened when Oprah Winfrey was asked — and agreed — to appear on the cover of Vogue's October 1998 issue. As the story goes, Winfrey spent months whittling herself to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's exacting standards so that she would look acceptable in a Steven Meisel-photograph for the cover. "If you want to be on the cover of Vogue and Anna Wintour says you have to be down to 150lbs - that's what you gotta do," Winfrey told the BBC, adding, tellingly, "I didn't think for one moment 'Now I am going to be a Vogue model' nor even did I think I could hold that weight."
The Vogue cover turned out well, as many remember: Oprah looked hot. But there was something spooky beneath the Vogue image's Meisel-perfect, glossy veneer; namely, the idea that even a woman who had made her fortune validating women's strengths, hopes and dreams — and becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet in the process — would so eagerly and willingly help to perpetuate the "cover lie" of a medium that has made its mark by invalidating women's strengths, hopes and dreams with an endless parade of stories on how to be thinner, sexier, trendier, and — ugh — better in bed.
The post we put up yesterday of an unretouched Redbook cover image caused a bit of a stir. It was meant to. But more than courting publicity and traffic, the image we obtained and displayed was meant to show just how far the Cover Lie extends; that even in and on a women's magazine meant for a more mature female audience (working moms, etc.) and featuring a more mature female celebrity (career-woman and mother-of-three Faith Hill) the lies and half-truths continue to be perpetuated. Honestly, it sort of broke our hearts that it was Redbook; the magazine has been criticized before for some questionable covers (see Aniston, Jennifer; Roberts, Julia) and, after all, readers of magazines like Redbook worry that they can't have it all as it is (the great career, the loving husband, the healthy kids, the perfect body). Plus, at this point in the evolution of the celebrity-sartorial complex, who or what exactly is Redbook — or any number of other women's magazines — fucking kidding with such a female forgery? Go to any name-brand, pop culture website and you can see galleries upon galleries of images of celebrities (female and male alike) in their normal, un-retouched, unlit and still-sickeningly-hot states. These pictures are perhaps the new cultural currency, as Virginia Heffernan of NY Times wrote the other day (they certainly increase our traffic!) So why do women's magazines continue to insist on providing readers just the opposite? Is it stubbornness? The selling of fantasy? Or the selling of other things, i.e. advertising revenue? And if so, is it really necessary to shave 10-15 pounds off a woman and erase exactly what it is (the freckles, the moles, the laugh lines) about her that makes her human and accessible and interesting in order to sell a bit of fucking soap? Look at the picture above, and tell us that Faith Hill is not fucking gorgeous and vibrant just the way God — not Photoshop — made her.
Some would say yes, the half-truths of women's magazine covers and cover-lines are necessary (these people usually work on the business sides of such magazines). Others would say yes because they know no other way, or are too afraid to say no (these people often toil on the editorial sides of such magazines). But as necessary as retouching may seem in order to fill the coffers of corporate behemoths like Procter & Gamble, Revlon or Warner Brothers Records it is not okay for the rest of us — the readers, that is — that this goes on. In a world where lying, deception, and the fudging of facts has become endemic in everything, all the way up to the highest levels of government, this is yet another example of a fraud being perpetrated on the public... and the public, for the most part, is not yet in on the joke. Magazine-retouching may not be a lie on par with, you know, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," but in a world where girls as young as eight are going on the South Beach Diet, teenagers are getting breast implants as graduation gifts, professional women are almost required to fetishize handbags, and everyone is spending way too much goddamn time figuring out how to pose in a way that will look as good as that friend with the really popular MySpace profile, it's fucking wrong. And we're glad you agreed.
Earlier: Here's Our Winner! 'Redbook' Shatters Our 'Faith' In Well, Not Publishing, Maybe God
The Annotated Guide To making Faith Hill Hot
The Five Great Lies Of Women's Magazines
Related: Oprah Winfrey & Beloved [BBC]
Doctored Cover Photos Add Up To Controversy [USAToday]
The Beautiful People, The Uglier The Better [NYTimes]
Comments
*round of applause*
*fist in air*
Congratulations, this post rocked.
I plan on whittling away 15 years of my age so that I can pose on the cover of Teen Vogue. (They can gladly airbrush my stretch marks).
YES! Love this post... love this blog!
Well-said. This site is tremendously commendable for such (comparatively) radical consciousness-raising. What exemplary role models you women are, not only for those who read your site, but for young girls who would otherwise never get the reality check that 'Photoshop of Horrors' and your insightful comments provide.
Long may you reign, Jezebelles! (Sorry if that's corny.)
Amen. I truly believe it is the LIE that is the most dangerous part of this celebrity beauty obsession. It is frankly fine with me if celebrities and models want to starve themselves to make money. Not what I would choose to validate in an ideal world, but if being skinny is your job, okay, fine. The absolutely criminal part is that these women (and some men) collude with the media and diet and cosmetic industries in pretending that it is possible to NATURALLY look this good. Pretending that they eat fried chicken, barely work out, and use only the kind of moisturizer you can buy in a drugstore, when in fact it takes enormous amounts of time, money, and professional help to maintain even their non-retouched levels of hotness. We don't pretend that anyone can be a NASA engineer or a neurosurgeon with enough effort, yet we torture impressionable minds with the idea that enough self-discipline and discretionary fund spending can turn anyone into Gisele. That is the truly sick part.
The bottoms of her feet are a little dirty.
But other than that, I think she looks great in that picture.
sing it. (also, I think you guys have hit your stride. well done.)
Bravo. Just. . .a massive, wartsandall Thanks.
Thank you ladies. The $10,000 was worth it. We can has more pls?
Brava!
I whole-heartedly agree with your post. But I'm also mulling over the fact that we prescribe to this sad doublethink -- for all our feminist, "tell it Sister!" fist raising, people were calling out pretty lil' Faith's nebulous back fat and smile lines.
So, maybe we all need to power through those impulses to snap judge (that's right - I said it!).
Let's use the snark in the name of sisterhood.
Thank you so much for this. When I was getting my high school senior portraits done, I had to meet with the retoucher to talk about what we wanted airbrushed out. I had had a zit on my chin on the day of my pictures, so that went. I also have a decently large freckle on the bridge of my nose that the retoucher kept insisting we get rid of, but I held my ground. That freckle has been there as long as I can remember, and its still there. I like it. Screw these people who don't want women to be natural beauties.
Amen Sisters.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
@MisterHippity: And this just means that the photoshoot room floor is dirty. These people couldn't clean the floor for Faith Hill???
I don't know, I find the bags under her eyes a little distracting. *stirs pot*.
And Oprah is just another insecure gal, I wish everybody would just accept it already. Money doesn't get you anything but a big house and a good beard...Hi Stedman!.
@FourthWaveBaby: And the patriarchy will be alive and well as long as the dominant cultural paradigm remains. As young women are buying into this 'celebrity beauty obsession', they give away the power to nurture and sustain inner attributes (intelligence, spirituality, creativity, loving-kindness) that will make them fulfilled and satisfied long after their objective 'hotness' has waned.
P.S.: Faith Hill in the 'Before' picture is beautiful.
I concur with the others: hooray!
@PinkSoxHat: My HS photog retoucher closed the gap in my teeth (that I love) without checking with me.
Look at the picture above, and tell us that Faith Hill is not fucking gorgeous and vibrant just the way God -- not Photoshop -- made her.
You mean except for the back fat, right?
I do believe Jezebel has come into her own. Well done.
P.S. Damn you ladies can write!
Hear Hear! I agree with this post 100%.
But I will say that women's mags don't make me feel NEAR as bad as ladmags. Every time I see a Maxim or FHM photoshoot I just want to hurl.
It's one thing to make women airbrushed Stepford wives, and it's entirely another to depict women as blow-up dolls with a pulse.
At least with women's mags, the degrading treatment usually stops with the photos, and the interviews expound a bit more on the actual woman's attributes beyond her looks. Whereas men's mags present every woman as a vapid cumdumpster.
Well said, ladies. And much needed because it's still fairly unknown (especially outside NYC) that so much retouching, etc. happens in the fashion/beauty world.
Case in point: My husband saw a re-post of the two covers last night (on another site) and showed it to me, saying "Look at this! This is unreal! Do they really do this more often than not?" A-yup.
I think it's a bit strange that you rail on and on about false ideals and having women held hostage by unrealistic standards forced upon us by unseen forces, then invoke some Man in the Sky as the reason Faith Hills is hot. Seems a bit ... unintentionally ironic.
Very nice post. Love it when you get feisty!
@MisterHippity: Ok, now they've gone and changed the picture. I was commenting on the unretouched one.
Brava, Anne!
I love you.
And Ive always fucken adored that 'Cover Lie' post from when this site first came up.
the picture above that you refer to is the photoshopped version, correct? shouldn't it be the nonphotoshopped version so that we can see her as "god made her"?
@BiscuitDoughJones: Great point. My question is, are the magazines themselves at fault, or is it the never-ending concatenation of eager nymphettes who grace (ahem) their pages? Seems like a vicious circle.
Your high school photographers airbrushed your photos? That's crazy! Man, I must be old.
@CodePink: FYI, when this article first posted this morning, the unretouched photo was at the head of the article.
Damn fine job.
@theobviouschild: Hey, leave the patriarchy out of this girl-fight. We've got nothing to do with this, and I can say that pretty confidently after 20 years involvement with magazines. This silliness is of women by women for women. And a few gay dudes.
The patriarchy really doesn't have a horse in this race.
@theobviouschild:
ahh, okay, thanks!
The other side to this story is that magazines don't do this because they think it's fun -- they do it because that's what gets women to buy magazines.
They test-market and focus-group these covers up the wazoo, and keep a close watch on exactly how many newsstand copies each issue sells. And what they've learned is that while readers want attractive "real" women (well, celebrities, anyway) rather than fashion models, they still want those women to look more perfect than anyone does in real life.
On the other hand, whenever a magazine experiments with a cover photo of a woman who doesn't look thin, beautiful and downright flawless, the magazine doesn't sell as well, and they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I'm not saying that makes it right -- to me, these plastic Stepford portraits look downright weird. (And, of course, men's magazines are doing it too.) But I think it's clear that in this case, what people say they want and what they'll actually buy are two different things.
Oh, preach it, sisters!!
(How did I get here so late today?) Yeah to all that and more. It's time to address the national psychosis inflicted on women, namely the totally unrealistic standards of beauty shoved in our faces every 15 seconds. I have nothing to add to all the great stuff here, except to repeat what some folks are saying, which is that this post is the big giant step we've been waiting for from Jezebel. Onward and upward.!!!!
I am interested to know the legal ramifications of this fun project. Will some poor archivist get the pants sued off of her for her very illegal theft of company property? Will that $10,000 cover her lawyer fees and lost income or do you guys have a separate fund for that? No sarcasm intended here; just genuine curiosity. Great story, great reporting, very brave of the Redbook employee.
@AndYourLittleDogToo: Ha! Same here.
I don't believe airbrushing of senior year photos was an option back when I had mine done.
Y'know, I was kind of worried you crazy kids wouldn't get off the ground, and I'm glad to see you've come up in the world, even if it means pissing off a middling pop-music star with all the obvious truths.
Ms. Hill -- YOU ARE STILL HOT WITH WRINKLES AND BACK FAT.
My god, I love you guys!
@Mediahohoho: Maybe men are in charge of pretty much everything because women are stuck in a pointless and competitive girlfight? (I love men; I'm just truly trying to get a grasp on the forces at work here.)
@food_ooh: I'd love to hear the inside scoop from any Redbook staffers about what's going on at work right now ...
Thank you for reminding me again why I have totally removed Oprah from my life; that woman's hypocrisy grows in direct proportion to her wealth. (see Frey, James)
yes yes yes yes