I guess when you have a posse of gorgeous, iconic ladies — Nine's Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and Kate Hudson — you feel obliged to make them look as good as possible. But for the love of natural lighting: Why so much Photoshop?

Sassybella asks, "Did Annie Leibovitz or Vogue go a little airbrush crazy?" The answer is a resounding YES. I can't wait to see this cover in person, to try and figure out what how someone cobbled these women into an image. I'm guessing Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire.

Leibovitz makes composite images quite often; take this photograph of Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, for instance:

Blogger Jeffrey Saddoris has read Leibovitz's book, At Work, in which she writes:

"The picture of Hellen Mirren and Judi Dench in the car was made in two different places. It was fun directing Judi Dench to act like she was talking to someone who wasn't actually there. She was saying, 'You bitch. How could you have done this to me? Why did you do that to me?' And she had that look. If we had been using film, we would have to stitch two frames together, but since we were shooting digitally, we built the final picture in the computer."

On another forum, a poster dissects the Leibovitz Mad Men shoot:

The commenter writes:

It appears that Annie shot the scene in separate composites. She took a shot of January Jones from where she is standing in the video still, THEN after she got what she wanted she moved to the left and shot Jon Hamm exactly positioned and lit how she wanted. Then I would assume she stood back and took some overall shots of the room that would later be stitched together to form the overall piece.

NOW, from an overall look the photograph appears classy and fit to the time piece and most people would walk away from it without any negativity, and I still think its a great shot... but the perspective now just bothers me. It appears as though she isn't even looking directly at him. Her overall size appears smaller than him. Also, if you look near his ass the straight line that runs on the wall... isn't so straight, its very apparent that was a poor clone job.

Even though the cover is a nightmare, there's a gorgeous shot of the ladies on the inside:

Instead of looking like a hallucinatory vision or Hollywood interpretation of the "Footprints" poem, this actually looks like a photograph of women, sitting on a couch — next to each other and existing in the same time-space continuum. What a concept.

Prima Time [Vogue]
Yay Or Nay? Annie Leibovitz Over Airbrushes Another US Vogue Cover [Sassybella]
Photo139 – Week 2 [Saddoris]
Annie Leibovitz thread [Nature Forum]

Earlier: Nine Throws Down The Oscar Gauntlet
Other Ladies Agree: Annie Leibovitz's Latest Is Painfully Lame
Photo Finish: (Annie Leibovitz & People Of Color)

• In Florida, a man is seeking $15,000 in damages from a strip club after he was allegedly injured when a stripper's shoe flew off her foot and broke a mirrored ceiling above his head. • Find out how to make cocaine. Hint: The secret ingredient is gasoline! • A new rock opera titled Lovelace: A Rock Opera focuses on the late Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace's life with help from the Go-Go's Charlotte Caffey. • A recent study of prairie voles suggests that a brain chemical related to depression is found in the brain of grieving voles or voles that are separated from their female partners. • Today, a British couple were sentenced to 3 months in jail for having sex on a beach in Dubai. The couple maintain that they did not have sex and plan on appealing the case. • Matchmaking agencies that offer Singapore businessmen foreign brides are seeing business dwindle as the financial meltdown forces male clients to scale back on lavish spending. • The American Cancer Society reports that it is seeing a decline in women over 40 getting yearly mammograms, possibly due to the pain during the process. • Pregnant Japanese women visit Shinto shrines on the Day of the Dog because the Japanese believe that dogs have easy births. • A poll-dancing fitness instructor reached a settlement on Wednesday with the Adams Township in Pennsylvania, allowing her to open up a pole-dancing studio for women. • Mattel denied claims today that the Little Mommy Cuddle N' Coo doll says "Islam is the light" as part of its pre-recorded cooing sounds. • Parents are pulling their children out of a music class at Foxboro Elementary School in Vacaville, California because of the teacher's recent gender reassignment surgery. • A Japanese study claims that high levels of soy consumption can reduce the risk of estrogen receptor-positive tumors and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative tumors, two types of breast cancer. • A 76-year-old woman who is charged in the death of one of her five dead husbands posted bond and was released from jail today in North Carolina. • Doctors say that the Bee Gees song "Stayin' Alive" is the ideal beat (103 beats per minute) to follow while performing chest compressions as part of CPR on a heart attack victim. • A new study links decreased dopamine activity, a neurotransmitter typically released in response to a pleasure experience, with obese women when they eat "pleasurable" foods like chocolate milkshakes. •

Ms. Bengisu thinks a covered woman on vacation is like "an out-of-tune singer in the middle of a concert" and blames not Islam but the Turkish patriarchy. And she may have a point. Last summer, a woman was wearing a sundress while fishing on a bridge in Istanbul when a gust of wind blew her skirt up. Last week, she was found guilty of exhibitionism and charged with a five-month suspended prison sentence.

Over the weekend, a group of women protested the verdict on the streets of Istanbul, walking across the very bridge where the incident took place. They chanted things like: "It's not exhibitionism, it's male abuse!" and "State, take your hands off my body!" Many people think conservative thinking is on the rise in Turkey; a devout Muslim party has been in power since 2002.

Some questions: Isn't the beach is supposed to offer some escape from life's problems? Can't everyone, regardless of size, shape or abdominal tightness, enjoy the earth's natural beauty by the sea shore? How can you have a "bad" body for squishing your toes in the sand? How can a gust of wind make a woman guilty of exhibitionism? And where is the middle ground between calling a sundress "improper" clothing, the booming bikini-free vacation industry and the nit-pickery seen on E! and in tabloid magazines? How would the people telling Star Jones and Arnold Schwarzenegger to cover up feel if the government agreed with them?
Boom In Bikini-Free Holidays As Turkish Women Cover Up [Independent]
Turkish Women Attack Clothing Law [BBC News]

[Hawaii, June 11. Images via Splash.]