We Just Awarded Someone $10,000 For An Unflattering Celebrity Cover Photo!

Moe — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:10:51 EDT

Remember how, way back on May 21 we announced we'd bestow $10,000 to the individual courageous enough to send us an amazing cover photo from a women's magazine in all its hideously fat, wrinkled and cruelly unretouched radiance? Well, over the past few weeks we got a bunch of entries (thank you, working-class heroes!) and we're happy to announce that someone has won the contest, which means he/she got paid what takes us months to make by stealing something off the boss's server and hiring a hot courier to bring it to our office with a funny note. Of course, aggressively-retouched photos are nothing new, or even in and of themselves shameful, but the older we get, the crazier they make us, in a manner akin to the way magazine cover-lines starting with numerals and/or ending with the phrase "we can't live without" makes us want to hole up in our closets and get back into cutting. Magazine editors, please, stop the inanity!

Famous ladies are paid to be Botoxed, nipped, tucked, dieted, wardrobed, and accessorized to within 5 pounds of their life-sustaining weights as it is. All so some computer nerd can Photoshop away their every remaining vestige of humanity? Ugh. Anyway, stay tuned: In a few short hours we will post the winning entry — which beat out a very tempting example of the "incredible shrinking Jennifer Lopez syndrome"! — along with another little screed about Walt Disney himself depicted women more realistically than magazine art directors do nowadays.

Earlier: Unretouched Cover Photos: $10,000 Reward
Kelly Clarkson Has Junk In The Trunk And Other Things We Already Knew, Confirmed By A Professional Retoucher

Unretouched Cover Photos Wanted: $10,000 Reward

Anna — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:30:04 EDT

One of the things about the women's magazine industry that riles us up the most is that the images they feature bear little semblance to reality. This is especially true with regards to the covers, which, as we point out in our manifesto, are essentially female forgeries, what with all the computer-artistry involving airbrushing, contouring, and, sometimes, outright body-part swapping. But calling out magazine editors for their deception is one thing; showing it is another. That's why, as part of our effort to illustrate the magic (and magical thinking!) that goes into the production of the magazines we all love to hate, we're offering $10K to whomever wins our contest for the best un-retouched (that means unaltered in any way!) image to appear on a women's magazine cover in the past two years. As always, we promise your identity will remain anonymous... whether you win or lose. Send your submissions to tips@jezebel.com (standard Gawker Media contest rules apply). And may the best (er, most natural-looking) woman win!

Jezebel: cover photos

We Just Awarded Someone $10,000 For An Unflattering Celebrity Cover Photo!

Unretouched Cover Photos Wanted: $10,000 Reward