Danziger's appearance on a Women at NBCU breakfast panel last Wednesday shows she really needs to learn when to cut her losses — we don't need to hear her say that "Kelly liked the picture" for the eight zillionth time, or that "we did not make her look skinny, we made her look better." But the real kicker is her explanation for whittling Clarkson away in the first place. She says,

[P]eople like to say, "Oh, the media is the problem." I would say that, if we're really honest, the reason some of these magazines get bought by people is because they want to see that image. It is a consumer-driven market. If you put something on the newsstand and they don't like it, it won't get bought.

She goes on to say we could "debate [...] all day" whether magazine Photoshopping or a consumer desire for unrealistic images came first — but it's clear which side she falls on. And even though she thinks her consumers demand Photoshopping, she still claims that Self doesn't really use it that much. The magazine is "as honest as they come," she says — except, presumably, for the whole Kelly Clarkson thing.

Danziger's argument that she's just giving her customers what they demand echoes Cosmo editor Kate White's "contribution" to the whole Ralph Lauren Photoshopping mess last week. In her (rather superfluous) appearance on the Today Show, White said,

I think women have to protest - and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks.

Both editors neatly pass the buck to magazine readers, whose appetites they claim really dictate how teensy a cover girl must be. This is pretty disingenuous, especially given that women's magazine editors set themselves up as tastemakers in so many other areas. They sell ads — and get free shit for advertorial features — largely by convincing companies that women will buy the products they recommend. They position themselves as trendsetters at the forefront of fashion — not followers who just report on what women are already wearing. Especially in the case of Self, they give health and lifestyle advice, and while they sometimes feature reader opinions, they don't base all their tips on workouts readers already perform. Women's magazines are completely in the business of telling women what to wear, what to buy, what to eat, and what to do, and the idea that women tell them what to put on the cover is ludicrous.

Moreover, it's hard to even evaluate Danziger's claims about readers' tastes, since they don't really have very many options. There is no mainstream American women's magazine that features un-Photoshopped models of all shapes and sizes. There's Bust, but with its smaller budget and bimonthly publication schedule, it's not a real competitor. Really, the major women's magazines represent something of a cartel of unrealistic female images, and women searching for an alternative will have a hard time "voting with their pocketbooks" — there's nothing to vote for.

Of course, it's true that Danziger and White are in the business of selling magazines, not making us all hate our bodies. Their reluctance to experiment with, say, not Photoshopping probably has as much to do with fear of the unknown — and perhaps fear of advertiser response — as it does with misogyny and sizeism. But as I've said before, women's magazines are in financial trouble, and the old formulas clearly aren't working so well anymore. In fact, the biggest ad gains this month were reported, not by Cosmo or Self, but by Southern Living and Real Simple, which sport food, not models, on their covers, and which credit their success to helping women actually do stuff. So maybe it's time for editors like White and Danziger to stop making excuses about what consumers want, and give them some actual choices.

3 Minute Ad Age: October 20, 2009 [AdAge]
Top 5 Monthlies: Giving Women What They Want [MinOnline]

Earlier: Kelly Clarkson Slimmed Down On Self Via Photoshop

Ralph Lauren Fires Photoshopped Model For Being "Too Fat"

Hamilton had counted Ralph Lauren among her clients since she started modeling at the age of 15 and she says that she considered the people who worked there her second family — at least until April of this year, when Ralph Lauren summarily fired her. The stated reason was that the label dumped Hamilton "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us." What Ralph Lauren allegedly told Hamilton's agency, Next, is that the 5'10" 5'8", 120 lb model had become too fat to fit into its clothing.

Ralph Lauren's behavior since these images came to light, on the blog Photoshop Disasters, has single-handedly turned a small PR crisis into a full-fledged disaster. First, the company had its lawyers try to sue Photoshop Disasters and BoingBoing, the second blog to pick up the story, for copyright infringement for reporting on the ad. The threats — and the fact that Ralph Lauren managed to get Photoshop Disasters' ISP, Google-owned Blogspot, to remove the image — not only came across as ridiculous and bullying, but only served to draw hundreds of thousands of eyes to the story. (The Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Telegraph, Current TV, and Mother Jones, among other outlets, jumped on the story with more or less alacrity.)

The company's apology, when it came, seemed sincere — but today, Ralph Lauren sought to distance itself from its decision to create and run the ad: "The image in question was mistakenly released and used in a department store in Japan and was not the approved image which ran in the U.S."

And for it to emerge that the model in question is a justifiably pissed-off employee that the brand threw under the bus six months ago for being "fat" — that's just the cherry on the Ralph Lauren public relations shit pie. The company's admission of "responsibility" for the ad, coming after its attempt to minimize the ad's significance, rings as hollow as its protestation that Hamilton is a "beautiful and healthy" woman, and that the Photoshop incident had "absolutely no connection" to the company's decision to fire her. Which is it? Is the ad a one-time "error" that was "unapproved," or is it something Ralph Lauren is prepared to take true responsibility for? Is Hamilton "beautiful and healthy," or is she unable to meet the obligations of her contract because of her weight?

Models get fired, or simply passed over for work, all the time for being overweight, but it's a practice that rarely gets addressed publicly. (Not least because anyone outside the industry might struggle to grasp by what measure a size 4 twenty-something who's represented a brand for nearly a decade could be considered "overweight.") There have even been cases where models who have had eating disorders, having entered treatment, have lost work or agency contracts because of their choice to try and get better. As much as it sucks that Hamilton was fired so coldly, it's kind of thrilling that she's willing to talk about it.

Did it never occur to Ralph Lauren to fire the photographer? Or the retoucher who created the image of the near-death Bratz doll Hamilton? Why didn't it consider firing the person who was responsible for releasing the image, if indeed that was a "mistake"? Why did Ralph Lauren's sights immediately fall to rest on the person involved who bore the least responsibility for the drastically altered image in question: the model?

What else isn't so great? Hearing some of Cosmopolitan editor Kate White's statements in the full segment. It seems to be the rule that any model, when doing television appearances, needs to be chaperoned by a fashion magazine editor, à la Ali Michael and Teen Vogue's Amy Astley. At least, that's the only explanation I could come up with for White's presence. After grabbing Hamilton's spotlight and hitching her wagon to the attendant publicity by offering her an 8-page spread in her magazine — a favor that Hamilton, having graced the covers of numerous international editions of Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue, including one of my all-time favorite issues of Vogue Paris, hardly need lower herself to accept — White, much like Ralph Lauren, set about walking the delicate line of admitting that there might be a "problem" in fashion without doing anything so creative as taking responsibility for it.

"It really starts with the sample clothes, because they've down-sized, they're now like a size 2 or 4," says White. "To some degree, it relates to the Kate Moss era. Before then, supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Christy Brinkley, they were really curvy. But they got skinnier and skinnier, and the clothes got smaller, and so it creates this cycle where you have to fit in the clothes to get the job, and then the models get smaller and that's who we have to use in fashion stories."

Notice the absence of subjects in that sentence: "it" creates a cycle. (A cycle! Those can be really hard to stop.) "It" relates to Kate Moss, or at least her "era." "The clothes" got smaller. (All by themselves?) The underweight ideal body that the fashion industry promulgates to women all around the world — and the underweight bodies that real fashion models are required to maintain, and which some cannot but maintain through unhealthy means — are problems that everyone is prepared to "acknowledge" in the fashion industry. People write letters about it. They institute meaningless, unenforced laws. What nobody has yet done is actually make a serious, thoughtful attempt to confront these problems of the industry's function — and this is an industry which is structured to punish the sufferer of an eating disorder who decides to enter treatment — and to solve them.

White's perspective on the basic problem is troubling: "The models" got smaller — seemingly of our own volition — and that's who she "has" to use in fashion stories.

The Cosmopolitan editor goes on to say, "I think women have to protest — and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks." If we don't have the magazines we deserve, it's really our own fault.

I remember when I became Editor-in-Chief of Cosmo, I was so focused on the challenge of running the world's most successful women's magazine that I didn't thought to savor just how awesome each day was. Now 10 years have gone by and when I look back on it, those crazy and unsettled times were actually some of my most fun moments. You just have to learn to stop and smell the roses.

Thanks Kate! We'll all relax now. [Cosmopolitan]

• Cosmo EIC Kate White taught us about fudge but appeared uncomfortable with discussions about fudge-packing.
  
• Maybe that's why her cover lines are so tired. She needs a dose of sexual fucking instead of old fashioned erotic sex.
  
• Forget fucking. We wanna see Christina Aguilera play Samantha from Sex and the City over and over again.
  
• It's a sight more entertaining than that crappy SATC trailer.
  
• Or Candace Bushnell's annoyingly needy column.
  
• And anyway, we need some trannie humor after that Modern Love made us hate ourselves.
  
• Let's just watch Fat Camp and be grateful that we still have our hair bows.

In Cosmo editor-in-chief Kate White's masterpiece You On Top, the fun, fearless female shills for both Diptyque and Bobbi Brown in her chapter on "15 Ways to Tap into Your Inner Sex Kitten." No. 2: "Light candles around your place...A fantastic one my beauty director turned me on to is Diptyque's Feu de Bois. You'll feel like a wood nymph when you smell it." Because nothing says "wood nymph" like a $55 candle. Even better is No. 14: "Discover the fantastic cologne by Bobbi Brown called Beach...When you wear it, you feel as if you're lying on the beach in a bikini listening to the waves crash and feeling the sun on your body." Or maybe in Kate's case, Beach makes her feel sexy because she's seeing the ad money in her bank account.

Does Harper's Bazaar Cover Blur ASME Lines? [Folio]

Earlier:
Talking Hot Fudge And Hot Sex With Cosmo Editor Kate White
The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: December 2007

Get in the doggie-style position—you on your knees and your guy kneeling behind you.

Here's the first page. Shape up for Nude Bathing! Nude bathing...it's like sexy sex! And like, scroll down REAL QUICKLY if you're at work.

It was something called an "upside down" sundae, whereby her friend stowed all the toppings on the bottom of the bowl, out of the sight of her superiors, then plopped the ice cream on top, safely hiding her stash of sweetness. "If you want that cherry in life, to say nothing of the hot fudge and whipped cream, youve gotta have that upside down hot fudge sundae." What a wonderful new cliche to replace the "cake and eat it too" crap!

Anyway, we tell that story because we had to employ a similar strategy merely to get entrance to this event, because a press officer at the Y informed us that press had been barred from the event. Using our cunning and the internet, we (Moe, Jessica) purchased two "civilian" tickets and sneaked in as though we were two normal people just interested in seeing what the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and mystery novel author Kate White has to say. What do such normal people look like, anyway?

Jessica: I got there first, and was oddly nervous. I wore more makeup than I usually do, because I didn't want to feel inadequately groomed when compared to the fashion bitches I assumed would attend. I still looked comparatively sloppy — I spotted a pair of this year's Miu Miu pumps and slunk into a chair in my dirty jeans. I had sat down in the middle of two rows of twenty-somethings who all seemed to know each other. I assumed they worked for Kate, so I asked the girl next to me if she, indeed, worked for Cosmo.
"I do," she said, "I'm Ashley."
"I'm Jessica, I work for Jezebel," I told her, and her formerly warm gaze turned icy.
"Oh. I saw that you guys wrote about us today."
"Um. Yeaaaaah."
That ended that conversation! (A quick perusal of the masthead later on led me to believe I was talking to associate web editor Ashley Womble, who was quite possibly responsible for the feature I mocked yesterday. Um, if you're reading this, I'm sorry Ashley! But like, "Boyfriend Wars" is a pretty exquisitely lame idea! Surely you see my point! No?"

Moe: Ha! That explains the forty text messages I got from you. I have to say, I did not notice any Miu Mius. I'm pretty sure i was sitting on the side of the room with all the Conservadox Jews, because...um, everyone's outfits were very modest. But Kate's outfit was fabulous! In a kind of "aggressively approachable" way. She wore a poufy taffeta-ish skirt and black patent leather ankle boots, with black tights and a black short-sleeved turtleneck. It was, like, the most expensive ensemble you could get away with and still probably be mistaken for an elementary school teacher. She is very thin, but she doesn't seem to make it the centerpiece of her appearance, and she has blown-dry highlighted hair that dovetails perfectly with the intense perkiness of her persona. She looked like she belonged on the set of a fifties sitcom. And then she told that fucking upside-down ice cream sundae anecdote. In my notes it is followed by an anecdote about Kate Spade, who apparently is friends with Kate White. I just wrote it all down, but now I'm deleting it because really, it is duller than the sundae anecdote. "Sometimes you've got to break the rules," was the big takeaway. I think that's when I completely lost it.

Jessica:I read Kate's book, You On Top over the weekend, and most of the anecdotes were taken verbatim from that, so they must have been fact-checked, right? Anyway, the book has some actually insightful, practical career advice. Interspersed with "Ways to Tap into Your Inner Sex Kitten." She also warns us to never ever talk to guys about our periods. But she runs a major magazine and still finds time to write mystery novels. You've got to respect that!

Moe: That's true. She also seems impossible to hate. But she's like, impossible to hate in that way where you feel like if you traveled back in time to 1963, and someone advised you not to talk to boys about your period, you would forgive them for that. Why do I feel like I'm in a time warp with Kate White? She's the foremost purveyor of orgasm advice in the country! People were still douching in 1963! And having coat hanger abortions.

Jessica: That said, she managed to make the vignettes sound spontaneous and unrehearsed; even charming. I won't go over her "five rules" in detail. You want some business speak, you can find it elsewhere. Maybe in your own head in that space reserved for common sense, buried under the names of former contestants on ANTM. I will say Kate's an excellent public speaker. Then came the Q&A. I don't remember what questions were asked except for your question about Whether Cosmo had a secret sex lab.

Moe: I swear to God I heard once that Cosmo has a "sex laboratory" where they try out positions and stuff. I was dying for something too-hot-for-Andy Griffith to be said. But yeah, she turned a little red when I asked that. Lady, you're the editor of Cosmo WTF?! Then someone asked a question about how to deal when you've realized you're following in your mother's footsteps and putting your career on hold for your husband. And that's when she pointed out her husband. Her husband was adorable, and all "aw shucks" about the whole thing, and she readily admitted that he was six or seven years younger than her, and that she's glad she married later in life. I felt bad for the woman who was putting her career on hold for her husband. For a moment I felt worse for her than for myself, for not having a husband. But I don't understand why you would do that, unless you didn't really like working. In which case, don't feel guilty about it! We're all about self-acceptance.

Jessica: Yeah, I think she's holding out on us and somewhere in the nether regions of the Hearst building there is a kinky dungeon filled with frilly underthings and eight cartons of batteries. I do remember, however, one of Kate's answers, which stuck with me. She said that women tend not to ask for things in their careers — she told a story about a group of young trainees at Arthur Anderson. When the group got their offers, all the men asked for more money, whereas all the women just took the initial quote. This resonated with me in particular because when I worked at Spin right out of college, the Editor-in-Chief at the time, Sia Michel, told me the exact. Same. Thing. Every woman Sia had hired took the salary that was offered up front. Almost every man negotiated for more.

Moe: Ugh, yeah, fuck men; where do they get off? I fucking hate those motherfuckers. That's why they always think they deserve to have sex with you. Motherfucker, explain to me why you deserve a motherfucking raise when there are kids working for twenty cents an hour in Bangladesh and I don't even make that much? I hate dudes.

Jessica: Leaving the Y, I realized that had Kate's book just been her career advice and her somewhat daffy personal essays, I would have valued it so much more. The impressive example she's set with her achievements is not-so-subtly undermined when she extols the virtues of "walk[ing] around your home with no top on. Feel[ing] the breeze with your breasts!" I realize that she's branded herself quite strongly as EIC of Cosmo (hell, she mentions it every five pages in her book) but that doesn't mean that her voice has to be "sexified" all the time. Last night, Kate told us that we need to "break all the rules" to succeed. Maybe she should listen to herself and stop shilling hackneyed "mattress moves so hot, his thighs will go up in flames."

Moe: You're totally right. She doesn't even like talking about sex! She should really be at a more serious women's magazine. Too bad there are none!

• For starters: This picture, shot to illustrate "How Partying Too Much Can Kill You." Bangs again! And stains on her stockings! And a somewhat realistic looking scenario!!! What's going on?
  
• The page 106 feature, "What Not To Do In Bed," contains tons of "real guy" quotes that actually sound as if they might have origins in "real guys." For example: "If she just lies there completely while I toss her around and arrange her limbs, it's like fooling around with a corpse."
  
• There's a little piece on how rubbing yogurt on a tampon can help you ward off an impending yeastie. DIY!
  
• An NFL cheerleader "writes" an anonymous column about how creepy and ridiculous it is to be an NFL cheerleader and by the way cheerleading sucks. More edge!
  
• A story on those birth control pills that get rid of your period goes balls-out and basically says, "You might as well go on it; you don't really need to get your period as much as you do anyway, fuck periods." Decisive! And somewhat thought-provoking.

Yeah, so none of this probably means anything, but hey! One fewer magazine to skip this month.

Laura Sessions Stepp was the first to speak at any length, and she basically rehashed the article she had written in Cosmo peppered with some of her usual anti-hook-up propaganda. Blah, blah, women should be dating and not just having casual sex, blah, blah, there wouldn't be so much assault if they had real relationships.

Two of the three men on the panel, Neal Irvin, the National Director of Men Can Stop Rape and anti-violence activist Joe Samalin, focused their commentary on the need to educate men. "The way we socialize men to think about sexuality is the reason they're confused about gray rape," said Irwin. "We're taught that men are the seekers, women are the gatekeepers." An interesting point, but neither Irvin nor Samalin gave concrete examples on how to help educate or socialize the men in question.

Linda Fairstein, the former chief prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s Sex Crimes Unit, was the only commentator who said anything remotely useful in terms of defining gray rape. "There is no such thing as gray rape in the criminal justice system," Fairstein explained. If a woman is blackout drunk — ie she is actively engaging in behavior but not creating new memories — rape will be nearly impossible to prosecute. "I would never have said yes when I was sober," Fairstein said, "will not stand up in court."

"Men are responsible," Fairstein continued. "They shouldn't be having sex with wasted women. Vomit should probably be a red flag... But teaching responsibility to young women is just as important. You don't have to drink eight drinks. You don't have to get blotto."

After the panel, Samalin suggested to me that men should refuse to have sex with any woman who has been drinking. "Even if you've been dating for three years," he said solemnly. Because that's a realistic expectation! Samalin's attitude was my issue with the whole experience. Every panel member vigorously agreed that when a woman says no, a man should listen, regardless of how quietly she says it or how intoxicated she might be. But the messier issues — what if she says no, but then consents later, or what if she says no while she's taking off her panties — were either not addressed or glossed over completely. Incidentally, I learned that in Maryland and North Carolina, once penetration has begun, a woman cannot rescind her consent. Duke sorority sisters, please take note.

I tried to ask Cosmo EIC Kate White what she thought about the gray rape discussion but when I told her I was from Jezebel, she muttered something about needing to deal with logistics and scurried off. Maybe she was aware of the irony that Cosmo — the magazine that, just this month, is suggesting its readers learn to "Tease Him into a Frenzy!" and "Be a Jealous Bitch!" — was hosting a discussion about the deeply conflicted nature of young women's sexual identity. Or maybe she was just afraid we'd tell everyone how airbrushed her letter from the editor photo is.

Earlier: 'Cosmo' Wonders: Is It Rape If You Had Too Many Jaeger Shots To Remember It Anyway?
Related: New Yorkers: Come Protest "Gray Rape" Panel This Morning! [Feministing]

1977: Helen Gurley Brown anticipates the "cougar" trend... 30 years before Demi & Ashton.

1987: Giving birth: All it takes is a slinky, electric-blue gown and a lot of hair gel?

1997: The Bonnie Fuller Method on how to get a man to commit: Issue an ultimatum .

2007: Wondering if your gynecologist is silently judging you? She is.

Every nerve from head to toe perks up. I reach a point where I feel like I am going to burst, and then the release is so gratifying.

But then as usual with Cosmo, the text was so dense and scholarly we settled on skimming. Apparently a blended orgasm causes "body spasms" and a "rolling, wavelike response" with an "incredibly explosive finale." So it's the type of orgasm you get from something motorized! But a blender? You've got a strange mind, Kate White.

Her signature is easy to read, with a good flow, a consistent rhythm. She is in balance emotionally. There are acquisitive hooks at the start of the W in White and the "t" in that name.

The "t" forms are very short, a sign of an independent thinker. She makes her own decisions. The endings of Kate and White are both strong, a sign of decisiveness. The t bars are strong and heavy, an indication of good energy and drive.

Sex Position Of The Week [Cosmopolitan]
Related: Kate White Is A Secret Blonde Genius [Gawker]

I was walking down a street in the east 90's and I saw two young Hispanic guys tugging at the shopping bag of an older woman. Assuming she was being mugged, I ran across the street yelling for them to stop. But then the two guys turned around and they were both wearing aprons—they worked at a nearby supermarket. And they said she had shoplifted from their store and they had chased her out to get the stuff back. I was fascinated by the optical illusion. I used it in my latest mystery.

Kate White, Novelist, Editor-In-Chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine [Gothamist]
A Gathering Of Cosmo Girls (And Guys) [Hartford Courant]
Kate White Wants To Abolish Brunch [NYMag]

• Did the failure of Bonnie Fuller's 23-word-title self-help tome scare off the publisher for her replacement at Cosmopolitan, Kate White? White has apparently changed the title of the paperback edition of her latest non-fiction book, cutting it down from 17 words (18 if you're not counting hyphenated phrases!) to 15. With Fuller's book selling only 338 copies in paperback since its release in early January, we don't blame her! [Radar]
• Teen Vogue's Amy Astley may soon see that her staff has one-less intern to boss around. Intern Jenna admits on the magazine's "Intern Blog" that she loves cheapo American Apparel clothes; gives absolutely no love to Teen Vogue advertisers Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, & Chloe. [TeenVogue]
• Before she gave birth, "Project Runway" and Elle magazine diva Nina Garcia reportedly had much of the fashion department's staff running around to style and produce a photo shoot to showcase her then-baby-filled belly. [Rush&Molloy]
• Meredith Corporation-published mom-mags Ladies' Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle magazines will soon have an online video presence. What does this mean? More online content to ignore! [MediaWeek]