(Images created by Cheryl Campbell; click image to enlarge)

Harper's Index, May 2008 [Harper's]
Julianne Moore, Portrait Of A Lady [Harper's Bazaar]

Earlier: The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: The Couture Economy, Demi Moore & Joan Collins' Issue With Rich Guys
•the Harper's (Bazaar) Index: Designer Diets, Little Miss Mortimer & Lindsay Lohan's DUIs
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: J. Lo's Diamonds, Giuliani And The Cougar Allure
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: January 2008
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: December 2007
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: September 2007
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: August 2007
•The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: July 2007

Earlier: Cover Lies (All previous posts)

Earlier: French (Photo Retouchers) Don't Let Famous Women Get Fat

Now. I know you might want to read about Padma Lakshmi's dress or the new shoes I regretted buying or all the booze and the chocolate fountain or this 30 Rock guy I talked to or Obama Girl but the fact is I didn't get into this fucking business to do work, I did it because I loved magazines and it actually sort of saddened me to be reminded how much of a pain it is for editors to actually read magazines; to sit down and ponder stories that other editors had deemed good enough not simply to assign to a writer; not simply deem fit for publication in their storied professional magazines; but enter for consideration to the National Magazine Awards.

I have never understood awards shows. I hate watching the Oscars, for instance, because I have never seen enough decent movies, and feel the same way, but exponentially, about words that are worth reading. It was worthwhile only in that I will carry with me the misery of sitting on a dark balcony wearing a dress through an excruciating two-hour sermon on the Things I Could Have Read Last Year that weren't TMZ posts on Brandon Davis' fat brother.

Later in the evening an award was given for some sort of internet feature. Before the winner was announced, a presentation of the nominees cited the "Primacy of Digital News." I didn't catch this; my brain was preoccupied by the all abiding alcohol anticipation anxiety that generally follows a worshiping at the altar of the Primacy of Digital News, but an editor at a monthly magazine was annoyed. "Who do they think they're fucking talking to?" he asked. Perhaps they hadn't read Autumn of the Multitaskers, Walter Kirn's ASME-nominated essay on how "infinite connectivity" is "dumbing us down and making us crazy," or, for that matter, Stephen King's Last Word On Harry Potter, a nominee in the same category that appeared last summer in Entertainment Weekly:

The very popularity of the books has often undone even the best intentions of the best critical writers. In their hurry to churn out column inches, and thus remain members of good standing in the Church of What's Happening Now, very few of the Potter reviewers have said anything worth remembering. Most of this microwaved critical mush sees Harry — not to mention his friends and his adventures — in only two ways: sociologically (''Harry Potter: Boon or Childhood Disease?'') or economically (''Harry Potter and the Chamber of Discount Pricing''). They take a perfunctory wave at things like plot and language, but do little more...and really, how can they? When you have only four days to read a 750-page book, then write an 1,100-word review on it, how much time do you have to really enjoy the book? To think about the book? Jo Rowling set out a sumptuous seven-course meal, carefully prepared, beautifully cooked, and lovingly served out. The kids and adults who fell in love with the series (I among them) savored every mouthful, from the appetizer (Sorcerer's Stone) to the dessert (the gorgeous epilogue of Deathly Hallows). Most reviewers, on the other hand, bolted everything down, then obligingly puked it back up half-digested on the book pages of their respective newspapers.

I'll start with Pat Dollard's War On Hollywood, the 23,000-word Vanity Fair profile of a stoner-turned-Hollywood agent-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-crackhead who also happens to be a left winger-turned-right winger. He's friends with Ann Coulter; Billy Bob Thornton says he's the only guy in Hollywood crazier than him; apparently it gets really good in the middle; the tragedy is I don't know this, even though it not only won the award but was written by a guy I used to date. (Who is, incidentally, always trying to get me to quit drinking.) (And also: is now married and apparently didn't show up at the event because his wife had not been invited; times, they are tough.)

Dollard's target audience is the same as any rock band's: kids—the more disaffected the better. He aims to alter the course of pop culture. "What we've celebrated since at least the 1950s is the antihero," Dollard says. "Today, even though our country has been attacked, nothing has changed. If you are a young man in America right now, the coolest fucking thing you can aspire to be is like a gangsta rapper, or a pseudo bad guy. The message of my movie is simple: If you're a young person in America, the coolest, fucking most badass and most noble thing you can be today is a combat Marine. Period."

Breitbart believes Dollard is onto something important. "There needs to be a confrontation at the pop-culture level of the kids who are over there fighting versus the kids at home who are totally disconnected, immersed in this mindless Abercrombie & Fitch-MTV culture." Breitbart adds, "There needs to be a revolution, and Dollard is the man who can kick it off. I don't care if older conservatives are offended by Pat Dollard. I was not looking for someone pristine. He brings to our cause this whole spirit of, like, the Merry Pranksters Two."

There is a certain stylistic uniformity to all forms of propaganda, but the personality of the propagandist is never far from the surface. Bin Laden's murmuring voice belies the contempt in his words. Zawahiri speaks in the confident, rhythmic clauses of a master strategist. Adam Gadahn, though he tries to adopt the composure of a statesman, exudes the zealotry of a convert, and of youth. Sometimes his syntax is so baroque, his sentiment so earnest, that he sounds like a character from "The Lord of the Rings." "The call has gone out," he proclaimed in one video. "The era of jihad and resistance has dawned in all its glory." Mostly, though, Gadahn sounds angry. In 2005, with his head wrapped in a black turban and his face covered with a black veil, he warned, "We love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions, and slitting the throats of the infidels." Last July, while discussing civilian casualties in Iraq, he said, "It's hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures, just pictures, of what the Crusaders did to those children, and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines' housing facilities at Camp Pendleton." In a feature-length Al Qaeda documentary that was released on the Internet on September 11, 2006, Gadahn referred to the United States as "enemy soil," and celebrated the September 11th hijackers as "dedicated, strong-willed, highly motivated individuals."

At the end of our meeting Dollard offers to become my manager. "Seriously, dude, I could get something set up for you like that," he says, clapping his hands to indicate how fast he is going to make a deal.

But Dollard never becomes my manager. In the coming weeks, he breaks several appointments. One day he phones. Rapid, shallow breaths come across the line. "Dude, I am so, so, so fucking sorry for not calling you." No explanation is required, but Dollard offers one anyway. "I was fucking kidnapped."
Dollard claims that members of an A.A. meeting abducted him after promising his wife to get him sober. Instead, they held him prisoner at a hotel in Palm Springs while plying him with call girls and coke. Meanwhile, they used his credit cards to charter a yacht and a plane for business deals they were conducting. The story is incredible, but Dollard's fourth wife later confirms its essential truth, adding, "I'm sure those A.A. people started with good intentions, but Pat twisted their intervention around until they thought the right thing to do was buying coke and hiring prostitutes for him."

Which reminds me, one reason I don't generally read magazines is to learn about how to spend my time in ways that aren't reading. Nonetheless, eating and exercising and travel are all more valid topics, in my mind, than shopping and makeup application, which is my excuse for reading Women, Money And Friends Come And Go, But Dogs Are Forever, which won Men's Health an award in the category of "Leisure Interests."

Wolves, like men, come in an assortment of personality types. Some are naturally aggressive — a trait that hardly endeared them to Stone Age hunters. Such wolves learned to stay the hell away from humans altogether or they would have faced extermination by our Paleolithic forefathers. Those wolves blessed with a more peaceful nature, on the other hand, adapted better as the human population boomed. One theory holds that these laid-back wolves benefited from an easily accessible food supply: human garbage. We, in turn, benefited from their warning howls whenever predators or marauding tribes came near. At some point, perhaps following the adoption of orphaned pups by a Stone Age hunter, these pacified wolves stopped living beside us and started living with us. This most likely happened toward the end of the last ice age. In a grave near modern-day Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany, archaeologists discovered the bodies of a Stone Age man and woman and the first "morphologically unambiguous" dog, dating back 14,000 years. "People have been burying or otherwise ritually disposing of dead dogs all over the world for a very long time," says Darcy F. Morey, Ph.D., a zooarchaeologist at the University of Tennessee at Martin. His hypothesis: Humans at this point in history began to view these animals less as beasts and more as creatures imbued with spiritual qualities and thus deserving of proper burial.

Until the seventies, the cart business was dominated by Greeks. Now, coffee carts are run mostly by Afghans. Bangladeshis man virtually all fruit stands and most hot-dog carts, though many uptown hot-dog carts are Dominican. The Vietnamese run smoothie carts. Nut carts are manned by Brazilians and Colombians. The trade is so ethnically fragmented that even Bangladeshis, the largest single group of vendors, make up less than 20 percent of the total number.

The Full List Of Links, Please Go Read Something Good And Tell Me About It; I'll Add More Here Later [Andrew Lavalle]
Autumn Of The Multitaskers [The Atlantic]
Pat Dollard's War On Hollywood [Vanity Fair]
Azzam The American [New Yorker]
Know Your Footprint [Popular Mechanics]
Women, Money And Friends Come And Go, But Dogs Are Forever [Men's Health]
Cartography: The Complete Road Map To New York Street Food [NY Mag]
The Last Word On Harry Potter [EW]
Engineering The Megacity [IEEE Spectrum]

This writer may be a public personality, but this sample is block printed, the variety of handwriting that tries to keep people from gathering much revealing information from it. (Cursive reveals much more.) Block printing is the choice of ransom note writers for that reason. This writer is very reluctant to allow others to know her until she knows them rather well first.

Furthermore, there are no loops on y's, an indication of a person who may seem to enjoy the company of others, but is very happy, thank you, to be all alone.

The swollen "d" forms signal a person who is acutely conscious of self, and can be wounded by destructive criticism.

Add to this an occasional slant to the left, a sign of one who represses emotions. Mostly the writing is vertical, which indicate a lack of impulsiveness. This writer thinks first, and then takes an action. The straight down-stroke of the y's indicates the determination to make an action succeed.

The bars that cross the "t" stem are placed at the top of the stem, the indication of a person who ambitiously stretches to reach a treetop tall goal. The bars are also heavy, which signals that the writer has the drive (gumption) actually to reach the treetops.

There are umbrella-shaped t bars that indicate extra portions of self-control. The block printing makes it difficult to figure out what the writer has developed controls over. The usual reason to develop such hyper-control is to stifle a recurrent fear, such as stage-fright.

The tops of the "m" forms come very close to needle-points, the sign of a very speedy thinker. Add to this a well developed "gut" intuition that skips over the usual steps of logic to get to trusted conclusions. Intuition accelerates the thinking process and allows the writer to get a handle on other people without much delay. Although some of the answers in this sample may seem dumb, the writer isn't. Some rounded "m" tops indicate that the writer can also be methodical (when absolutely necessary) and there are "V" formation in the m's and n's that signal an analytical mind that will take the time to figure out what's actually what.

Fairly strong final endings to words indicate an ability to make decisions and short t stems signal an independent thinker who makes up her own mind from information she selects.

Clean o's (the middles are without marks or blotches) are a sign of good integrity. The writer lives in the "real" world and abides by most of its rules in a way that is not secretive or devious.

There is what graphologists call a "conscious gesture" —- in this case the z's in "quizzed" are crossed. The writer has either grown up in a European-based country or has adopted the crossed-z as a kind of educated stylistic embellishment.

Earlier: Dea Cosmo Girl Hayden "Heroes" Panettiere: "Better To Be The Turtle Than The Hare"
•Cosmo Girl Rihanna: "Solitary & Self-Involved"
•Decoding Cosmo Cover Girl Katie Heigl: "She Refuses To Waste Time With Convoluted Crap"
•Cosmo Girl Hilary Duff: Intuitive, Practical And Younger Than She Looks
•Cosmo Girl Beyonce Knowles: Detail-Oriented, Thoughtful, Possibly Power-Hungry
•'Cosmo' Cover Girl Ali Larter: Self-Involved, Stubborn, Easily Distracted

Teen Vogue: Teen Vogue's website doesn't seem to have any sex coverage at all. Its drop-down menu on the homepage has five sections: Style, Industry Insider, Beauty, Team Vogue and Connect. And although there are no articles about sex or question-and-answer style features, there is a fair amount of sex talk on the largely unregulated Message Boards. Sample thread starter: "I haven't had sex in over two weeks. its starting to wear on me but my boyfriend is out of town and i don't want to cheat on him because i've already done that too much. I guess i just have to stay strong but its hard. TIPS?!?!?!"
Cosmo Girl!: Ah, Cosmo Girl. The website's "Sex" section is part of a drop down menu titled "Guys" (also available under the heading "Life Advice") where the magazine has a panel of reasonable experts answering questions like "Can you get pregnant if a guy fingers you with sperm on his hand?" They don't talk down to the girls, and seem to be giving straight talk. Alongside the prudent advice is a lot of boy craziness including recurring features like "Hook A Hottie", "Guy Videos", "Eye Candy", "Guide To Guys" — the list goes on.
Elle Girl: The sex coverage on Elle Girl is also pretty minimal. The brunt of it is articles like How to Deal ...With a Guy Who's Just After a Hookup and quizzes such as Are you a bad girlfriend?. None of these are particularly informative or sex-positive.
Seventeen: The bottom line of Seventeen's sex stories is always, "don't get knocked up". There's an entire section devoted to "preventing pregnancy." While the idea of sex for pleasure's sake is definitely not the backbone of Seventeen's health section, they do an admirable job in answering the tough questions, like the age-old query, "Can I Get Pregnant From Having Sex in Water?"
YM : Back in the early-mid-90s when I was a burgeoning teen, YM was the repository for the raciest sex stories. The magazine was never huge on serious content or real advice, though. It's a bit tamer than I remember — where are all the blow job questions? — but the "Say Anything" section still provides the same level of teen mortification it always did.

Magazine Readers Want Sex [Daily Telegraph]

Then, in the early 90s, it all came crashing down, due to corruption in the Italian parliament, bankruptcy in the cities, deaths from AIDS and a lack of money in general. But Ms. Molho maintains it was great while it lasted. And possibly the fashion magazines were a lot more fun. Plus! Ms. Mohlo has some great insights about working in the industry: "There was a time when quality paid off," she says.

On being a young, low-on-the-totem-pole stylist:

"I instantly learned that the difficult parts of this job are the small ones. When you have the amazing dress and the famous photographer, you don't really have to do any work."

Easy money, constant partying, and one out of two people in the street was a foreigner. It was a very superficial atmosphere, but it was vibrant. The fashion money funded the arts. Think about the Fiorucci store that was entirely painted by Keith Haring. There was a sensation that everything was possible."

"These schools today are pretty useless. They are very theoretical. What do you need theory for? Nothing. What you need is experience, to have lived and seen and done other things in life. I taught for a while and I used to tell my students: 'Seeing one picture by Chagall is much more important than reading all the issues of Vogue ever published.'"

"Studying him and talking to all the people in his life, I think I managed to understand the reasoning behind some of his actions. There's a telling episode in his life. When his life partner, Sergio Galeotti, died, the only daily that mentioned AIDS was Rome's Messaggero. Immediately after that, Armani canceled his advertising account with that paper. It became something of a media scandal. Researching him as a person, I see that as an act of love aimed at the preservation of a man's dignity rather than an act of spite."

"Everything turned into a soulless homage to other things we had seen before. Think about the era of successive revivals that began after the 80s. For example, even today in most runway shows the music is nothing but a mix of 60s, 70s, and 80s music. It's a big empty hole. Nothing is exciting anymore, and most things are tremendously boring. Often, the best things are written by unknown editors and journalists, while the big names seem to sign things off with their left hand. Haven't you noticed that nobody expresses an opinion anymore?"

Drinking Milan [Vice]

Earlier: I Can Has Jeetann? C'est LOLVogue En Faux Français
LOLVogue: Teh Hare Toss & Teh Bunnee Hop
LOLLost: Srsly, Guiz, Dis Izland Is Weeerd
LOLVogue: Tard Moddles & Bahlinceeyagga
Mon Dieu! C'est French LOLVogue: Shoulders, Champagne and Cigarettes
LOL'Vogue': Scarves, Silverware & Scooters
LOLVogue: Starving Models & Marionettes

2008

2005

2003

2002

1997

1996

1995

Continues Roberts:

"Teenagers can be seen on TV and in the cinema in the most prurient ways, and then a photograph which is for all intents and purposes innocent is blown out of portion and condemned as some ridiculous apotheosis. It's a joke to me. But it's not a joke because I don't find it funny. I find it offensive. I'm deemed as being party to some kind of subversive picture of this girl, that she was cajoled. That we literally manhandled her into stripping is completely not true."

On yesterday's post about about the Miley Cyrus/Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, a commenter argued: "Didn't Kate Moss pose topless when she was 15? Like - actually topless, not just with her back showing. Comparatively, this isn't all that shocking. It's just kind of pathetic." And yes, 19-year-old Kate Moss did pose topless. In fact, her first shoot for The Face magazine was a topless shoot. But Miley Cyrus is not Kate Moss. She is not a model. In fact, she is a subsidiary of squeaky-clean conglomerate Disney. She had a sold-out 70-date concert tour which grossed $36 million and generated $50 million in album sales and downloads. That doesn't include T-shirts, clothes, rain boots, etc. Money from the parents of her fans, who are children. It's no secret that it's tough to transition from child star to teen star (see Spears, Britney and Lohan, Lindsay; both formerly caught in the Mouse's trap.) Isn't a racy photo shoot on an ingenue's to-do list? But the most interesting thing is while the Miley kerfluffle prompted a response from photographer Annie Leibovitz, the Lebron James cover she shot for Vogue was met with silence from the photographer, even after its inspiration was discovered.

Why does a not-naked fifteen-year-old garner more attention than a black man portrayed as an animal? Is subtle racism just not a big deal? Or is it that America loves Lolitas? Do we enjoy seeing our starlets young, pure, but on the verge of corruption? Hopefully with a lollipops in their mouths?

Annie Leibovitz Defends Hannah Montana Star Miley Cyrus's Vanity Fair Shoot [Telegraph]
Memo Pad [WWD]
The Latest Ingenue To-Do [Washington Post]
Sexualizing Miley: Are Billy Ray and Tish Cyrus Letting Her Be The New Lolita? [Huffington Post]
The Miley Cyrus Pics: Damage Control [Time]
New York Times Takes Back Miley Cyrus Headline: "She Was Not Topless" [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Miley Cyrus: Fifteen & Topless in Vanity Fair
Miley Cyrus Is Not The Innocent Victim That Disney Makes Her Out To Be
Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
MagHag

Heldman states that self-objectification can lead to all or some of the following in women: depression, low self-esteem, less faith in their own capabilities, which leads to diminished success in life, low political efficacy, disgust and shame about their bodies... the list goes on. (To me, the most interesting side-effect is "low political efficacy", which is just a fancy way of saying that women who objectify themselves do not believe that they can create change, and thus rarely or never get involved with politics.)

Dr. Heldman, bless her soul, tries listing ways to combat self-objectification, but most of them seem fairly implausible, particularly if you're a television and movie lover. A "radical, personal solution is to actively avoid media to self-objectify, which, unfortunately is that vast majority of movies, television programs and women's magazines," Heldman writes. "My research with college age women indicates that the less women consume media, the less they self-objectify, particularly if they avoid fashion magazines. [Emphasis ours.] By shutting out media, girls and women can create mental and emotional space for true self-exploration." I guess the only solution is for women to make our own un-self-objectifying media to combat the other kind. Tina Fey and Diablo Cody? We are looking at you.

Self-Objectification — Seeing Ourselves Through Others Eyes — Impairs Women's Body Image, Mental Health, Motor Skills, And Even Sex Lives [Ms.]

Earlier: Memo To Women's Magazine Editors: White Women Hate Themselves After Reading Your Magazines

Men are... immeasurably interested in acquiring fixed ideas of God, of the soul, and of their common duties to their Creator and to their fellow men. This is, then, the subject on which it is most important for each of us to entertain fixed ideas; and, unhappily, it is also the subject on which it is most difficult for each of us, left to himself, to settle his opinions by the sole force of his reason.

The magazine goes on to interview a Catholic-born Shamanist who also digs Judaism, a Wiccan Buddhist who's reading the Bible, lapsed Baptists who love gays but still do charity, and an "expert" at the University of Notre Dame who wonders if there isn't a downside to all this. "If teens are thinking, evaluating, and searching, that is a good sign. The downside is that if religion turns into a customizable choice, it loses its power," she says. But Tocqueville totes knew you were going to say that! From page 508:

I anticipate the objection, that as all religions have general and eternal truths for their object, they can not thus shape themselves to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim to certainty in the eyes of mankind.To this I reply again, that the principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the accessories connected with them.

October 5:

November 6:

April 15:

We love the color, Jenna. But you don't need to wear "slimming" hues anymore! Enough with the dysmorphia!

April 20:
Oh, man, Jenna rocks the Faith Hill pose! I think she just might be that skinny. Now I feel like one of those people who monitors celebrity weight fluctuations! I wonder if she's on this "no-diet diet" I keep hearing about...

It kind of contradicts itself in a few places, so we've bolded that.

IT'S WHAT YOU MIGHT PICTURE. Sitting on the couch in her parents' home in Encino, California, she's clutching a pillow to her stomach like a kid at a sleepover. A lot of what she says echoes what you've heard. You ask her which star of the silver screen she most identifies with, and she says Dolly Parton. Tee hee. She's got the oh-my-gosh nuh-uh of the small-town Texan.
Sure, Jessica Simpson is a lot like you would expect.
But look close.
Blow her off if you want. Say, She's not even that hot. Yesterday's news. Last year's pinup.
Now look even closer: She may have come from the same Mickey Mouse oven as her pantyless comrades, but unlike them, she is not melting. She is not checking in and out of rehab. She is not squeezing out babies like wet gremlins. She is not selling night-vision sex tapes on the Internet.
Now look north, into her eyes: Jessica Simpson is the future face of the new American job of celebrity, the first of the self-made, small-talent applicants who'll last a Liz Taylor lifetime.

She conjures the sensation of palming the cheerleader's ass behind the bleachers on unwilted September afternoons...You can see it in her girlfriend face. A face that lets men know she will one day be a good mother, with the promise of postpartum sex in her eyes. She says her lips are chapped from kissing. Maybe if you got close enough to kiss them you would see the reflection in her eyes — a football flying past the iris, a cheerleader pom-pomming in the back of the retina.

Simpson kept the cheerleader skirt on. She didn't give in whole naked hog to our imaginations.

"I've come to realize that the more I censor myself, the lest people relate to me," she says. "I went through a period in my life where I kept to myself, this last year and a half. And this is the first time, as I'm making my country album right now, I've had to just lay it all out there and go to that place where I'm comfortable saying, 'Here's my world, come back in.'

And this, the MONEY ANECDOTE:

She's talking about her favorite bra. She's saying that she's wearing it. "What is the damn name?" she asks the ceiling. She rustles around in her sweatshirt. "iI can't ever...watch me, I'm gonna take it off..."
She starts removing the bra under her sweatshirt. "This is so something I would do...Um." The bra is off and in her hands. "It's this. I LOVE this." Love is always in italics, capitalized. Bold-faced, underlined, drop-shadowed...."This store is unbelievable. Kiki de Montparnasse. I'm definitely black lace. Red lace is cheesy but black lace, hmm..."
This is Jessica Simpson.
Just a normal girl, a twenty-seven year-old preacher's daughter with a good-sized heart....at least here we've turned a real-live girl into something more: the lost American metaphor. A blond from Nowhere, Texas, holding a $200 bra in her hands. She knows she doesn't deserve it because of who she is.

You believe her. She's in for the long haul. So he'll continue playing the part, working her way up. She'll be Daisy Duke, she'll wear sort shorts, she'll be a blonde and act like a ditz on camera. She won't bitch about not being in a Woody Allen film or try to write a postmodern novel about canned tuna. Nothing will be handed to Jessica Simpson.

Earlier: French Vogue: The Wind Beneath Our Wings
Mon Dieu! C'est French LOLVogue: Shoulders, Champagne and Cigarettes
Bon Joor, C'est Paris LOLVogue Encore!
French 'Vogue': Devil Worship Is The New Black!
Related: LOLVogue: Teh Hare Toss & Teh Bunnee Hop
LOLVogue: Tard Moddles & Bahlinceeyagga
LOLVogue: Sheez Over Ayteen, I Sware
LOLVogue: Hungry Moddles & Rorschach Tests
LOLVogue: Carbs, Botox & Pink-Eye
LOLVogue: Good Help Is Hard To Find
LOLVogue: Starving Models & Marionettes
LOL'Vogue': Scarves, Silverware & Scooters

"Survey after survey has shown there isn't enough content reaching African-American women," says Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications. "African-American women say they are looking for more content reflecting their voice and lifestyle. This partnership gives us the opportunity." The problem: Is there an African-American voice and lifestyle? I'm black and I never watch Oprah or Girlfriends (although my mom loves Girlfriends). My brother doesn't watch basketball (my friend Jonathan, who's Jewish, does). I have black friends with no interest in Tyra Banks and an Asian friend who loves her. Are the people who read Essence the same people who read Sister 2 Sister, Vibe and Black Enterprise? It's like targeting "women" with a site like Shine. Are they working women? Moms? Single women? Beauty-obsessed women? Bitter women? Does being a woman mean you automatically give a shit about Kate Bosworth? (I'll answer that one: No.) Black women come in a myriad of tastes, styles and voices. Can a website attract all black women? It'll be interesting to see them try.

Essence Enlists Warner To Reach Black Women On Web [Crains]
Essence Mag Uses Some Synergy to Turn Past Printed Page [AdAge]
Essence Magazine To Go Multiplatform [MediaWeek]
Overhaul for Web Site of Essence Magazine [NY Times]

"Rowdy, romantic outlaw chic" means $840 Gucci shoes. Can one actually walk on sand with those heels? Where's the covered wagon when you need it?

If only the pioneers had had retro radios.

Here's the $13,000 gown! There is something darkly beautiful about it, but would a gothic castle would have been a better backdrop? Too predictable? Seeing this dress in stark bright daylight doesn't seem right.

Is it okay to wear fishnets while horseback riding? Is it okay to wear a $1400 necklace while horseback riding?

Dress: $5,320. Shoes: $790. Stockings: $120. Shooting Prada so close to a horse's ass: Priceless.

I was going to make a joke about the model being mauled to death, but it seemed too grisly. Heh. Sorry.

Dress, $5,060; top, $2,330; Roberto Cavalli. Model Anna Kuchinka says, "If I weren't a model I would be a clinical psychologist." Maybe she can help us process why that Cavalli blouse is more than an airline ticket to Italy?

Yeah... No.

Earlier: Marie Claire's Vietnam Photo Shoot: Apocalypse Wow
Marie Claire's Oh-So-Realistic Trailer Park Photo Shoot
Marie Claire & The 75-Year-Old Bhutanese Model
'Marie Claire' Editors Went To Italy And All They Got Was This Awesome Photo Shoot

When Stephanie Faucher, the design director of Computerworld, was questioned by Folio magazine about the infamous Lebron James image on the cover of Vogue, she answered with her own question: "What better way to sell magazines than to run a controversial cover?"

Except that Folio reports, controversial covers don't always increase sales. Though, writes Joanna Pettas, "It's nice to hear people outside the industry talking about magazines. It's a reminder that print, and magazines in general, still have an impact on social culture." Still, one has to wonder: If women are tired of airbrushed celebs and "perfect" models, and a magazine really wanted to court controversy, wouldn't it be a good idea to publish an untouched cover photograph? I'd buy that, in a heartbeat. Would you?

Liz Hurley Admits She Gets Her Bikini Pictures Airbrushed [Mirror]
Liz Hurley Confesses Love Of Airbrushing [Telegraph]
Why Ridiculous Covers Matter [Folio]
Despite Talk of Ethics Codes, Airbrushing Is Here to Stay [AdAge]
Related: Cover Critique: Vogue's Lebron and Gisele
Earlier: America Ferrera's 'Glamour' Treatment, Revisited
Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
Mainstream Media Outlets Have Picked Up On The Controversial "LeBron Kong" Vogue Cover

The wind tapped like a tired man,
And like a host, "Come in,"
I boldly answered; entered then
My residence within

A rapid, footless guest,
To offer whom a chair
Were as impossible as hand
A sofa to the air.

No bone had he to bind him,
His speech was like the push
Of numerous humming-birds at once

His countenance a billow,
His fingers, if he pass,
Let go a music, as of tunes
Blown tremulous in glass.

He visited, still flitting;
Then, like a timid man,
Again he tapped—'t was flurriedly—
And I became alone.

(From Nature)

Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
There's not a charge to me
Like that old measure in the boughs,
That phraseless melody

The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.

When winds go round and round in bands,
And thrum upon the door,
And birds take places overhead,
To bear them orchestra,

I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
If such an outcast be,
He never heard that fleshless chant
Rise solemn in the tree,

As if some caravan of sound
On deserts, in the sky,
Had broken rank,
Then knit, and passed
In seamless company.

(From Nature)

The wind begun to rock the grass
With threatening tunes and low,—
He flung a menace at the earth,
A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees
And started all abroad;
The dust did scoop itself like hands
And throw away the road.

The wagons quickened on the streets,
The thunder hurried slow;
The lightning showed a yellow beak,
And then a livid claw.

The birds put up the bars to nests,
The cattle fled to barns;
There came one drop of giant rain,
And then, as if the hands

That held the dams had parted hold,
The waters wrecked the sky
But overlooked my father's house,
lust quartering a tree.

(The Wind Begun To Rock The Grass)

The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
"Because, sir, love is sweet!"

We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee, —
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility!

(From Time And Eternity)

Earlier: Bon Joor, C'est Paris LOLVogue Encore!
What's The Message Behind A Black Man In Heels On The Cover Of Vogue?
French Vogue: Now With More Bearded Drag Queens
Olivier Theyskens Totally Naked in French Vogue: Hot or Not?
Mon Dieu! C'est French LOLVogue: Shoulders, Champagne and Cigarettes
French 'Vogue': Devil Worship Is The New Black!

Dodai: I just wanted to point out that their slogan is not a joke. It's very very real.

Dodai: The Editor's letter begins, "I am what I've coined a 'serial miserablist.'" I stopped reading after that.
Pamela: "Miserabilist," "nitpicking about my body," people with "an ugly core," "an attack of gastritis." Um, isn't this supposed to be a fun magazine about kiddie clothes?

Dodai: This swingset looks great, huh? It's all natural, made from white cedar. And it rings up at an affordable $21,850.
Pamela: Just what you need when the local playground is crawling with untold numbers of germs and the unwashed masses of neighborhood toddlers.

Dodai: $648 worth of furniture for kids never looked so depressing. To hell with the planet: Bring on the bright plastic chairs! Kidding. Sort of.
Pamela: The designer baby furniture world is still mired in mid-century modern, which seems so 2005 now. My favorite is the abstract, minimalist rocking horse, oddly not featured here. It looks more like an abdominizer than a toy.

Dodai: The stroller on the left is $400; the stroller on the right is $759. As far as I can tell, neither are guaranteed to keep a kid from screaming his head off in the grocery store.
Pamela: The one on the right has its own catalog, filled with photos of hipster parents and nary a child in sight. It's all about us.

Dodai: Really? Parents want their infants dressed like Rod Stewart's baby? Really?
Pamela: Is this child from Rod's third or fourth batch? Fifth?!

Dodai: Ah, child models. One can almost smell the ennui from here.
Pamela: I am fairly certain I spot eye shadow. To think I waited until 8th grade before breaking into Ultima II.

Dodai: The feature story, "A Perfect World," is an interview and photo shoot with covermommy Christine Costner and son Cayden. It is TEN PAGES LONG. If I'd had the patience to read it I'm sure I would have found it fascinating.
Pamela: Cayden, Aiden, Braydon, Jayden. Will and Jada, look what you started! Please make this whole trend go away.

Dodai: Then again, maybe not.
Pamela: In this hard-hitting feature, Costner is described as "not just any actor," but "one of the world's most respected thespians." (Insert Native American whooping sounds here)

Dodai: Wow, Asian kids!
Pamela: Oh, parenting magazines love Asian babies. It's only when they get older that editors seem to decide they're "not cute" any more.

Dodai: Black kid! Redhead kid! Baby Couture is officially more diverse than Vogue.
Pamela: Working our collective nostalgia for 1986 Benetton.

Dodai: Saucy minx. She's totally going to tell all the kids in the sandbox she's a model.
Pamela: They'll rip off that bunny necklace in a flash. It's probably laced with lead anyway.

Dodai: Okay, enough already. I've officially reached baby overload. No. More. Thanks.
Pamela: Please tell me why this baby is wearing a shower cap. Oh, it's a bonnet. Doesn't make it any better.

Baby Couture Magazine [Baby Couture]

Related: Parenting, Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers — and What It Means for Our Children [Amazon]
Pamela Paul's Website [PamelaPaul.com]

From the Blender cover where Britney's head was attached, Frankenstein-style, onto another body, to poor Faith Hill — readers are misled. Constantly. Take the new Marie Claire: We all know that Tina Fey has a prominent scar. So why can we barely see it?

As a reader pointed out, in this ad for Gossip Girl, Blake Lively's waist has been whittled down to the size of her neck. Screen shots from behind-the-scenes at the shoot prove how drastically she was chopped.

Some magazines in the UK claim that they're altering photographs to make models fatter. Well not fat, of course, just less emaciated. "It is now deemed just as negative to be too thin as too fat," says Belinda Coleman of retouching agency The Shoemakers Elves. "Every­one is scared of being highlighted as the magazine or label that promotes very thin girls, so they are being a lot more careful about the images they present." But this means that the model is still frightfully thin and getting paid. "Retouching skinny girls doesn't help anyone except advertisers, and least of all the models in question," writes Kate Finnigan, the style editor of Stella.

To be honest, when I think of a PhotoShop ban, what comes to mind is the scene in Batman where the news anchors can't use any makeup or cosmetics products because the Joker has tainted them all. The faces of the reporters are ashen, pale, craggy and uneven. It's shocking because we know what people on TV are supposed to look like: Smooth and perfect. Even if they're just reading the news. Magazines are the same; we're so used to the lies, the forgeries on the covers. How would we handle it if covers suddenly started revealing the truth? On the other hand, if magazines continue to lie and continue to have their lies exposed, are they fools for persisting? Are we fools for buying? Are the stars fools for aiding and abetting the lies?

ASME Plans To Address Photoshopping [Foilio]
Now Fashion Mags Make Models 'Fatter' [Telegraph]
Airbrushing Fears Under The Carpet [Telegraph]

Related: Britney Spears Blender Magazine March 2008 Cover [PopCrunch]
Tina Fey - "Marie Claire" May 2008 [JustJared]
Earlier: America Ferrera's 'Glamour' Treatment, Revisited
Vogue Cover Girl Drew Barrymore Has Been Powerfully Photoshopped
The Five Great Lies Of Women's Magazines
Here's Our Winner! 'Redbook' Shatters Our 'Faith' In Well, Not Publishing, But Maybe God

Meanwhile, even white women are whitewashed in women's magazines, Alvarez claims:

The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least "ethnic" and most "neutral" as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls — often with what is described as a "boyish" figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood — hips, ass. Personality. The ideal: Gwyneth Paltrow.