group hugs
You probably heard, but the NY Times' 'Sunday Styles' section was chock-full of goodies this weekend. There was that surprisingly-unannoying 'Modern Love' column (gem of a passage: "As we ate, we theorized about the effects of pornography on romantic relationships. Dinner ended; he had to go pack for his trip. I asked casually when I was going to see him again. He sighed. "That's a loaded question." I asked what he meant, because I thought the question was fairly straightforward"); a story about the "branding" of Burma/Myanmar; and dozens of weddings. (So many weddings. Including one starring a Rockefeller!)
Oh, and then there was that story about Jezebel.
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The
New York Observer's "Off the Record" media column asked some of the editors of the so-called
"seven sisters" magazines — which include
Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Good Housekeeping and
Woman's Day — whether or not they would endorse Hillary Clinton, since they have always had a cozy relationship with First Ladies. The answer from every editor was a resounding NO.
Woman's Day EIC Jane Chesnutt told the
Observer's John Koblin, "We go to press with our November issue before the conventions are even held. So to endorse anyone is, you see — even if you assume the candidate is set — a physical impossibility." Chesnutt then added, "I have to say that I don't sense this monolithic support for her among women." [
Observer]
There's a video on
Advertising Age about BLOGS STEALING CONTENT from magazines and OMG HOW THE MAGAZINES ARE GOING TO SURVIVE OUR PITILESS ASSAULT ON THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and you don't really need to watch the video because I can sum it up thusly:
many magazines simply do not deserve to exist. Seriously, when I came to work for this blog I was like "Anna, the cool thing about
this is, whereas it was actually a little painful for me to see newspaper content repurposed so relentlessly on blogs that they couldn't make any money on the internet and had to lay off all the reporters not in charge of covering gruesome crime/heroic dogs, we could kill women's magazines entirely and I would not feel ONE TWINGE of remorse!" Anyway the video brings up that unretouched
Redbook cover with
Faith Hill that we ran a few months back, which is ironic since it's not like
they were doing anything with it, which gave us a great idea! Why don't magazines just make back all the ad revenue we're stealing running the before/after photoshop jobs on their websites? And they could make a branded reality show about the photo department. Like
Six Feet Under meets
The Hills! Do it before Harvey Levin "steals" the idea first! [
Ad Age]
we'll take redbook over little red books any day
Russia is full of cheap vodka and girls who look like Natalia Vodianova so fuck if I can understand why they need Hitler Youth type sex
camps to get laid. This is fresh on the heels of the condom industry's discovery that the average Chinese
loses his or her virginity at 22, so maybe it's a creeping sphere-of-influence thing. Anyway, Vladimir Putin is behind a scary new eugenics-y sex campaign because no one in his increasingly facist country is procreating, which reminded us that scary ideology is not sexy, even when it is being worn by Cameron Diaz, which is why we're using her as our picture, because we think it would be nice if you agreed with us and also, that "
The Revolution Will Be Accessorized" is the most obnoxious tag line ever.
Sex For The Motherland [Daily Mail]
point/counterpoint
Dear
Ad Age media critic Simon Dumenco,
We understand that because it took you an entire menstrual cycle to
write about our
Redbook cover expose, you kind of had to be "counterintuitive" and backlash to the backlash to the backlash or something. Calling us "self-righteous" is kinda weak, and pointing out that Faith Hill herself would probably
rather look like her "unattainable" version (that = the point) is even weaker, but you almost redeemed yourself by telling us about airbrushing Pauly Shore's poopy underwear. (Skid marks = a post we wish we'd done earlier!) But then came this paragraph.
Which is why even Jezebel has to take money from marketers such as American Apparel — the pervy, hipster brand that's all about worshipping dewy, cellulite-free, half-naked youths..
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ad libs
Okay boys and girls, what do we do when we hear the
word phrase of the day? We scream REAL loud!
Until now, regulators have voiced few objections to the use of cosmetic fakery in advertisements, and the techniques used by L'Oréal are standard in the industry.
[
screaming] Yup, this latest bout of gross rationalization vis-a-vis a little
"industry standards" is in regards to
the outing of L'Oreal for using fake eyelashes in a mascara commercial featuring Penelope Cruz. But the advertising community is having none of industry regulators' scorn.
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annals of self-loathing
Uh, remember that
little segment on the
Today show yesterday? Something having to do with, oh, women and body image and magazines that do brutal retouching jobs on their cover subjects
thus inspiring self-hatred and impossible standards of beauty — all in the name of "industry standards"? Yeah, we caught that segment too! And remember how
Men's Health editor David Zinczenko and that psychologist kept saying that it's
totally okay that magazines do this, because everyone knows that said magazines are "aspirational"? Well the word 'aspirational' is only two letters removed from 'inspirational', Mr. Zinczenko, especially with regards to young girls.
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Jezebel
