Tad Friend hasn't always been kind to female subjects, but he's on relatively good behavior in his New Yorker profile of Finke, whose blog Deadline Hollywood Daily he calls "Hollywood's most dreaded news source." Friend calls Finke "a combination town crier and volcano god" who "portrays many of the town's leaders as jackasses who golf at exclusive preserves, elbow underlings aside to hog the spotlight, downsize those underlings while lining their own pockets, and generally besmirch the fabric of civilization." While he does quote various expressions of her rage (i.e. an e-mail titled "WHY ARE YOU AND JOEL SILVER LYING?"), pretty much the worst thing he calls Finke is "intemperate." She's been called far worse.

Finke herself says Universal president Ron Meyer (now a "defender" of Finke) used to call her "that fucking cunt," which he not only doesn't deny but seems quite pleased to hear about from Friend. Continuing in the female-anatomy vein, producer Ray Stark told her, "Girlie, if you ever fuck me, I'm going to personally come over to your house and give you a hysterectomy." Even fictional characters have gotten into the act: an agent on Entourage recently said, "I'll fuck Nikki Finke before I let her affect my business decisions."

It's tempting to think that Finke comes in for all this harsh and disgusting vitriol because she's a woman in a man's world — and an outspoken woman at that. And certainly some have told Finke to be more ladylike. According to Friend, Variety's Peter Bart once wrote that Finke had attended "Miss Hewitt's Classes in New York, which taught upscale girls how to be warm and cuddly. I'd like her to take a warm-and-cuddly refresher course." But all the colorful disses aimed at Finke's reproductive organs may be as much a sign of membership in the boys' club as they are an attempt to boot her out of it. Friend writes,

In a curious way, Finke makes the entertainment industry feel better about itself. When she writes that "New Line was left holding its dick" or that if Jay Leno "starts whining like the pussy he is, tell him to man up and shut up," she reassures everyone that Hollywood really is as ballsy as its denizens would like to believe. Finke explains, "I talk to alpha males all day, and the women I talk to are alpha females, so I end up writing like a man, in the language they're comfortable with. I don't pretty it up."

Finke clearly sees herself not as the victim of misogyny but as a participant in masculine, tell-it-like-it-is discourse. For her, "writing like a man" can mean impugning the character of women who made her friends look bad. When the LA Times published domestic violence allegations Meyer's ex-girlfriend Cynthia Garvey had made against him, Finke wrote, "the newspaper chose not to publish that Garvey has accused four ex-boyfriends of domestic violence against her." Writing like a man also means never using an inoffensive word when an offensive one will do — in a post basically mocking The New Yorker for not being more critical of her or Hollywood, Finke makes sure to point out that Harvey Weinstein also called her a cunt (and not a "jerk," as the magazine eventually printed). Elsewhere in her thoroughly distasteful post, she wrote,

I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick, whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process.

And,

Warner Bros and Universal and DreamWorks and William Morris/Endeavor and Summit Entertainment execs and flacks and consultants also had their way with the mag. (They were even laughing about it. When I asked one PR person what it took to convince Tad to take out whole portions of the article, the response was, "I swallowed.")

And,

Now remember, readers: you, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a cunt and treat Remnick like a putz and don't give a fuck.

Finke's obviously a full and willing participant in a Hollywood rhetoric of bitch-slapping, blowjobs, and butt-rape. It's a fundamentally homophobic rhetoric (Friend too documents Finke's fondness for the word "buttboy"), and one whose misogyny Finke employs as gleefully as anybody else. Friend writes that in Hollywood, "relationships are matters of dominance and submission." And apparently chronicling those relationships is a matter of representing those who have submitted in some way (by, for instance, using the word "cunt" just once) as women, gays, or rape victims. You know, losers.

Her detractors aside, Finke does appear to be a powerful Hollywood presence. She's become one in part through savvy and guile and relationship-building, and in part through what David Carr of the Times calls "a weaponized rhetoric designed to maim and ridicule." She seems to view this rhetoric as a symbol of her power — her "alpha" status — and her comfort with a big-dicks-versus-pussies writing style pioneered by misogynists, homophobes, and bullies shows that ultimately these qualities know no gender. Finke doesn't write "like a man," she just writes like an asshole.

Call Me [The New Yorker]
Hollywood Manipulated The New Yorker [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
Darling Nikki: New Yorker Profile Sparks Profane Response [NYT]

Sturrock, fashion editor for the Palm Beach Post, writes in PulseStyle that "There is something about Anna Wintour that can make people very nervous." As proof, Sturrock offers a couple of not-so-cutting remarks Wintour made over the years (a one-sentence answer about New Years' plans does not an ice queen make), and then this anecdote:

And there was the unfortunate time I knelt in front of her (literally knelt - that's what made it all the more humiliating) and asked, "What is style?"

Insert derisive cackle here.

"Oh, that's a silly question," she said. "Everyone always asks that. You need to think of something more original."

I stammered something about how my boss had put me up to this …

"That's my answer," said Wintour, her eyes already scanning the room for someone more interesting. "Think of a more original question."

Definitely sounds like a painful encounter. And Sturrock deftly points out that Wintour frequently addresses the question "what is style?" in the pages of Vogue. Sturrock writes,

There it is on Page 340 ("What is personal style? ‘It's your life experiences … expressed through your clothes.' ") and again on Page 463 ("Style, as we sometimes forget, is really about fun, plain and simple.")

Wintour certainly comes off as ungracious here, but I wonder how this ungraciousness would play if she were a man. Sturrock quotes Wintour on her management style: "I'm very decisive … and sometimes unfortunately [people] don't hear the answer that they would like to hear." People are notoriously more judgmental of female bosses than male ones, and perhaps Wintour's "decisiveness" would go down a lot better if she had a beard rather than a bob. Even a "West Coast fashion editor's" statement to Sturrock that Wintour is "teeny and perfectly coiffed and looks at everyone as if they are ants that need to be squished" reads as vaguely sexist.

Then there's the matter of Wintour's field. Is it possible that her reputed nastiness is a response to Vogue being taken less seriously than more intellectual publications? Might her refusal to answer an "unoriginal question" be a way of asserting her own and Vogue's intelligence, of resisting the perception of fashion as something silly and lightweight? And if Wintour's remarks were uttered by a male editor of, say, The New Yorker or The Atlantic, might we read them as acid wit rather than bitchiness? At the very least, nobody would ever call David Remnick a "Prada-clad queen beeyatch."

Of course, Vogue isn't The New Yorker (much as I'd like to see the cartoons replaced with LOLVogues). Wintour's journalistic standards aren't as high as those of more "serious" magazines (cf. pretty much any profile of a woman in politics that includes a discussion of what she's wearing). And she's known for promoting expensive shit, plastic surgery, and well-nigh-impossible body types. Wintour's no hero, but her gender and her job might make her both meaner and more maligned for being mean than she would be otherwise. And maybe if her position were more respected, she wouldn't feel the need to make herself feared.

A Fashion Editor Reflects On Her Squirmy Chats With ‘Vogue' Icon Anna Wintour [PulseStyle]

Frere-Jones argues that pop music is hard to predict. Sometimes the songs — and artists — you think won't last, do. He writes:

The nature of pop recycling makes it hard to measure, or define, endurance. In 1980, Gary Numan's synthesizer pop song "Cars" was a reliable presence on broadcast radio here and in the United Kingdom. By 1985, though, you'd have been hard pressed to find a trace of Numan in the mainstream of pop. Today, he's ubiquitous-"Cars" has been referenced in television shows and pop songs steadily throughout the past decade, and Numan's synthesizer sounds are audible in the work of tiny Brooklyn bands and enormous stars alike. […] The artist who stays on the charts for years without interruption sometimes does it by virtue of professional acuity and inoffensive predictability. Some of pop's most delightful figures endure exactly because we can't figure out what they are up to.

As for Lady Gaga? She can sing, and she can write songs. (Frere-Jones notes that she penned tracks for the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears; her producers have worked with Destiny's Child.) Her album has gone gold; "Just Dance" has gone to number one in seven countries. But what really gets attention is that she namedrops Rilke, wears avant-garde get-ups and "opines in public about whether a certain shade of red is 'Communist.'" People love a wacky one-hit wonder, but can GaGa keep it going? And is she really odd, or is she just, as Frere-Jones puts it, "not dumb"? Some singers are genuinely "weird" — Peaches, Björk — but even if they earn dedicated fans, they tend not to have the global success more tame, "mainstream" acts enjoy. And just because someone has talent and longevity — Mariah, Janet Jackson — doesn't mean they're interesting as innovative artists. Also, there are plenty of one hit wonders who are incredibly talented, but for whatever reason cease to be embraced by the public after an initial flush of success. Frere-Jones asks, "[GaGa] knows that the one-hit wonders are weirder and cooler than the well-paid musicians who stretch their careers over seven years on the stage and twenty more behind it. Can she have it both ways?"

Time will tell whether Lady GaGa is a flash in the pan or someone from whom you can always expect something new, quirky and different. But for now, isn't there room for a breath of fresh air in a world of Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and other girls gone mild?

Ladies Wild [The New Yorker]

The Boston-born Cunningham started shooting street fashion in 1966, when a photographer friend of the young fashion journalist gave him a $35 camera and advised him to use it like a notebook. Captivated by the New York's clothing soup him ever since, Cunningham has photographed a weekly "On The Street" fashion column for the Sunday Styles section ever since a couple good shots of Greta Garbo's nutria coat caught the section editor's eye in 1978. Cunningham has a passionate, discriminating, but stubbornly democratic love of fashion. He's as likely to be captivated by the turn of a workman's trouser cuffs as he is by the twist of a Balenciaga heel; despite a lifetime spent working in the industry, starting off as a stocker at Bonwit Teller, Cunningham retains an outsider's eye. He loves shooting on 5th Ave., where he says you can see the whole world go by, if you're patient enough. But he's been known to get on trains to go clear across the city if he thinks he's missed a shot that'll fit with his week's theme.

Lauren Collins, who profiled Cunningham in this week's Style issue of the New Yorker, reveals that the photographer, who turns 80 this month, lives alone in the Carnegie Hall Tower. He sleeps on a piece of foam that tops a board propped up by milk crates, and has access to a shared bathroom and kitchen. He is most often dressed in a utilitarian blue cotton smock — like those some garment workers still wear, with thimbles and embroidery scissors in the pockets and needles holding many colored threads in a row down one sleeve — and he generally gets around town on his red bicycle. When he travels to Paris, his editor at the Times, Trip Gabriel, reports that Cunningham "insists on staying at a cheapo hotel that has no phones in the rooms." He takes all his pictures with a well-used Nikon; in the years since the Times photojournalism department went digital, Cunningham has processed his film at a 1-hour photo lab on 43rd St.

Cunningham is a quiet man who works in the loud, twinned industries of fashion and media. But what captivates him is still the simple aesthetic joy of noticing what people wear, and identifying commonalities. "I don't really see people — I see clothes," he says. And he has little patience for the sky-is-falling rhetoric of America's allegedly faltering style. "People say everybody's a slob. Ridiculous! There are marvelously dressed women you see at a quarter to eight, going to business. When people say fashion is no more, they're ridiculous! It's as good as it ever was."

Cunningham has perfect recall of individual ensembles — what they were, when they were worn, what the person was doing — that were of particular interest to him, going all the way back to the 1960s. "I'm looking for something that has beauty," he says, simply. And he hasn't the heart for criticizing the sartorial choices of private citizens. "Dos and Don'ts? I don't think there are any don'ts! What right does one have?"

In the profile, Collins mentions that Cunningham has often been called a "fashion monk" — but instead classifies him as an oblate, "a layperson who has dedicated his life to the tribe without becoming a part of it." And it's this crucial distinction that sets him apart from the current popular crop of street style bloggers, whose work Cunningham's pioneering in many ways made possible. There's often a mind-numbing sameness to the outfits recorded on various of the well-read blogs that chronicle the styles of the world's cities; it's the young, good-looking subject, wearing the cool outfit with the 80s thrift-store touches, shooting a doleful look down the camera's lens. Reading their offerings, the overwhelming impression is one of a flattened world where all the hip young things have the same ideas about how to dress, whether they happen to live in Mexico City or Berlin. The stylistic tranche being diaried is limited. You can't imagine Jak & Jil finding anything of interest at the Puerto Rican Day Parade or in the outfits of tourists — two things Cunningham loves.

Although a few street style blogs, like Garance Doré's, seem to share Cunningham's enthusiasm for fashion as it's worn by real people — and his knack for identifying unthought-of trends — a lot of street style photobloggers behave as though they're (im)patiently waiting for their place at the fashion table. And why shouldn't they? Scott Schuman, aka the Sartorialist, has been featured in a Gap campaign and himself photographed the new DKNY Jeans campaign. Jak & Jil's Tommy Ton (who says of Doré and Schuman, "They're interested in taking a beautiful photograph. I'm just a freak for the Balmain and the Balenciaga!") nonetheless attracted the attention of the Asian retailer Lane Crawford, who asked Ton to step into Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin's shoes and shoot, presumably at least somewhat beautiful, images for its next campaign.

Cunningham eschews such trappings of the profession. He lives for the next great shot, the next strange confluence of colors and shapes, the next windstorm that turns umbrellas into spiny exoskeletons, the next rainstorm that shows the wealthy that the waters don't magically part. "Oh, it's marvelous — it just rearranges the whole fashion scene when the wind blows down from the top of the Avenue," says Cunningham. "Six-, seven-hundred-dollar shoes, and they're all in the slush — hey, it's pretty peculiar! Nothing like a good blizzard, kid, and you get pictures."

Which is not to say that Cunningham doesn't speak fluent couture — he can spot a Dior or a Chanel at fifty paces, and he has a particular love of the more eccentric labels, like Comme des Garçons and Martin Margiela. (In 2000, when hip-hop fans started wearing their sweatshirts "abstractly, with the neck hole on the shoulder, or with the sleeves dangling down the back," Collins writes, Cunningham compared the look to the Japanese avant-garde deconstructionist designers.) But despite his depth of insider knowledge, or perhaps because of it, it's fashion qua fashion that interests him, not the label per se. That might be the biggest difference between Cunningham and Ton.

Cunningham is looking forward to seeing, over the coming months, how people are going to reflect the changing economy in their daily dress. "Fashion, the people wearing it, will do it before they even know what they're doing. You don't know yet, it's just starting to gel, but there will be a style. You watch, you'll see something. There's the old saw about hemlines. Who knows? It's only in the future you can know. You just have to stay out on the street and get it. It's all here."

Man On The Street [New Yorker — sub req'd]
Bill Cunningham [NY Times]

Wallace had been writing The Pale King since 2000 — an excerpt also appears in The New Yorker. Max writes,

It is about being in the moment and paying attention to the things that matter, and centers on a group of several dozen I.R.S. agents working in the Midwest. Their job is tedious, but dullness, "The Pale King" suggests, ultimately sets them free.

Unsurprisingly, Wallace had trouble writing about the transcendence of boredom — his editor Michael Pietsch says he "'posed himself the task that is almost the opposite of how fiction works,' which is 'leaving out the things that are not of much interest.'" Wallace described the project at one point as like "trying to carry a sheet of plywood in a windstorm." He had suffered from depression and anxiety since high school, but he stopped taking his antidepressant, Nardil, in part because, according to Max, "he thought that removing the scrim of Nardil might help him see a way out of his creative impasse."

As we now know, it didn't work. Wallace had to be hospitalized for depression, and when he got out, he was too anxious to give any new antidepressant time to work. Max's article is the first to quote Karen Green, Wallace's wife. She says she knows when her husband decided to kill himself. Of the week before his death, she says, "That Saturday was a really good day, Monday and Tuesday were not so good. He started lying to me that Wednesday." He hanged himself on Friday.

A lot of people (including myself) have written about David Foster Wallace's death, and a lot of them have used him as an example of how difficult it is to be a creative person. I now think this is misguided. While Wallace's writing troubles caused him great anxiety and sorrow (of The Pale King, he wrote, "the whole thing is a tornado that won't hold still long enough for me to see what's useful and what isn't" [...] "I've brooded and brooded about all this till my brooder is sore."), anxiety and sorrow are far from unique to writers or artists or intellectuals or people who achieve success (as Wallace did with Infinite Jest) and then worry about topping it. What we can learn from his life — insofar as it's possible or even right to learn anything from anyone else's life — comes not from the fact that he wrote and died young, but from the actual stuff that he wrote. It's possible that his depression gave him special insight into the despair that many people sometimes feel about having to live in the world, but it was the value he placed on both moral rightness and moral nuance that made him want to do something about it.

"Look, man," he said in a 1991 interview, "we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?" Quite the contrary, he believed that fiction should help people "become less alone inside." It's a tall order, but it's also the best and, oddly for Wallace, the simplest explanation of what art can do that I've ever heard.

It's difficult — or at least it's difficult for me — to write about David Foster Wallace without writing like him. Perhaps this is because, for all the annoyingness of his digressive, footnote-heavy style (especially as he got older, he himself was aware of this annoyingness), his writing encourages the constant questioning and revising of every single thought. It's not, perhaps, the healthiest way to live your mental life, but once you've had a taste of it, it's hard not to feel that it's the most just and correct way. In a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College, Wallace said that being free "means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct
meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed." I don't agree that you will be hosed if you don't make your life a series of conscious cognitive choices. But I believe that only if you do this, and only if you are willing to examine those choices again and again and again, will you come even close to understanding the way the world and other people work — to being the kind of person who can make other people become less alone.

The Unfinished [The New Yorker]
Wiggle Room [The New Yorker]
New Yorker Publishes Part Of Unfinished Wallace Novel [Washington Post]

[New York, February 26. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

This is truly a historic night — a moment many of us prayed for, marched for, organized for and some even died for. This is not the end of a journey, but the turning of a major page in American history. […] Throughout his long journey, Obama built a campaign based on three factors: It was inclusive, engaging and empowering. […] Obama planted seeds of hope. He harvested the votes of those who gave up on politics and now America can celebrate this moment. Anything is possible again in America.

While it would have been amazing to see Ms. Brazile covering election night live on CNN, at least we have her clip from the New Yorker panel earlier in the fall. Our first clip was of poor quality (but still went viral!); here's a much better version:

Commentary: America's Historic New Chapter [CNN]
Earlier: Donna Brazile Is Not Going To The Back Of The Bus

• Rumor has it that the mini moguls' "lifestyle differences" are tearing their fashion collabs asunder. “Ashley really wants to be a respected businesswoman and be taken seriously...MK does too, but she hasn’t been willing to give up her lifestyle and act like an adult for their job.” Result? MK is being "distanced" from the business end. [LA Times]
• Gossip Girls Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and Michelle Trachtenberg have all "designed" Stuart Weitzman heels for charity. "Blake's candy-themed kicks (no doubt courting comparisons like "sweet" and "confectious") are going for the highest of the three at $300 - Leighton's in the middle and Michelle's on the right." [Fashionista]
• A petulant Oscar de la Renta is skipping the Metropolitan Opera's opening night for the first time in 20 years. He "was none too happy to learn that Renée Fleming’s onstage frocks for the affair were designed by Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Christian Lacroix." Um, is his ticket going begging? Sounds better than fashion week! [WWD]
• Markets rebound a tad; retailers still panicky. [WWD]

• Uh oh. Amidst the recent financial turmoil, Prada has called off its widely-reported plan to go public this year, "making it the global financial turmoil's most high-profile fashion victim." [WSJ, WWD]
• The "Obama Effect" has done wonders for designer Thakoon, whose rose-colored frock Michelle sported on nom night. "I saw her on TV and I couldn't even look, I was so embarrassed from being excited,'"quoth he. [LA Times]
• Norwegian designer Peter Dundas joins venerable print-meisters Pucci as creative director. [IHT]
• Rumor — no, it really might just be a rumor — has it that Marc Jacobs is opening a store in Manhattan's East Village. Which, even if true, doesn't seem like that big a deal. [Fashionista]
• Thes auction Naomi "Siddhartha" Campbell organized for the White Ribbon Foundation was a big hit. "London’s big spenders outbid each other for looks donated by designers including Alexander McQueen, Zac Posen and Christopher Kane." [WWD]
• "Last year, Giorgio Armani told Time that PETA had persuaded him to drop fur from his designs, but his fall line includes fur coats for babies, floral-printed fur coats, fur-hemmed skirts and fur-trimmed jackets." PETA's pissed. So now they're going to go back to the always-effective plan A: harassing and heckling! [P6]
• Gap is opening in Mexico, stealthily: it'll be opening "stores within stores" in an established department store chain. [WSJ]
• A graphic designer named "Salvor" has teamed up with Rogan to lauch a capsule collection which, one assumes, will have a one-word name. [Fashionista]
• Fans of both clothes and Sonic Youth — read, anyone — must be thrilled about Kim Gordon's new line, Mirror/Dash. Even if, so far, it's just one jacket. [BlackBook]
• The New Yorker's panel talk on "The Future of Fashion": snooze or revelation? [Fashionista]
• "A Japanese designer and furrier, Chie Imai, has called her autumn 2008 collection of fur-trimmed capes and boleros Eco Harmony." The fabric is, indeed, recycled. The fur? The animals in question might take exception to the "harmony." PETA certainly would. [Independent]
• Sears is introducing these 3-D virtual dressing rooms that will allow you to "try" things on from home. If you thought store mirrors were dishonest...! [Reuters]
• Betsey Johnson loves being a grandma, fresh fish. [Fashion Informer]
• Fashion Fringe winner: "Go By A Secret Path, aka designer Eun Jeong Hong, yesterday earned herself a rather nice end of week treat in the shape of £100,000, as well as continuous support from the Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden team to kick start her professional design career." [VogueUK]
• Abercrombie and Fitch pioneers "scent ambience services" in its stores. Why am I having visions of the poppy field in the Wizard of Oz? [Breitbart]
• Wyndam Hotel employees will go green whether they like it or not, sporting "uniforms made with polyester fibers spun from plastic beverage bottles." All we can say is, whoever made that virtuous decision better be wearing Coke couture, too. [BrandWeek]
• A few royals hit Fashion Week, but paps mostly had to settle for Kate Middleton's little sister. [WWD]
• Pamela Anderson escorted by "a man in a white mask" at Vivienne Westwood show. [ElleUK]

Many women are transformed by Dangin's computer stylus, which sits in a basement laboratory at "Box", his four-story, Manhattan Photoshop fortress: In addition to Drew, there is the trophy wife with the "flat" face and "short" legs; the shoulder blade found "in a recent project at W"; the cast of the Sopranos; Prada models; "a famous actress in her late twenties"; a "crunchy"-faced model; "another well known actress"; "an actress with a movie coming out this spring"; Kate Moss; models Liya Kebede and Raquel Zimmerman; Madonna. And then there is model Christy Turlington, who, Collins explains, "needs the least help".

Collins, interestingly (purposefully?) glosses over Dangin's flaws as adeptly as he reshapes a model's nasiolabial folds. Her interview subjects, she explains, liken him to "a translator, an interpreter, a conductor, a ballet dancer articulating choreographed steps". (She compares his work to that of painters Jasper Johns and John Currin; he is, she later explains solemnly, "savantlike".) Collins also seems almost resolutely disinterested in exploring Dangin's role in perpetuating unrealistic standards of beauty and when a photograph ceases to be a photograph and becomes, what Redbook editor Stacy Morrison once said, "an image": most of the critics and/or experts of photo manipulation Collins quotes are all long-dead; the only living people she does quote are all fans of Dangin; and she all but skips over the news that Dangin retouched Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" advertisements. And when she finally gets around to asking Dangin about the work he does and how it affects and defines those aforementioned standards of beauty, she follows his explanation — "I'm just giving the supply to the demand" — with a cynical parenthetical announcing, "fashion advertisements are not public-service announcements." (Yeah, tell that to Newsweek's Jessica Bennett, who put up this story on Friday, quoting a NYC stylist as saying "those young kids looking at the magazines, they're dreaming of something that doesn't exist.")

The work Dangin does, has, not surprisingly, made him very rich. (He owns homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and St. Bart's; in addition to the cover portrait of Barrymore, Dangin, with the help of favorite Photoshop tools as the smudge brush, the warping tool, and the clone stamp, retouched — or "tweaked" — 107 advertisements and 36 fashion photographs in the March 2008 issue of Vogue alone.) It has also, interestingly, made him somewhat of a god among the egotistical, easily-unimpressed bigwigs in the fashion and photography industries, who defer to his whims without a second thought. His list of clients is both impressive and iconic: Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier; Annie Leibovitz ("Just by the fact that he works with you, you think you're good"); Inez and Vinoodh; Craig McDean, who says he gives Dangin "carte blanche" to basically do whatever he wants. Whether Dangin enjoys all the adulation and deference that comes his way, Collins does not make clear (nor does she explore the fact that from the photographers to the photo retouchers to the art directors, images of women in fashion magazines are manipulated and decided upon by men before they ever appear before a female fashion editor's eyes.) As for the things Dangin doesn't enjoy — on the women whose photographs he alters, that is — they include the following: ropy blue veins; bony temples; fleshy chins; bumps of all sorts; big knees; "slumpy" legs; bad pores. Oh, and of course, fat asses.

Several days later, Demarchelier returned to the studio to continue winnowing images for the show. The conversation turned to which shot to include of another well-known actress.

"I like her in this one, because she looks very natural," Dangin said.

"Yes," Demarchelier agreed. "In that other pose, she looks like an actress."

"But she's also very good here," Dangin said, of a shot that showed her partially nude.

"Yes, she's very beautiful in that position. Do you want to cut it?"

"No, no. I'm going to keep it for the ass," Dangin said.

"Maybe we could redo the ass."

"Yes, the ass is quite heavy."

Related: Picture Perfect [Newsweek]

Earlier: Photoshop of Horrors
Vogue Cover Girl Drew Barrymore Has Been Powerfully Photoshopped
Our Fifteenth Minute: That Faith Hill Photo Wasn't Actually A Photo, Redbook Editor Explains

MEGAN: So, do you love how you're the official go-to CH sub now? We keep thinking we ought to get a girl or something, but you're too easy.
SPENCER: it's true
you just pass me around
MEGAN: Does that make us really intellectually whore-y? Or just you?
SPENCER: wtf? i thought jezebel was against slut-shaming!
i'm gathering up my clothes and running out of this sorority house
my mascara all fucked up
i'm seeking the safe space of feministing
MEGAN:: Hey, you know, we all only fuck with other people about stuff we do ourselves and feel guilty about.
But I want my mascara back, even if it isn't waterproof.
Anyway, so, we could talk about everyone fucking on the campaign trail.
SPENCER: speaking of Feministing, can you believe that the New Yorker quoted a post Ann wrote and changed her name to "One Blogger"?
oh you want to talk to that about the NEWS
MEGAN: Oh, well, you know, it is supposed to sort of be like that. But, yeah, let's shame the New Yorker because that was a shit move.
(Says the girl who got quoted by them but not by name once already.)
SPENCER: yeah, what's next? the New Yorker hiring a snitch bitch as its Washington correspondent?
ok so: that WSJ story
MEGAN: Yeah, I just liked the story because it made us political DC types look like we actually manage to connect with one another on a human/physical level.
SPENCER: you didn't think it was ridiculous? do people not figure out that campaigns are staffed by 20-somethings, who work in a pressure cooker, for months on end, with limited contact with the outside world, and trained to think that anyone they don't work with is the enemy... and that in that environment... PEOPLE HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER
MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, I think you and I know that but most people see Howard Wolfson on TV in that motherfucking Norwegian sweater and think we're all nerdy and never get laid.
SPENCER: this, however, is inappropriate:

Sandra Sobieraj, Washington bureau chief for People magazine, married Frank Westfall, a Secret Service bomb technician who protected the vice president while she was covering the Gore campaign.