tupance

The truth is, you are complaining about something that you have created. Women have always obsessed over these kinds of things, you hear it in any office. and it's NOT because of pressure from men, ask any bloke they don't want to her that crap day in day out. They don't want to be asked does she look fat in this. She either does or she doesn't. Lose weight if you want to, don't if you're happy the way you are. You won't get blokes complaining unless its a husband you hasn't accepted ageing yet.

So for the women who buy these magazines in the thousands, it's a case of you reap what you sow. Most of you are on here from an interest in fashion, glamour and looking good. How hypocritical then to complain at big brother of publishing to do this. The jokes on you guys cos you still go out and buy them at the weekly supermarket stop.

You want to make a difference then stop buying the damn magazines - or are you too afraid to slip behind in the competitive office stakes. I think you all care too much what other people think.

Young and impressionable minds are one thing, but you all should know better by your age.

You don't get this crap in any mens mag - the most you get is what tie should I wear with these cuffs?

So quite frankly, do something to erase your mistakes as a gender, or stop fucking complaining about them and find another blog site.

typicalwoman

d87

I think that people want to have dreams, have idols - we want them perfect, clean, idealistic role models (even more when most of us fail in this things, look at the percentage of obese in the US and Europe and China is catching up) - we like when thy stumple and we can say, look they are human too, but we don't want to think that they are human in the first place.

DerFrankie

nacho_supreme

Issues such as domestic violence and international gender atrocities stem from the objectification and dehumanization of women. Subtle oppression - like the objectification, sexualization, and unrealistic beauty standards set by women's (and men's) magazines - contributes to the larger issues effecting women today. It's all relevant. Open your eyes. If you aren't upset about this, maybe you aren't paying attention.

And by the way, I'm from the Midwest.

nacho_supreme

And since I'm on the topic - when did Barbie stop being a career girl and become a bimbo?

joanmarion

joanmarion

No wonder today's teenage girls suffer from eating disorders when young men see these altered images and assume that this is what their ideal woman is supposed to look like. It doesn't help that clothing sample sizes are now a size 4 down from a size 8 over the past 15-20 years. Models are now thinner than ever. Between the airbrushing and the implants, what's a girl to do??

EVERY magazine cover, ad, and billboard photo is digitally corrected. It's the industry standard. Magazines are in the business to generate ad revenue and ads sell dreams. The sooner we as women stop accepting and chasing these fantasy images the better off we will all be. If a product's ad sells unrealistic expectations, then vote with your wallet - don't buy the product...

joanmarion

I applaud your stand on this issue and its been for too long since anyone question the motives of these magazines.

ginatrout

Schweet

weedie

@krucoff: Krucoff, you first. I mean, for crying out loud, you're railing against a blog. Maybe you should be spending your time doing those righteous things you ask of others.

OK, I'm going back to writing about cars.

Ray Wert

@BiscuitDoughJones: i hear you. i would love love love to see the pre-photoshopped pic of a ladmag cover. i know those mags aren't geared for women. But knowing that doesnt make me feel any less like crap when i see them on the newsstands.

militia

So far, she's had the strength of self and of will to shrug off that toxic talk, but she's got years to go yet.

TealCuttlefish

andromache

@krucoff: You know, what makes this blue stater blue is that when trying to think of a super duper important "women's issue" you went to battered women's shelters. Not, you know, *preventing* domestic violence *and* aiding the battered women. Addressing the still in existence wage gap. Sexual assault. Just off the top of my head, I'd go straight to reproductive choice, but I understand not everyone is as scared of that one.

Also, just off the top of my head as a regular reader, I can think of more than a few times when the editors linked to stories about all of the above.

TinyK

PS - she said that in the 70's when lighting and Vaseline on the lens were the dominant technologies.

MissMoose

You can't really be so ignorant as to believe that importance of this whole issue amounts to nothing more than "magazine commentary," can you?

Yeah, violence against women and international gender atrocities are serious problems -- but this is a serious problem too. I don't care what color state or which coast they reside in, a lot of women -- and, much more tragically, a lot of girls -- don't really know how artificial these images are. Girls are starving themselves. Girls are dying. And you'd better believe that sickness is direct result of this kind of body-image brainwashing.

Maybe you don't consider that situation an "international gender atrocity" in its own right, but I sure do. Maybe because I have a daughter, and I'm worried that she'll get brainwashed by this bizarre cult of emaciation that permeates our society.

MisterHippity

BiscuitDoughJones

plitter

any such name

FHM, Maxim, et al are really just softcore porn. The sole purpose is the pictures, just like porn, so it's not really terribly surprising that the interviews are vapid (which isn't to say the porn industry isn't guilty of the women-as-2-dimensional-cumdumpsters accusation).

A more accurate comparison would be to GQ or the like, which still contain the photochopped images but, like the women's mags, tend to have more substantial interviews.

KurticusMaximus

clodia

Gee, thanks for letting the cat out of the bag, do you think those people who don't "get it" smell the fish now?

This bi-coastal arrogance is full of crap and it's the type of condescension that makes red states turn redder.

Do you know what would be truly "revolutionary"? Not talking about this shit and concentrating your efforts on battered women shelters and international gender atrocities. If you're really "pissed" then I would suggest directing that rage to something a bit more useful than magazine commentary...but that might actually include work, huh?

krucoff

ae38

flackette is frustrated

I wonder if the August cover mother of three (Kelly Ripa) has also been doctored.

SoSueMe

I love you, Jezebel, but you'd think with all this wailing and gnashing of teeth that we're just realizing now this travesty exists. It's been around for a while, been written about, and there are websites taht show how celebrity photoshopping gets done.

I agree with TedSez.... it's really a symptom of a much larger problem. We as women should demand more, refuse to buy the magazines that portray us so dishonestly, and teach young girls about what's real and healthy. We're not going to shame the magazines into changing when the financial numbers support airbrushing.

Damn. Just like with everything else, it's our responsibility.

BeSarcastic

I love my '80s baby album (shut up) for the grainy, hilarious goof pics my parents happily snapped, unable to airbrush my moles, color-correct jaundice, or blur their own embarrassing paraphrenalia out of the background.

Let's work on keeping reality real.

sventurata

Preach, sister!

TheJerseyDevil

BeSarcastic

backseat_driver10023

ARPRINCE

Especially the part about the handbag-fetishizing. And the retouching. And the kid-boobs. And the infant diets.

Thank you.

hotcheetos

MooGooGuyPierce

Steverino

Scout

To the subject at hand--thank you ladies of Jezebel for keeping it 110% real on this topic (and to the person who was able to send this in)!

bellethellama

TedSez has a good point - we want the women who have amassed an enviable amount of wealth & privilege to be better than us because it makes us feel better that we're not leveraging our talents, intelligence, and sex appeal to get the same things.

I just read a fascinating book on this subject: Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etckoff - it covers the biological development & behavioral preferences for human beauty through all of human history. It will blow your minds!

Looking good is a great asset, not something to be derided. And it should be worked on, because natural beauty is something we should appreciate and strive to improve. It just doesn't have to go as far as it does.

onceuponatime

"There's a picture of Oprah on the cover where she looks about 12. If I bought a magazine and put pictures of myself looking 19, somebody would say to me, 'Stop it'. I saw this hilarious as that had this woman with two tiny wrinkles by her eyes. It said, 'This is what you look like at 60.' I know nobody who looked like that even at 20."

Gabriel Byrne tells no lies. No lies!

hortense

mindbling

Where did these young girls get the idea that being independent and strong meant showing it to anyone who looked and giving it all away to anyone who wanted it?

I'm 35...not married...and haven't been a virgin since...well...a long time ago. Understand...I'm no "Wait until you're in love and married" square...no way.

But for god sake...what's going on?

And when did we decide that lines around your eyes (from smiling for fuck's sake! Smiling!!) were so BAD???

botoxtastic

I just wish these things didn't have to be said. It's ironic that the same magazines that tell us to be happy with ourselves go and airbrush their already-gorgeous celebrity features to look like Barbie dolls.

thanksluckystars

Every time I go to India and pick up a women's mag, the cover models are thinner, lighter-skinned and straighter-haired. I was watching the Miss Universe pagaent several years ago and was struck at how these so-called "diverse" women looked exactly the same, down to their hairstyles. Remembering that beauty can be found in all shapes, sizes and colors is a precious weapon in a world where Eva Longoria is repeatedly called "curvy."

Plus, when people put down their magazines and climb into bed to their freak on, cellulite, back fat and birthmarks become wholly irrelevant.

That's what scares the corporations, I tells ya.

Bollywhaaa

WonderWoman

exiled

saturn

Mediahohoho

Re: The Kids Today.
When I look at pictures of my 16-20 year old self with pink or blue hair wearing oversized t-shirts and baggy shorts, I take comfort in knowing that my image rebellion, while silly, was never harmful or oversexualized.

It's pretty awful that being called a feminist is more damaging than being called a slut.

AndYourLittleDogToo

TrixieBelden

it's true that i grew up worshipping retouched photos of my favorite teen idols in the early 90s, a fact that did cause some unhealthy eating and exercise habits at 14, 15 and 16....

however, my young (ages 13 and 16) cousins tell me that hardly any of their friends wear underwear, are curious to try cocaine (with an alarming enthusiasm), and try to one-up each other with way too suggestive photos on myspace.

these girls know that the images on the cover of teen vogue and the like are bullshit. so now they are infatuated with the gritty, the illicit, the senstional and, in my opinion, much more dangerous images being crammed down their throats.

i thought it sucked to be 16 in the mid-90s. i'm terrified as to what sort of brainwashing images will be around for my children years from now.

ellagood

BiscuitDoughJones

jfury

@Bollywhaaa: I have no idea why the ideal exists; I can only hope that some cultural anthropologists join this discussion soon! (It seems to be a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' conundrum.)

Lysergic Asset

The mere fact that someone felt it necessary to do that to this woman's arm goes a long way toward explaining why eating disorders among girls and women have reached epidemic proportions.

MisterHippity

AndYourLittleDogToo

But why does that specific ideal exist? If you take a community totally isolated from Western influence, would blue-eyed skinny blondes still be the ideal? Or could it be that image's relationship to power and status?

Bollywhaaa

I am gonna have to chime in with some previous posters when I say that the blame lies in large part with the consumer/reader of these magazines. When people rip Faith Hill apart for having back fat and lines under her eyes, the advertisers only hear the ring of the cash register.

h_bee

chezme

f-words

Dickdogfood

Lysergic Asset

Brad Walsh

faire-la-moue

Phyllis Nefler

Lysergic Asset

jessaleigh

Ms. Hill -- YOU ARE STILL HOT WITH WRINKLES AND BACK FAT.

numbersix

I don't believe airbrushing of senior year photos was an option back when I had mine done.

Looker

food_ooh

SarahHeartburn

huxlux

They test-market and focus-group these covers up the wazoo, and keep a close watch on exactly how many newsstand copies each issue sells. And what they've learned is that while readers want attractive "real" women (well, celebrities, anyway) rather than fashion models, they still want those women to look more perfect than anyone does in real life.

On the other hand, whenever a magazine experiments with a cover photo of a woman who doesn't look thin, beautiful and downright flawless, the magazine doesn't sell as well, and they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'm not saying that makes it right -- to me, these plastic Stepford portraits look downright weird. (And, of course, men's magazines are doing it too.) But I think it's clear that in this case, what people say they want and what they'll actually buy are two different things.

TedSez

CodePink

Mediahohoho

fasthugger

Lysergic Asset

AndYourLittleDogToo

Lysergic Asset

CodePink

And Ive always fucken adored that 'Cover Lie' post from when this site first came up.

ConnPossible

oudemia

MisterHippity

TriedandTrue

mindbling

Case in point: My husband saw a re-post of the two covers last night (on another site) and showed it to me, saying "Look at this! This is unreal! Do they really do this more often than not?" A-yup.

gritsnyc

BiscuitDoughJones

P.S. Damn you ladies can write!

Jerseylicious

You mean except for the back fat, right?

radosh

@PinkSoxHat: My HS photog retoucher closed the gap in my teeth (that I love) without checking with me.

Talaton

P.S.: Faith Hill in the 'Before' picture is beautiful.

Lysergic Asset

And Oprah is just another insecure gal, I wish everybody would just accept it already. Money doesn't get you anything but a big house and a good beard...Hi Stedman!.

Pepperoncina

Amen.
Amen.
Amen.

@MisterHippity: And this just means that the photoshoot room floor is dirty. These people couldn't clean the floor for Faith Hill???

botoxtastic

PinkSoxHat

So, maybe we all need to power through those impulses to snap judge (that's right - I said it!).

Let's use the snark in the name of sisterhood.

Bollywhaaa

katastic

Kittenplan

KarenUhOh

a lady

But other than that, I think she looks great in that picture.

MisterHippity

FourthWaveBaby

Long may you reign, Jezebelles! (Sorry if that's corny.)

Lysergic Asset

jesspgh

lovelyday

Looker

millwhistle

msb2: blue balls machine