Glossed Over

Vogue Liveblog 2012: The Biggest Issue Yet

Hello! Welcome to the sixth annual Vogue liveblog.  My name is Wendy, and I’ll be your increasingly unhinged guide today as I take you through all 916 pages of the largest-ever September issue. 

The rules: I bought this magazine yesterday. I have not opened it. I have not read anything about the contents of this issue, except for one Yahoo! news story about this being the largest issue ever. Entries will appear in chronological order--just refresh to see the new posts.

If for some reason you have a job or a family or other obligations that prevent you from obsessively reloading this page all day, no worries! Check @glossedover on Twitter for occasional updates. I’ll be using the hashtag #vogueliveblog, and I’d love for you to use it too. You know. If you want. No pressure. Your hair looks great.

All right, enough preamble. Shall we?

The Sixth Annual September Vogue Liveblog: Tuesday, August 28

Last year's Vogue liveblog took nine hours. This year's September issue has 158 pages more than the 2011 edition. How long will it take to read 916 pages of rich-people buffoonery? Will I truly learn anything new about Lady Gaga? And will I see fit to drink until my face goes numb once I finally, finally finish the issue? 

Let's find out! This year's liveblog begins Tuesday, August 28 at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Until then, here's what the last five years of liveblogging looked like: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. 

Update: find the 2012 liveblog here!

Allure's Olympic Coverage: Beach Volleyball and Butts

Tonight, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh will compete for their third consecutive gold medal in beach volleyball. (Update: they won!) Back in the July issue of Allure, they were profiled in a story called "Golden Girls," which, by the way, is a title so played out it should be banned. Especially when, in the case of this article, the text is less about gold medals and more about, well, ass.

And not just the lingering shots of barely clad butts that you've come to expect from the quality coverage of beach volleyball available to us here in the USA. (Thanks, NBC!) No, Allure manages, somehow, to take the media's obsession with beach volleyball players' bodies to Olympian heights.  

The article opens on a Southern California beach. May-Treanor and Walsh, wearing bathing suits (of course), are walking on the beach to their practice spot. Along the way, they capture the attention of a man playing a casual game of volleyball. Imagine if you were playing volleyball in the sand, and along come the world's foremost players. What would you think?

Pretty much the exact opposite of this guy, I'm guessing. Also, unlike this chump, you'd probably be able to form complete sentences.

His reaction, so insightful it apparently demanded to be immortalized in print:

"Ass, ass, ass, ass, ass," he mumbled to his teammates. As if on cue, a small crowd of tourists, surfers, lifeguards...squinted into the blazing sun to watch the women walk by.

"Ass, ass, ass, ass," the man repeated, a little louder this time. "That's some five-star ass."

Was his comment offensive? Sure. Objectifying? Of course. But accurate? ...Absolutely.

Was his comment disgusting? Sure. Would it be street harassment if it had occurred there instead of on the beach? Of course. But Allure still thought it necessary to include? Absolutely! And in case you didn't get exactly what this guy was carrying on about, because "ass, ass, ass" is really quite complex, Allure helpfully included this giant picture of--you guessed it!--what appears to be Walsh's ass.

There's not actually a caption explaining whose ass it is, at least not in the Kindle edition, so I deduced based on the bikini. Congratulations, Allure! You've just won the gold medal in the dehumanizing the subjects of your article! 

Next, the article details the women's accomplishments, but veers almost immediately into something far more challenging: bikini line hair removal! Because what's really important isn't their world championships, it's their pubic hair. Then:

Therein lies a dichotomy: Yes, they are extremely serious athletes [apparently it's necessary to remind the reader of this, since the author has done little to relay this key point], but there is no getting around the fact that they're also "girls running around in bikinis," as Walsh puts it.

Yes, hard to get around that, when a national magazine opens its profile with a story specifically highlighting that. 

While it's a relief to know that these women have hang-ups about their bodies...

It's not a relief. It's terrible. I know this line is supposed to make Walsh and May-Treanor seem relatable, but it's depressing as hell. If I ever manage to reconfigure my DNA so that I too can be six feet tall and totally ripped, I will walk around naked. Constantly. In public. THERE SHALL BE NO HANGUPS. 

Off the beach, the women are plenty girlish.

Oh good! I wouldn't want their lives as professional athletes to somehow diminish a total stranger's arbitrary assessment of how much they resemble a child! 

You get the idea. In the every-four-years glut of women's mag articles about athletes, "Golden Girls" fits right in. And while it's kind of annoying to see athletes reduced to such trifles when I'd rather know, say, how they stay focused, the beauty articles make some sense. I mean, I go swimming once a week and my hair is like steel wool for days after--so, sure, I would like to know what conditioner Natalie Coughlin uses.

But, other than an aside about oily sunscreens affecting the volleyball, Allure's article never quite achieves that winning (sorry) combination of unique athletic perspective and fun beauty chat. The piece talks about how the two look great in bikinis, but not how to select a perfectly fitting one. It mentions how well sand exfoliates, but not how to moisturize after. And, of course, there is the ass picture. 

At one point in the story, Walsh says, "I can honestly say I haven't felt objectified one day in my life." I hope, after Allure's article, she still feels that way.

Lucky's First-Ever Music Issue: Only Years After Everyone Else's

Lucky's August edition is the magazine's first-ever music issue. They're calling Kelly Clarkson "adorable," which is a suspiciously non-effusive word for the magazine that called Rachel Bilson a "sartorial Einstein." I mean, how high is the bar here? 

Anyway, since this is the music issue, I'll relay my thoughts in the lyrics of Nada Surf's 1996 hit song, "Popular":

Lucky, "You're so novel. What a good idea."

Really! It's a fantastic idea! It's so good, in fact, that several other women's magazines already do it. For instance, Self. 

And Elle. 

Also Nylon. 

And W.

Oh, and Marie Claire. 

But surely such blatant copying was intentional, right? After all, none of those other magazines is rumored to be going digital-only. So I can only assume that the music issue concept is focus group-approved, advertiser-tested, and a last-ditch effort at raking in some sweet ad cash before Conde Nast lowers the hammer. See you in the fall, Lucky! Maybe! 

Lowest Common Denominator: Glamour, July

3: Number of consecutive Glamour covers featuring blonde reality stars: Lauren Conrad, Carrie Underwood, and now Julianne Hough, who miraculously survived the glitter factory explosion depicted on the cover. 

Less than zero: Likelihood that I will ever use Glamour's Word of the Month, "frizzle," because using it would take more explanation than simply saying "There's just enough precipitation to make my hair frizz" and it'd require the admission that I take Glamour's suggestions seriously.

27: Page on which Avengers star Cobie Smulders propagates some gender-essentialist bullshit, saying you talk about your period and "where we are in life" with women, and talk about movies with men. Movies like, oh, Avengers? Which had a 40 percent female audience?

4: Nearly naked aspiring Olympic swimmers pictured in this issue. Do what you will with that information.

Amounts so vast even Neil deGrasse Tyson couldn't quantify them: How much I hate the skirt-over-dress look that Glamour incessantly includes in "The Month in Outfits." Isn't the whole point of a dress that you don't need to wear more clothes with it?

Not a single one: Fucks given about Taylor Tomasi Hill at Glamour HQ, apparently. They actually wrote "Google her" in the subhead for "‘What Inspires Me,' by Taylor Tomasi Hill." Seriously? You can't just tell me why you put her in the magazine?

0.2 percent: Likelihood that any tweet tagged with the Glamour-invented hashtag "#prettygirlproblems" is, in fact, a problem. Young women of America, please don't lie awake nights because you're a "brow newbie."

SPECIAL COMMENTARY ON GLAMOUR'S TOPIC OF THE MONTH, ORAL SEX

27: Percent of men surveyed by Glamour who "would rather get a blow job tonight than a raise at work."

27: Percent of men surveyed by Glamour who need to learn to play the long game.

20: Age of a man quoted as saying "I know a lot of guys who are pretty proud of going down on a woman."

Infinite: My joy that I will never again have to date 20-year-old men. #smugmarried

END SPECIAL COMMENTARY ON GLAMOUR'S TOPIC OF THE MONTH, ORAL SEX

Zero, no wait, one: Words I can bring myself to write about the profile of Julianne Hough. And the word is dullsville. I suspect the interview was actually conducted with Hough's publicist.

102: Page on which Glamour declares "Yep, He [Channing Tatum] Was a Stripper"

115, or equivalent to a sandblaster: Approximate decibel level at which I yelled, YES I KNOW I DON'T LIVE IN A CAVE I'VE READ THAT 327 TIMES IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS. 

+100: Serious, sincere bonus points to Glamour for using a real-sized woman in "Feel-Good Allover Beauty" and not even once patting themselves on the back for being so inclusive. More like this, please.

7th: Item in a list of "Eleven Things You Can Only Get Away With in Summer" wherein Glamour advises "Shimmer. Everywhere." Well, that explains the cover.

Listen Up, Internet: I Am Not Jean Godfrey-June

Here's a statement I never thought I'd have to make:

I am not Jean Godfrey-June. 

Recently I've been flooded with emails from shoddy internet marketers who apparently believe I am the beauty director of Lucky. They send messages titled "Jean Godfrey-June"—nothing conveys credibility like the recipient's full name in the subject line!—and offer services like $500 a month PR packages, help with Quickbooks, and "5 guaranteed interviews with press a month." Seems legitimate!

How do these shady people confuse me with Jean Godfrey-June? Google results, I guess. (Google gives me Godfrey-June's Twitter first, a Gothamist post from 2006 next, and this site third.)

But never mind that my name is on this site. Is it really so difficult to determine that a blog where Jean Godfrey-June's writing skills are impugned, her book mocked, and her ability to do her job is questioned probably does not belong to Jean Godfrey-June? I guess so!

Maybe I should put my name here in 48-pt bold type to prevent confusion. Or maybe I should just change my name to, I don't know, Gene Joffrey-July and find a job where I write meandering personal anecdotes about solid perfume and get disparaged on the internet by frustrated bloggers. Then maybe—maybe!—there'd be grounds for confusion.

For future email entrepreneurs who stumble upon this site and somehow think "Wendy Felton" and years of perhaps unjustifiably angry screeds are secret code for "Jean Godfrey-June," I have three things to say to you:

1. I am not Jean Godfrey-June.

2. If you had half the intelligence of the paper that Lucky is printed on, you’d have figured that out. Yet you continue to hit send on these emails. Which can only mean one thing:

3. You are all idiots.

Springing Forward with Six New Magazine Covers

Hi. It's been a while since I've been here. That's because I've been having a tremendous New York depression adventure!

But these new issues—well, their covers—are forcing me out of my silence. I mean, have you seen these things? So I'm going to write brief, snarky comments about a few covers, and I'll hope you'll humor me by pretending this is a real post. Cool?

Lucky

Perhaps it's because of my advanced age, but I do not aspire to look "So. Damn. Cute." You know who is "so. damn. cute."? My cat. Except I would say "so damn cute," because that thing with the periods was over in like 2009.

Glamour

Hunger Games and "Acne Smackdown": is Glamour going for the teens? Kudos to the Glamour staff for finding an actress whose face hasn't yet adorned a million glossies (ahem, InStyle); no kudos for the word "ballsy." Bravery has no genitals!

Cosmopolitan

You get the feeling Cosmopolitan would have stuck that pink "25 Fun, Free Dates" bubble right over Megan Fox's face if they thought they could get away with it. Way, way too much going on here, and it's all distracting me from what really matters, which is—duh!—trying to figure out who has the hottest butt in Hollywood. 

Bazaar

Three things:
1. Angelina Jolie did it better.
2. What better way to exemplify "Fabulous at every age" than by putting a 28-year-old on the cover?
3. I really hope "10 New Looks that Matter" includes an explanation of why they matter, because that will probably be the most hilarious thing I read all year.

Elle

I like to think I speak for the entire world when I say, "Was this really necessary?"

It's not that pregnant women aren't lovely or that they shouldn't be on magazine covers. It's that this pose has been done to death. It's that a pregnant woman posing nude feels remarkably similar to plus-size models posing nude, which is itself an uncomfortable mélange of sexualization and stylists just throwing up their hands in frustration. It's that fashion magazines apparently live in a world where clothes for non-sample-sized women just don't exist—except, oh look, they do! Which means this cover is really just another naked, Photoshopped female body on display in a cynical ploy for cash. 

I do, however, admire the juxtaposition of "Change your look instantly" with Simpson's burgeoning belly, because hello! Pregnancy is a great way to change your look. You know, when eye shadow and some new shoes just won't do...

(If your blood pressure can handle reading a more serious—but still snarky!—take on this cover, I liked this Dallas Observer post.)

And finally:

InStyle

Have you ever thought, "Gosh, I wish there were a major media outlet covering that little-known actress Jennifer Aniston. What's up with her love life? Does she work out? I wonder if she has opinions about those popular denim trousers!" I sure haven't, but apparently those people exist and they're buying this issue. I will not be among them.

What do you think about these covers? Anything good inside these issues?