Marie Claire: OMG, You Guys, Mandy’s Getting Married!

So, Mandy Moore is on the cover of Marie Claire’s April issue. Is she appearing in an upcoming film? Does she have a new single? According to the cover, she’s accomplished something much more significant than that!

Engaged! [bolding theirs]
New soul mate, new sound

Oh, awesome. Clearly landing a man is two times as important as her new album since it merits twice as many mentions.

Sure, the article doesn’t focus exclusively on her private life—only six of the thirteen paragraphs are devoted to it! Which is, really, an amazing feat of journalism when you consider that she didn’t even get engaged until after the interview and got married the same day the magazine hit newsstands.

Naturally, the profile includes the obligatory query about the artistic influence of her high-profile relationships:

Even though she’s singing about the Merrimack River and jacaranda trees, there is also a tantalizing collection of yous crooned about with varying degrees of amorousness, ambivalence, and longing…Surely there must be clues in her music about her days and nights with the intriguing roster of men she’s dated—people like Wilmer Valderrama, Andy Roddick, Zach Braff…Alas, no.

Alas indeed! Which men are the subjects of these songs? Whose enjoyment of Moore’s tunes wouldn’t be enriched if we knew they were about the guy who played Fez on That ’70s Show? Every line must be ripped from reality! After all, artists can’t possibly be—oh, what’s it called?—performing.

Never mind, let’s discuss her current romance.

Then there is the 34-year-old rock polyglot, Ryan Adams; when he showed up at the Marie Claire cover shoot, they were cute together in the way of people who share a history and possibly a future…On February 11, they announce their engagement. June Carter and Johnny Cash without the dysfunction? I’m pulling for them.

How generous of the writer to approve of a relationship Moore consistently refused to discuss with him!

It’s not that celebrities' relationships are or even should be irrelevant—many have excelled at self-promotion via personal revelations—or that magazine writers should treat their subjects with total reverence. But relationships taking precedence (like, say, top billing on the cover) over professional accomplishments only serves to reinforce many outdated stereotypes that magazines like Marie Claire often philosophize against.

Was the cover designed to attract newsstand buyers? Undoubtedly. But even a cursory glance through the issue's pages is enough to see there are no in-depth disclosures about the Moore-Adams pairing. Marie Claire’s slogan is “more than just a pretty face"—but making the “more" all about men turns out to be way less.

Comments

[Ondo Lady]

I have never understood the hype about Mandy Moore. This is the issue that the team were working on when the documentary, Running in Heels' was being filmed. You should have seen how excited they were when she was confirmed for the cover. Anyone would have thought they had won the lottery. Great blog post as always.

[Petite]

This is the main thing that I hate about these magazines. Every single thing is told from a man's perspective: what to wear to attract a man, what to say when said man introduces himself to you, how to maintain your appearance to keep the man, the silly mind games to play to know what he is thinking. Men are great but I don't see why these magazines try to make women think that they should be our sole purpose in life. I'm not too familiar with the male counterparts but I wonder if they do the same thing.

[The Kaz]

I'm a man, and lots of men's magazines teach you how to be "cool," from what clothes to wear to what drinks to order. You could argue that those things are to impress other men, but I've always seen it as "Women are looking for cool men so you need to be cool and do what we say to get a woman." Thumb thru Maxim sometime. Some of the content is as painful for men as fashion mags are for women.

[Rio]

Actually, I have to admit that getting engaged is the most interesting thing Mandy Moore has done in the past year. That includes her music, which is less worth listening to than an accounting lecture.

[Allison]

I saw hubby in concert 4 days later; alas, no duet was performed. "Without dysfunction"? MC knows who Ryan Adams is, right?