What's most troubling about this commercial? Is it the unoriginal use of cats to represent the female anatomy? The racial stereotypes? The notions that pubic hair is "untidy" and "rough around the edges" and fun to remove? Or the fact that some executive thinks this commercial is a brilliant way to convince us to buy the product?
Actual mannequins would be far more cost-effective, since they already come with poreless skin, expressionless faces, limbs that can be arranged at joint-dislocating angles, and completely smooth underarms. Imagine the savings on retouching!
The award for the most moronic advertisement in recent memory goes to the spread for Excellence To-Go hair color by L’Oréal Paris, as seen in the current issue of InStyle and on display in drugstores everywhere. What, you ask, could be so terrible about an ad for hair dye—other than, you know, furthering this ludicrous notion that we women are supposed to coat our scalps in a potentially toxic substance every few weeks so as not to offend anyone with a gray hair or two?
Well, for starters, there’s this manufactured quote from Eva Longoria:
This is going to torture me. No exaggeration: I may lie awake tonight wondering how hair dye is supposed to “keep up.” How can haircolor do anything other than smell wretched and stain my forehead? With what or with whom is it expected to keep up? And how offensive is it to pretend that Eva Longoria doesn’t have a personal hairstylist touching up her roots every six minutes?
Then there’s the “so fast” part of the statement. Yes, the world moves so insanely fast, MY HAIRCOLOR MUST ADAPT INSTANTLY. What? This is a product that is supposed to have a permanent effect. It does not change. There is nothing fast about hair dye except the speed with which it stains the paint on the
bathroom wall.
The adjoining page gets even worse, somehow:
For me, this constitutes a compelling reason to NITPICK! And to RANT!
The nitpick: revolutions are by their very nature new. And the rant: co-opting the language of revolution to sell the very products whose necessity feminism rejects is absolutely noxious. I’ll take my revolutions in the form of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, thank you, not in hair color that shaves a whopping 5 minutes from competing brands’ processing time and is marketed to me as if coloring my hair every six weeks since age 18 has actually slaughtered 75 percent of my brain cells. (Never mind the possibility that, well, it has.)
Finally, there’s L’Oréal’s trademark:
Actually, L’Oréal, we’re worth more than that. If only your advertising reflected as much.
Back in July, Vogue issued a rather, shall we say, opaque denial of the existence of racism in the fashion industry. Nearly everyone cited in the article blamed someone else, and anyway, said those same people, non-white people just aren’t in style right now! Accompanying the article were photos of Arlenis Sosa, Jourdan Dunn, and Chanel Iman—because, apparently, featuring their photos in an article about racism does far more good than just booking them in fashion spreads.
In November’s “Flash,” the magazine catches up with Sosa. So, how’s that modeling-while-Dominican thing working out?
Since appearing in Vogue this past summer, Arlenis Sosa has skyrocketed into the top-model stratosphere: She walked in 28 spring shows in New York—Carolina Herrera, Narciso Rodriguez, and Ralph Lauren among them—before jetting off to conquer the catwalks of Europe.
Given Vogue’s usual taste in models, the runway success of a non-white woman isn’t the only eyebrow-raising element of this article:
At de la Renta’s collection…she scored top honors: opening and closing the show in a color-block maillot and a strapless silver evening dress, respectively, both of which showed off her jaw-dropping curves (yes, curves!) to spectacular effect.
Wait, wait, wait. Vogue—Vogue?— is celebrating “curves”? I actually closed the magazine to double-check the cover. Sure, Sosa is curvy for a model, if curvy means having enough flesh so that her ribs don't poke out below her collarbone.
Asked how she’s coping with her newly packed schedule of castings, fittings, photo shoots, and fashion shows, Sosa doesn’t hesitate: “I can be tired later!” she says with a megawatt smile. “Right now, I’m loving every minute of it.”
By the conclusions drawn in the previous article, that can mean only one of two things: either Dominican models are in right now, or the only people not hiring non-white models are the editors at Vogue.
That’s right: despite the self-congratulatory piece about Sosa’s success, this month’s major fashion spreads feature not a single woman who doesn’t appear to be Caucasian, and neither does the October issue.
To be fair, there are a few women of color scattered throughout the November edition, primarily in paparazzi shots and event photos. I counted four different photos of Michelle Obama (three of those also depicted Barack), two of Venus Williams (one of which includes sister Serena), a candid of Naomi Campbell, two runway shots of Jourdan Dunn and one of Du Juan, and one pic each of socialite Genevieve Jones, Zoe Saldana, Astrid Munoz, dancer Judith Jamison, and Dr. Iffie Aitkenhead.
And several advertisers demonstrate diversity: Movado’s ad features Kerry Washington, Revlon has Jessica Alba and Halle Berry, and L’oreal ads star Pamela Dos Santos and Ashley Yao.
So I have to wonder what's going on at Vogue. Toasting Sosa's success is great, but why isn’t she—or anyone who resembles her—modeling in the magazine?
$2.99: Lucky’s cover price
$30: Suggested retail of Kim France and Andrea Linett’s new book, “The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style,” excerpted in the November issue
97%: Oddly enough, the amount of content in those excerpted pages that looks exactly like every single issue of Lucky
1: Number of times each that the alleged word “fashiony” is applied to the Gap and Banana Republic
2: Staffers who publicly admit to “converting” to Jessica Simpson’s new fragrance, Fancy, after Simpson appeared on October’s cover
31.5: Months, at the current rate of 2 employees per month, until the rest of the editorial staff is engulfed in the Great Simpson Perfume Convergence
10: Brands of non-Simpson perfume advertised in this issue, including—so help me—Fairy Dust by Paris Hilton
“Hugely”: Amount powder could potentially change your appearance, according to “Loose Powder: How and Why” in “Beauty Spy”
3: Number of “dramatically different looks” that can be achieved simply by using a different mascara, according to page 144 of “Beauty Spy”
47: Other life issues, approximately, I need to tackle before I’ll have even the slightest motivation to test on my own face Lucky’s gripping hypotheses about the transformative powers of cosmetics
“All the time”: Frequency with which beauty editor Jean Godfrey-June buys “things [she] can’t afford,” as divulged in “The Beauty Closet”
$86,483: Total retail value of all jewelry featured in “The Lucky Fall Jewelry Guide”
56: Number of adjectives and adjectival phrases in “The Season’s Best Coats”
26: Number of apparel items described by those 56 terms
30: Even more meaningless descriptors—like “nonchalant crisp” and “cozy meets flirty”—applied to the ensembles in “A Month of Outfits”
Infinite: Desperation emanating from the pop-up that screams “WAIT! SUBSCRIBE TO LUCKY!” when leaving Lucky’s website
I’m going to keep this brief and cranky.
It’s never a good sign when I roll my eyes before I’ve even opened the magazine. Sure, the photo is novel and eye-catching, and Kirsten Dunst hasn’t appeared on any covers for a while, but “shopping issue”? Really? That differentiates this edition from every other issue how, exactly?
Next obstacle: the editor’s letter, about a teenage girl who, after beating cancer, dreams of moving to New York to intern at Bazaar. This had potential to be touching, but I couldn’t buy the preposterous notion that Bazaar is a 15-year-old’s favorite magazine. Actually, could Bazaar possibly be anyone’s favorite magazine?
And then, in my vain search for content remotely relevant to my life, I encountered these ads for Bertolucci watches. Can someone please explain how this is supposed to inspire me to spend? All I’m getting is that men are apparently more aroused by oversized inanimate women wearing pricey timepieces than by, you know, human females with faces, and I’m almost sure that’s not the intended message.
I’d fill you in on the rest of the issue, but honestly? I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Flipping through the next few pages, I spotted a lengthy story about something called “banana pants”—and that was the moment I decided to read a book instead.
600+: Number of pages in the September issue, according to the cover
636: Actual number of pages in this issue
1.75: Number of hips Jessica Simpson has, also according to the cover
4: Contestants from the upcoming Stylista featured in a co-branded H&M ad (Best quote from one of the contestants: “You can look good in anything as long as you have a smile on your face and you haven’t bad too many Double Doubles.” Thanks for that insight.)
3: Length, in minutes, of a Stylista preview promoted in Robbie Meyers’ “Editor’s Letter”
239,402: Based on the promotional brigade thus far, the approximate number of further Stylista mentions I’m expecting in this issue
2: Ugly Betty characters who receive Joe Zee makeovers in “Style A to Zee”
100%: My expectation that this issue will also contain numerous mentions of Just Shoot Me, since Elle seems bent on cornering the fashion-mag-as-TV-show market
1: Reference to The Lost Boys as the inspiration for gothic fashion, in “Wicked Ways”
$3,840: Price of the “bag of the season,” a snakeskin Fendi, as listed on page 310
0: Percent of people who are not fashion editors who think $3,840 is a reasonable price for a bag for “the season”
Boundless: My incredulity that “short trousers” are in for fall, as shown in “Fall’s Must-Haves.” Can anyone who isn’t a 6-foot-tall model wear these? Would anyone even want to?
90210: Zip code-turned-title of the show Elle deems “DVR-worthy” in “Elle 25” (Okay, okay, I’m looking forward to it, too. Donna Martin graduates!)
428: Page on which Stylista is mentioned AGAIN. This time, an editorial assistant interviews Joe Zee and Anne Slowey, apparently because they so rarely get a chance to express themselves in the pages of Elle
2.333: Pages assigned to “Killer Stiller,” a profile of—you guessed it—Ben Stiller
7: Pages devoted to political coverage
19: Pages of beauty coverage
13: Age difference, in years, between writer Philip Nobel and the girlfriend whom he left his wife to be with, in “Danger Man”
Monthly: Estimated frequency with which at least one of the women’s mags runs a similar story about a man who left his wife in pursuit of a younger woman
40: Age of model Stephanie Seymour, who appears in fashion spread “Forever in Blue Jeans” (and looks amazing, for the record)
23, 20, and 19: Ages of Ashley Tisdale, Zac Efron, and Vanessa Hudgens, respectively, who appear in “High School Confidential”
According to a new Neutrogena TV commercial, “Every girl has a past.” Even Jennifer Garner! Apparently, 
visible
signs of aging are a punishment for all those times we “did some things that maybe we shouldn’t.” How convenient that Neutrogena has invented a potion that fights wrinkles and absolves sins! Because, you know, what I really look for in a night cream is forgiveness. Watch the commercial here.
Screencap from L.A. Deli via Oh No They Didn’t!
Update: An edited Jennifer Garner-only version of the clip has popped up on YouTube.
As 10,000 freshly printed copies of the July edition are shipped to newsstands, Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani talked to Reuters about the magazine’s incredibly successful “Black Issue.” This quote, in particular, struck me:
“America ... is ready for a black president, so why are we not ready for a black model?”
Aren’t we ready, though? This issue is the first in Condé Nast’s history to be reprinted to satisfy demand. Ad sales were up 30 percent for this issue, even though many of those same advertisers stuck with white models in their ads. Photographer Steven Meisel, who shot the cover story, says,
“I’ve asked my advertising clients so many times, ‘Can we use a black girl?’ They say no. Advertisers say black models don’t sell.”
Right. They don’t sell advertising, which is why these same advertisers snapped up pages in this edition. They don’t sell consumer goods, and it has nothing to do with the product or the ad concept. They don’t sell at the newsstand, but it was Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover of the year’s worst selling issue.
So where does the problem really lie? Looks like America is certainly ready for more diverse models, but are magazines?
Earlier: Is Fashion Racist? Fashion-Industry Mouthpiece Vogue Says No
47: Number of items promised on the front cover by number
Not much: What Glamour thinks of its readers, considering the cover lines’ emphasis on “cheap,” “easy,” “lazy,” and “shortcuts”
8: Percent of women surveyed by Glamour who say going to work bra-less is a “do” 
$1,000,000: Money Drew Barrymore donated for relief in Africa, as cited in “Drew’s Million-Dollar Miracle”
20,000: Children that money will feed for a year, based on the article’s statement that $50 feeds one child for twelve months
$1,267: Total retail value of the featured cosmetics in the Beauty section immediately following the piece about Barrymore
18: Number of “real women” depicted in the “Jeans Special” section
8: Of 10, the number of real women considered “don’ts” in “The Official Dos and Don’ts of Denim”
1: Page devoted to “I Could Be Killed for Helping This Woman,” about a volunteer who works illegally in Myanmar providing aid to cyclone victims
3: Pages devoted to Christina Aguilera, not including the cover
975,301: Approximate number of times I’ve read how a celebrity got back into shape after childbirth in a women’s magazine, now that I’ve read the Xtina interview
975, 301: Approximate number of those articles containing clichés about motherhood (“My little boy breathes new life into me…Of course you have compassion for children, but when you have your own, you feel it on a much deeper level…Our child comes first, obviously…”)
10: Pages of “Fall Clothes You Can Wear Now,” including a full-length coat, a long-sleeved black lace dress, and several pairs of opaque tights
82: Forecasted high temperature, in degrees, for my city on Monday, July 14
11: Number of Olympic athletes featured in “The 11 Greatest Bodies on Earth”
Not a one: Models in this issue whose shapes look remotely like these “greatest bodies”
Minuscule: Amount of belief I have that Glamour’s praise for the Olympians’ bodies will eventually translate into a wider range of models in the fashion spreads (Don’t get me wrong. I want it to happen very much; I’m just a cynic.)
100: Percent of clothes in “The New Rules of Casual Chic” that come from the Gap
Nada: Gap items featured elsewhere in the issue
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