Glossed Over

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.

Magazine Covers Putting the Faux in Fitness

Can someone please tell me which cover is worse?

Is it the Shape cover featuring Audrina Patridge, who is perhaps best known for hawking Carl’s Jr. burgers that she pretty clearly doesn't eat, and who appears to have lost the entire right side of her body to the Photoshop bandit?

Or is it the Seventeen issue with Nina Dobrev, because it’s a publication telling 12-year-olds how to acquire a rockin’ bikini body? (Let’s not even get into the missing chunk of her torso.)

I can’t decide, see, because I started trying to figure out why these magazines ostensibly devoted to fitness couldn’t find someone with serious muscle definition to put on the cover, and then I looked up how many professional women’s athletic leagues exist in the US, and then I learned there are more than 170,000 women playing college sports, and then I thought about Jillian Michaels and Glee’s professional dancer/actor Heather Morris (both of whom are famous enough to have landed magazine covers recently) and, for that matter, the women on Dancing with the Stars, and that I would consider any of them a more compelling fitness role model than Lauren Conrad’s neighbor from The Hills, and then I tried to figure out why major media outlets would forgo women like that in favor of these two as the best examples of a healthy lifestyle, and I realized--of course!--it has more to do with newsstand sales than actual fitness, and that’s more or less when my brain exploded.

Magazine Masochism: Reading Lucky's May Issue

When I was sixteen, I went with two friends to see Merchant-Ivory’s The Remains of the Day. It was a poor choice for three teenagers shit-faced on Sour Patch Kids: much of the subtle period drama was lost on us. We sat in stunned silence until the end, when one of my friends turned to me in the dark and blurted, “WHAT WAS THAT?” 

That’s how I felt reading the May edition of Lucky. Admittedly, this most crass of magazines is nothing like the nuanced film. But my reaction to this issue was the same as my friend’s to the movie.

Everything about this issue just seemed off. I mean, exclamations like “best doorknob accessory ever!” (page 132) technically make sense, even if decorating doorknobs, let alone determining what sort of overpriced trinket could be crowned the best doorknob ornament ever, never occurred to me. Am I supposed to care about this stuff?

And sure, there’s at least one office on the planet where the denim blazer and yellow micro-shorts pictured in “Four Girls, One Lace Top,” deemed “perfect for work” by accessories designer Meghan Asha, are actually appropriate. That workplace is probably Lucky HQ, but it still counts, right?

But my most profound confusion came from the cover. Check out the lower right-hand corner: this image, from the Lucky Facebook page, says “Dress for Curves: Ginnifer Goodwin shares her styling know-how.” My newsstand copy says:

How to Dress for Curves by Ginnifer Goodwin

OH COME ON. Even allowing that “curvy” is a completely meaningless word, how on earth is Ginnifer Goodwin an expert on this?

Let’s go to the text! From “Southern Comfort,” page 58:

Goodwin’s comfort with her curves [this is where I paused to inspect the three photos of Goodwin on page 66 all Sherlock Holmes-like, seeking evidence of said curves] is largely due to her stylist, Penny Lovell, who introduced the star to tailoring. “I’m three different sizes,” says Goodwin, gesturing to her tiny waist, narrow shoulders and what she calls her “womanly” hips. “I buy things that are big and tailor them down.”

Where do I even begin?

First: Goodwin came to terms with her body “due to her stylist”? How fortunate for her! How unfortunate for the rest of us!

Secondly: being three different sizes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re curvy. It means you’re not a dressmaker’s mannequin. This is not an affliction limited to one particular body type, as anyone who’s tried on a Go International dress at Target well knows.

Next: Your hips are “womanly” because you’re a woman. They’re supposed to be that way.

Finally: Buying clothes to fit the largest part of your body and tailoring them down? This is neither revelatory advice (especially not to anyone who’s seen a single episode of What Not to Wear), nor is it exactly dressing to flatter your body. Also, it’s an utterly unhelpful tip if you’re a discount shopper. If I have to spend an additional $40 to tailor a pair of Gap pants, then I probably can’t afford them.

Now that her clothes fit better, Goodwin is braver about fashion… “Things look better when I embrace my body.”

Aw, what a lovely sentiment! Not so lovely? After recommending a Memphis specialty chocolate store, Goodwin says this:

“If I lived here, I’d be an elephant!”

Yeah, I’m having a little trouble reconciling all the curve-loving euphoria in the previous paragraphs with dehumanizing garbage like this. Eating chocolate—even eating chocolate every day—might make you heavier. It will not make you an elephant. People who weigh more than Ginnifer Goodwin are not the world’s largest land mammals.

The Goodwin article comes to an all-too-merciful end shortly thereafter, but I could go on for hours about this issue. There are the reader quotes that sound exactly like everything else in the magazine. There’s the “smoky-wood-floor” scent Jean Godfrey June describes. There’s the fact that a gainfully employed copyeditor considers “retro-ifies” a valid word, because it appears on page 112. And there’s my growing suspicion that only people with tons of money and zero taste could enjoy this magazine.

By the time I reached the final page, I was cranky, exhausted by the lengthy strings of hyphenated descriptors, and just plain numb. Lucky, please explain yourself: WHAT WAS THAT?

Jessica Simpson Gets Lucky, Learns to Love Herself

I’m almost ashamed to admit this publicly, but I was actually intrigued by this cover line on the September issue of Lucky:

Jessica Simpson on finally loving her body

The celebrity-learns-to-love-herself tale is a tough sell. On the one hand: isn't appearing on magazine covers confirmation enough that you've conformed to society's beauty standards? Am I really supposed to empathize—or worse, sympathize—with the skinny woman with flawless skin smiling at me from the pages of Lucky? On the other hand: the fame that lands stars in magazines also leads to unwarranted scrutiny, like the massive uproar Simpson faced when she had the audacity to go on stage in a pair of high-waisted jeans. No one cares if I show up to work with a fresh pimple and undereye bags (which—heads up, co-workers!—I totally will be tomorrow), but the bar is set much higher for celebrities.

How does Lucky address Simpson's transformation?

She stopped fighting her hourglass silhouette, for instance, after realizing that “we all obsess over looking like the perfect Barbie type, and that’s not always what’s beautiful. It’s about making peace with yourself.”

Which is great and all, but I think the key point here is not that she arrived at that conclusion, but how she got there. How did she make peace with herself? Therapy? Yoga? Perhaps a steadfast refusal to read women’s magazines?

This sea change came out of her globe-spanning journey for her VH1 show, The Price of Beauty—a trip that also provided the tools to diversify her wardrobe.

Because, you know, picking up some accessories is totally on par with learning to love yourself. That is one twisted sentence, Lucky.

The paragraph goes on to list exactly what J. Simps found so compelling about foreign cultures, and her highlights are exactly what you’d expect: Bright colors! Caftans! Bangle bracelets! Which means all that gallivanting could have been scrapped in favor of a trip to the local newsstand, because brights, bangles, and caftans are exactly what every fashion editor in the history of women’s magazines considers “exotic.”

There are precious few other details to parse—are we to believe that Jessica learned to love her body because of the caftans she so admired in Morocco?  Who knows? Instead we get another reinforcement of the Eat Pray Love-style message that empowerment is best acquired via globe-trotting. I don’t mean to downplay the powerful shift in perspective that international travel can provide. But neither should we codify a privileged traipse through India or Morocco or Bali as a surefire remedy for flagging self-esteem. Such messages only reinforce the consumerist lifestyle magazines promote to begin with—that happiness and beauty are best achieved by spending money.

It wouldn't be fair to expect Jessica Simpson to serve as the female paragon of healthy self-esteem and cultural sensitivity. (Although there is an interesting discussion to be had on that topic, particularly if you want to consider where the $98 shoes bearing her name are manufactured, and whether she visited that country on her show.) But by twisting “Jessica Simpson loves her shape” into “Jessica Simpson went around the world for a TV show and ended up with an awesome wardrobe,” Lucky’s turned self-acceptance into a trip precious few of us will ever take.

Australia Introduces Body-Image Standards for Fashion Industry

Women’s Wear Daily reported this morning about a new Australian program touted as “the world’s first body image initiative.” The voluntary code of conduct, developed in partnership with eating-disorder support group The Butterfly Foundation, will designate magazines, fashion retailers and designers, and modeling agencies that comply with the guidelines as “body image friendly.” The criteria, as reported in WWD:

Recommendations include disclosing and avoiding the digital enhancement of images; banning ultra-thin female models or overly muscular male ones, in addition to models under the age of 16 to advertise adult clothes; employing a greater diversity of ethnicities and model body sizes; eschewing editorial and advertising content that promotes negative body image through rapid weight loss and cosmetic surgery, and, for retailers, carrying a wider variety of clothing sizes that better reflects the demands of the community.

There is, I think, small cause for concern about the ban on “ultra-thin female models or overly muscular male ones”—what are the determining factors for these body types? Will naturally slender or naturally sculpted models be excluded? The idea shouldn’t be that any one type of body is better; it should be that there is beauty in all sizes of bodies.

But that message seems lost on a retailer quoted in the WWD article. While she acknowledges that today's models are thinner than ever before, former model Belinda Seper says,

“Fashion is for, generally speaking, women who are in good physical shape, who choose to take care of themselves.”

And if that isn't illogical enough for you, read on!

Seper harbors doubts that larger sizes would in fact sell. Just 10 percent of her merchandise is a size 16 (size 14 in the U.S.)

So larger sizes don’t sell as well as smaller sizes…but she doesn’t stock as much larger-sized merchandise. Good news, Belinda: I think I see the problem!

In any case, this program is a positive step. Australia has a female prime minister and now this? America, I hope you’re paying attention.

Update: This is the relevant section of the guidelines for determining whether a model is at a naturally sustainable weight: "Where there is concern about the healthy weight of a model, organisations are encouraged to take steps to satisfy themselves the model is healthy before employing them." And here's the full text of the guidelines [PDF].

There's Nothing Sexy About InStyle's "Look Better Naked"

Many many years ago, I briefly dated a guy who was, well, not particularly nice.  Watching a movie at his place one afternoon, he leaned in for a kiss. (Mom and Dad, avert your eyes here.) Matters progressed, he tugged the hem of my t-shirt over my head, and then he rolled his eyes at my basic beige bra. “Don’t you have any sexy underwear?” he asked.

All I could think was: Dude, I’m taking my clothes off for you. How is that not enough?

Therein lies the problem with February’s glut of lingerie and look-better-naked stories: they’re so focused on an artificial construct of romance that they miss the point. If, as magazines often say, feeling sexy means feeling comfortable in your own skin, then endless articles exhorting the virtues of self-tanners, lacy knickers, and styling products aren't exactly conducive to developing that self-confidence.

And that’s what makes InStyle’s “10 Ways to Look Better Naked” so utterly ludicrous. Among their suggestions:

• Weight loss

Got 30 minutes and $85 to spend on detoxifying salts? Great!

We shed 3 inches of water weight and felt thinner for about 48 hours.

And you can keep those inches off, too, provided you don’t do anything outlandish like, say, eat or drink. People don’t typically go to romantic restaurants on Valentine’s Day, do they?

• Jewelry

The magazine suggests highlighting your back, which it calls “a very sexy region of the body.” The best way to do that? With an $850 gemstone-studded lariat chain, obviously. Without pricey jewels pointing the way, how would a man know what to focus on?

• Home décor

“Amber casts skin in a warm, rosy glow,” says [interior designer Ron] Woodson, who suggests placing a red-hued bulb in bedside lamps and painting your ceiling a barely there shade of peach or pink to enhance the effect.

Painting the ceiling? Painting the ceiling! That seems excessively vain, but at least they didn’t suggest installing a mirror up there.

Of course, the article also covers the usual territory of depilation, exfoliation, and cosmetic trickery to hide any traces of humanity blemishes and bruises. But unless you’re disrobing for a sculptor who’ll immortalize your every detail in marble, isn’t this overkill? There’s probably a 3,000-word essay here about treating women like objects and the deleterious effects of porn and how the media tries to define our sexuality, but I’ll just leave it at this:

If you’re naked and your partner dares frown at your white ceiling or a stray stretch mark, your relationship is way beyond InStyle’s help. Also, you’re probably dating my ex-boyfriend.

Lowest Common Denominator: Cosmopolitan, February

6: Minutes per day needed to “score a slammin’ bod,” according to the cover

Infinite: The disingenuousness of a Cover Girl ad suggesting readers “go for beauty on your own terms” by eschewing department-store cosmetics for the Cover Girl brand. Thanks, Cover Girl, for telling me what my own terms are! Apparently my terms involve buying slightly less expensive stuff I don’t need.

25: Cosmopolitan’s “magic age” for getting married, as cited on page 36

100: In “Beauty: His Picks,” number of men surveyed about whether nail decals are “fun and flirty” or “too over-the-top”

Apparently zero: Number of women surveyed for the same article about whether they care what 100 random men think of their fingernails

1950s: Decade whose gender stereotypes Cosmo rejects in “Are You Turning Your Boyfriend Into a Girlie Man?”—right before suggesting steak and football are inherently masculine and salad, Cat Power, and French movies are inextricably feminine.

101: Page of the aforementioned article that made my head explode. The culprit phrase? “Do more gender-neutral activities with your man (see our “Manly Date Ideas,” at right)…” Since when does “gender-neutral” default to “manly”?

1: Appallingly evocative reference to an erect penis as a “giant breakfast sausage” on page 105. Sorry, I couldn’t let that one pass!

9: Of the thirteen men Cosmo’s crowned its “Fun Fearless Males 2010,” the number who are actors (The other four are a musician, an athlete, a TV producer, and Dr. Oz.)

“Almost 200” and “up to 300”: The supposedly shocking calorie counts in bottled teas and wrap sandwiches, according to “These Healthy Foods Can Make You Fat”

Endless: Stories in this issue devoted to pleasing men sexually (“4 Traits Men Find Irresistible,” “99 Hot New Sex Tips...In 20 Words or Less,” “Tap In to Your Seductive Powers,” “The One Time He Always Wants You”)

4 apiece: Pages devoted to articles about fertility and inter-racial couples

3: Pages devoted to a story about the decline of the thong

2: Pages dedicated to police officer Ally Jacobs, whose investigative work led to the arrest of Jaycee Dugard's captor

Huge: My—and, I’m sure, your—relief at learning one needn’t get a job at Cosmopolitan to achieve the same success with men that its staffers enjoy, because the magazine found 13 of them to give us the inside scoop. Lessons offered by current and former magazine staffers in “Engaged at Cosmo!” include these gems: cook his favorite dishes, avoid discussing marriage, don’t freak out when he plays Guitar Hero (like someone would?), and always wear the latest nail polish.

Zip: Actual eroticism in this month’s edition of “Red Hot Reads,” as exemplified by this decidedly unsexy sentence: “It felt so good that coherent thought was behind her, but she did realize it had never been like this with any other man before.”

Vogue Takes Its Turn in the Lara Stone Sideshow

I haven’t read an issue of Vogue in three months, but good news for me: nothing’s changed! In her January “Letter from the Editor,” Anna Wintour demonstrates the magazine’s remarkably persistent distance from the real world.

[French fashion designer Sophie Theallet] is a very rare creature in fashion these days. As [Lanvin designer Alber] Elbaz told the crowd, it is too often the case these days that people elect to work in style industries in pursuit of fame, not skills. “Why does every girl over five feet tall and age thirteen want to be a model?” he asked. “Why don’t they ever want to be a seamstress?”

Yeah! Why be the beautiful woman who wears the clothes when you could be the poorly paid one who makes them?

Never a magazine to back down from a completely indefensible viewpoint, the issue also includes an article detailing the struggles of size-four model Lara Stone. Which is great, you know, because Vogue clearly offers an unbiased perspective on the fashion industry’s obsession with preternatural thinness. (Sigh.)

From “Hello, Gorgeous”:

It’s hard to say which came first—the superskinny model or the size 0 sample. Either way, the trend has been tough on both the models, who find it nearly impossible to maintain that body type past the age of seventeen, and the magazines that want to show clothes on models who aren’t painfully thin.

Vogue not being one of those magazines, obviously.

Designers who use the superskinny girls defend the trend, saying clothes hang better on a coat hanger. But the opposite is also true—some clothes look better on bodies with “boobs,” which is why Stone’s career has flourished.

What a charming pair of sentences! Slender women's bodies are compared to coat hangers, the fashion industry's ideal woman is actually an inanimate object, and we learn clothes aren't designed for humans. Oh, and for those who don't happen to resemble a hanger, guess what! One model who is still way thinner than most of us is enough to represent us! Who says the fashion industry doesn't love women?

Stone doesn’t blame fashion for her problems. “I like my job,” she says… She doesn’t even blame the designers—“That is their aesthetic. It’s not for me to say whether it’s right or wrong.”

Well, I’ll say it. It is wrong to call a woman fat because she doesn’t resemble a wire hanger. Also wrong? Not blaming designers. Canonizing a coat hanger as the ideal female form isn't the worst thing they could do, but it's probably illegal to make clothes out of asbestos.

By the way, those difficulties writer Rebecca Johnson refers to? They include a recent stint in rehab for alcohol abuse—a habit that began when Stone tried drinking to lose weight. In a sentence so callous that I can't quite believe it's in print, Johnson says this:

Her problems—if you can even call them that—recall the poet Rilke's definition of fame as the collection of misunderstandings that gather around a person.

Got that? Stone's drinking was reminiscent of Rilke, and not, say, indicative of a destructive atmosphere in the fashion world.

“People still tell me I’m fat, but when I look in the mirror, that’s not what I see.”

Maybe Wintour and Elbaz are on to something: why would a woman aspire to be a model when this is how models are treated?

Stone’s recent surge in prominence may well lead to a positive shift in attitudes—but until then, it’s disheartening to see her continually treated like a size-four sideshow.  Her shape makes her an anomaly in the fashion world, but by focusing on her "fat" size-four body, magazines seem to overlook that she's an anomaly in the real world, too.

Related: What W Really Thinks About Women's Bodies

The 5 Ways Glamour Undermines Its Size-12 Self-Acceptance Message

There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently about the photo of model Lizzi Miller in September’s Glamour. See, Lizzi has something that rarely appears in fashion glossies: a non-concave stomach. So readers—in the apparent joy of seeing a body that remotely resembles their own in a magazine—have sent letter after letter of praise to Glamour HQ.

In her blog, editor-in-chief Cindi Leive mentions Glamour’s “commitment to celebrating all kinds of beauty,” which makes me wonder whether she even reads her own magazine. I’ll give credit where credit is due: this photo and the overwhelming response give me a little hope. But a photo—even this photo—isn’t enough.

Here’s why:

1.    Lizzi Miller’s photo appears in a story called “What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body,” which is ostensibly promoting body confidence. But why illustrate this piece with a plus-size model? The implication is that larger women are the ones who need this advice, because, you know, skinny females apparently pop out of the womb bursting with self-confidence.

2.    Leive describes Miller as a non-supermodel whose body is “wait for it…normal,” as if she (Leive) has nothing to do with the models who populate every other page of the magazine. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it isn’t readers who clamor for a parade of sylphs month after month.

3.    The hubbub over Miller doesn’t just mean they’ve done something positive. It means Glamour is failing its readers. If a single photo has generated such a response, then the magazine isn’t regularly depicting the women it purportedly speaks to. A picture of a plus-size model shouldn’t be a favor to readers. It should be a frequent way of representing them—not to the exclusion of slender women, but alongside and equal with them.

4.    If I could say one word to Cindi Leive, it would be this: “context.” A plus-size model in Glamour is great. Loving your body is fantastic. But the positive message is diluted by the rest of this issue’s content: a “Health Answers, Please!” column about weight-loss supplements, a feature called “Beware the 1,140-Calorie Breakfast,” the usual spate of super-thin models, and in “Your Instant Whole-Body Makeover,” the warning that poor posture “can even make you look like you’ve gained a few pounds.” The horror! Here’s a thought: Stop fear-mongering about fat and maybe there wouldn’t be a need for articles about self-acceptance. Which brings me to...

5.    Leive’s blog post completely fails to acknowledge that Glamour is complicit in this situation. You know why it’s refreshing to see a model who looks like Miller? Because we so rarely see anyone who looks like her in any fashion magazine. Sure, Glamour is leagues beyond Vogue or W in terms of body-type diversity, but that’s damning with faint praise.   

What do you think?

Related: What W Really Thinks About Women’s Bodies

InStyle Makeover Needs a Makeover of Its Own

As I discovered this weekend, InStyle Makeover and Taco Bell are remarkably similar. They're both cheap and require a very strong gag reflex. 

What was it about this special issue that was so hard to swallow? Was it the $600 cosmetic case? The fact that some no-doubt-underpaid editorial assistant had to conceptualize the ways in which a purse can camouflage a “flawed” figure? Or that every woman made over in this issue didn’t really need a makeover?

Impossible beauty standards, you win again! And we lose.

Take a look at Vanessa Hudgens, who was given an “undone” makeover. This was the result:

According to InStyle, this is a “polished no-makeup look.” Don’t you roll out of bed sporting fake eyelashes and the exact right shade of nude lipstick? With a professional hairstylist and makeup artist at your disposal, this natural look is so easy to achieve!

A few pages later, “Plump + Go” features someone who actually isn’t wearing makeup. That’s because she’s a model preparing to be injected with four different substances—Botox, Perlane, Cosmoderm, and Restylane. So there are at least four reasons none of us look anything like the women we see in magazines.

Continuing the trend of making over people who don’t really need making over, “6 Weeks to Slim” pairs two magazine staffers with trainers who, naturally, impose ultra-strict quasi-scientific edicts. Do they lose weight? Yes. Did they need to lose it in the first place? Nope! Both have BMIs within the normal range.

Admittedly, the BMI is a flawed calculation. Fine. But this depiction of two slim women getting slimmer alongside a “Dress Yourself Thin” coverline and a food diary from manicurist Ji Baek, whose diet consists largely of champagne—it all sends a powerful message about our bodies.

It says that our bodies aren’t ours—they’re open for public comment. That they don’t exist for our pleasure or strength but instead that they are a source of shame. That starvation and sacrifice are the path to self-satisfaction.

As long as our bodies and faces belong not to us but to an ever-changing, ever-more-impossible standard, women will be going to war with themselves.

Wouldn’t it be a pleasant surprise to see a magazine emphasize being healthy and strong instead of slender and young? Wouldn’t it be great to see a magazine stop referring to “boyish” figures, as if those women somehow aren’t female enough, and stop altogether ignoring larger women? Wouldn't it be a positive change to see a fashion spread focus on flattery instead of camouflage?

Absolutely. But I’m not holding my breath. To accomplish anything other than selling insecurity, InStyle Makeover would need a makeover of its own.