Glossed Over

The Fifth Annual September Vogue Liveblog

Good morning! Welcome to the fifth annual liveblog of the September issue of Vogue. Five years! 

The rules: I have not opened this issue, nor have I read any blog posts/articles/embittered rants about its content. I will, however, admit to watching Racked try to smash snack foods with this sucker. It's heavy! The liveblog goes in chronological order; refresh the page to see the latest updates.

Oh, and one more thing. As I mentioned in the video, I will be tweeting during the day using the hashtag #vogueliveblog, and I would love for you to use that hashtag too! As a small token of my gratitude for all of you out there reading along with me, I'll be giving The September Issue on DVD to three randomly selected people who tweet a link to this site and the hashtag between 10 a.m. today and 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday. (This is not a sponsored giveaway, just me spending my own money to send three lucky people a movie. US and Canada only, sorry.) Remember, your tweet must include both a link--you can use http://bit.ly/vogueliveblog11--and the hashtag #vogueliveblog to be eligible to win.  [Contest now closed, winners declared.] Thanks for being here!

Now let's get going.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: The Entire February Issue of Cosmopolitan

Okay, we’ve been away from the blog for a while. Now that we’re back, we feel a little penance is necessary—after all, you’re still here, aren’t you? So we read the ENTIRE ISSUE of Cosmopolitan this evening. Here are the highs, the lows, the points where we just couldn’t resist a smartass remark. Enjoy while we take a lengthy shower to decontaminate.

•    First, the cover, on which Katherine Heigl is wearing a truly appalling dusty pink Herve Leger bandage dress. Does anyone actually need horizontal lines encasing their entire body? Does this look good on anyone who doesn't weigh 110 pounds? Hell, it barely looks good on Heigl.  Anyway, our favorite cover lines:

10 Subliminal Tricks That Make People Adore You

Guess what? Reading Cosmo in public isn’t one of them!

John Mayer Shares Why All Guys Aren’t A**holes

Well, there’s an unlikely source for that story.

•    Best letter to the editor ever.

I want to give you a high five for featuring Beyonce on the cover of your December issue. Thank you so much for showing more diversity in your magazine and featuring our country as a whole!

Because, you know, Beyonce is really representative of “our country as a whole.”

•    Oh! What an honor! Katherine Heigl is Cosmo’s “Fun Fearless Female of the Year.” Apparently, she earned the title by going head-to-head with former costar Isaiah Washington:

Last year, after costar Isaiah Washington allegedly used an offensive word (faggot) to refer to T.R. Knight…Katherine spoke up against Isaiah at the Golden Globes. “You can’t give me too much credit for being brave,” she says now. “I was just a girl who had had a couple of drinks and was angry and got mouthy.”

But then she says this…

“As I was opening my mouth, I kept thinking, Shut up. But it’s an issue that I felt really passionately about.”

Well, which is it? Was she loose-lipped after drinking,l or did she feel strongly about defending Knight? Also, we LOVE how Cosmo put the f-word in italics, like it’s a foreign language or something.

Two other reasons Katherine’s so fun and fearless: She last cried watching an episode of Grey’s spin-off Private Practice, and she has her own line of hospital scrubs. Is that what passes for awesome at Cosmo HQ?

•    We’re skipping the confessions, because they make us feel old. Also because they’re completely fabricated. In any case, we can’t exactly relate to tales of women accidentally exposing themselves during a dormitory fire drill or puking in the boss’ potted plants, possibly because we’re at the advanced age of 31, or because the last time we were senselessly drunk, we cried about college football in the diner at the Palms hotel in Vegas at 4 in the morning. Hey, Cosmo, we’d be happy to write that up and submit it for an upcoming issue!

•    In “Man Manual,” Cosmo calls out mensfitness.com for proffering dumb advice that a woman wearing flats to a bar “certainly isn’t there to lure a mate.” And Cosmo certainly has the moral high ground here, since all of its advice is spot-on!

•    Here’s some ludicrous Hollywood trivia that’s supposed to be surprising insider information, from “Informer”:

In the movie Catch Me If You Can, Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo plays the hot stewardess who hooks up with Leo DiCaprio’s character. Jennifer Garner also appears in the flick as—get this—a high-class hooker!

Get this! It’s called acting! Also, her IMDB entry!

•    We are deeply amused by the anatomical euphemisms used in the lingerie feature “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Resolved: to start referring to our breasts as our “powerful pair,” just like Cosmo does.

•    John Mayer’s letter to us readers on page 101 gave us the creeps.

A guy who has to say he’s nothing like those other guys is usually exactly like those other guys. Also, “passion-filled endeavors”? Signing the note “I love you”? Think we’ll pass on that drink, John.

Here are Cosmo’s other “Fun Fearless Male” honorees:

Chris Brown, who has eight tattoos! Fun!

Dave Annable, who has “always been scared of sharks in a little-girl way.” Fearless!

Dane Cook, who tells a scintillating tale of eating bad shellfish on a date. “I went to the bathroom and knew it was going to be an all-night situation, so I told her we had to drive home…and that I’d have to stop a couple times on the way.” Suave!

James McAvoy, who…well…we have nothing bad to say about him.

Tony Romo, who says football is “not as glamorous as everyone thinks.” Revealing!

John Krasinski, who should have combed his hair and worn something other than an undershirt for the photo, but we lurve him anyway.

Dave Salmoni, who is apparently some kind of wild-animal daredevil. Uh, reckless?

Common, who enjoyed playing a police officer in the upcoming movie The Night Watchman because he “got to learn about the ghetto part of Los Angeles.” Seriously.

Peter Krause, who likes to speak in clichés! “There’s something very romantic about doing things that make you feel incredibly alive.” Original!

Tom Anderson, who we deleted from our Myspace friends.

And Zac Efron, who…God. Do we really have to explain why no grown woman should be interested in him?

•    Wait. Why are there twelve fun fearless males, but only one female?

•    “9 Big Secrets of Male Arousal”: One of those secrets is that a man’s nose is an erogenous zone. Well, they get credit for trotting out a sex tip we are absolutely certain we’ve never seen before.

•    “Get Him to Go There”: You know how Cosmo won’t use the word “hair” twice in the same article, instead subbing “tresses,” “locks,” “strands,” and “sun-catching silk”? Well, they do the same with female genitalia! In the one-page story “Get Him to Go There,” writer Elise Nersesian uses the following terms:

Ahem, bush

Down below

Between your legs

Privates

Southern regions

Below the belt

Your goods

•    Aah! There’s more! In “The Most Satisfying Sex Position,” Bethany Heitman uses the expression “hot button.” TWICE.

•    There may be only one fun fearless female, but there are stories of five women who were “Young and Murdered.” Ah, so that’s the other way young women can get media coverage!

•    Then there’s “I Suddenly Had Baby Panic,” which sums up the decision to be a single mother like this:

I’m a romantic. I wanted the partner, then the baby…before long, I was considering single motherhood. A baby was my priority, so I decided to make it happen despite the obstacles.

Single motherhood isn’t exactly a fresh topic for a women’s magazine, but they could have printed something slightly more thoughtful than this. Writer Louise Sloan talks about searching for a sperm donor and “shopping for eye color the way you select pumps in red or navy.” Oh, excellent comparison. We never would have understood otherwise. Either Cosmo thinks its readers are sexually precocious twelve-year-olds, or they think we’re stupid. We can’t decide which is a worse editorial philosophy.

•    “It’s A Wild, Wild Life,” a fashion spread with way too much khaki, uses the following caption:

She always wanted to use that line “I am woman, hear me roar.”

Using a feminist anthem to sell clothes? And we thought we were cynical.

•     “The Secrets of Being an ‘It Girl’”: Apparently it has something to do with being named Jessica, as both Alba and Biel are pictured in the opening spread. No need to read this one!

•    Oh no! Another way we could die! “Beware of This Scary Infection” tells us all about MRSA, which is one more disease whose transmission can be prevented by thorough hand-washing, but which we’re going to fret about anyway!

•    This is why we don’t normally spend any time on the “Red-Hot Read.”

He really does want to make me his own personal ice-cream sundae, she thought and gasped as the ice cream dripped from the spoon onto her belly, her hips, her thighs…

This “erotic” story really does want to trot out every tired cliché, she thought, and rolled her eyes as she realized it was possible to write graphically about sex and still be totally dull...

•    Ooh, our horoscope! “Uninhibited booty awaits!”

•    Finally, the last page of this issue, the “Cosmo Quiz.” Turns out we’re “flirt averse,” but we think that just translates to Cosmo-averse. Good night!

Live Blog: Reading September's Vogue

Here goes nothing something, we hope. We’ve never live blogged before, and to our knowledge, no one else has live blogged a magazine before. There may be a reason for that. Guess we’ll find out! We should mention that we have not even opened the September issue of Vogue until now, nor have we read other blogs’ takes on the issue. We have no idea what to expect and only the most optimistic of hopes that we’ll be done before Conan O’Brien starts.

Bazaar's Tradition of Off-Putting Covers Continues

It’s not quite on par with the Paris-Nicole fiasco, but the August cover of Bazaar is still appalling.  Featuring Jessica Simpson with a bundle of balloons on the beach (and visible wrinkles around her eyes and mouth) and the magazine’s typically generic cover lines, this cover is clearly designed to attract—well, who exactly?

A Glossed Over Guide: Becoming a Big-Time Beauty Editor

We never thought being a beauty editor was a particularly simple task—if you know what all those different mascara brushes do, you’re way ahead of us—but after reading Jean Godfrey-June’s completely phoned-in column, “The Beauty Closet,” in the June issue of Lucky, we’ve changed our tune.  In fact, based on this page alone, we’ve discerned there are just four easy steps to becoming a top beauty editor:

1.  Carefully select your featured products.  Think you should patrol out-of-the-way boutiques and track down women brewing body lotion in their kitchens?  Not necessary.  It isn’t even mandatory to seek out new formulations or effective innovations to share with your readers.  In fact, all you need to do is read the press releases from a couple of national chain stores, and maybe stroll through the cosmetics aisle at CVS once in a while.  Following the example set in Jean’s June column, a typical article can contain ringing endorsements of mass-manufactured products from commonplace shops like Bath and Body Works and Crabtree & Evelyn.  And why not throw in a L’oreal lip gloss that can be purchased in pretty much any drugstore in the U.S.?  Done!

2.  Find colorful ways to describe the items. Beauty editors are supposed to be creative, so be bold with your language.  Don’t be afraid to refer to candles with nonsensical descriptions like “stuffy, stodgy chic,” and feel free to use cloying constructions like “uber-British-y.”  Not sure what these phrases actually mean?  Don’t worry!  Your readers won’t know either!

3.  Keep the big picture in mind. Never forget that, as a beauty editor, your job is to sell products that no one really needs. Don’t hesitate to overstate the cultural importance of common items like lip gloss if you think it’ll move a few more units, and be sure to couch even the most pedestrian of beauty aids in convoluted, grandiose language.  Even though no one will truly comprehend your prose, they won’t want to admit it.  For example:

Women no longer powder their noses; cigarettes are out; only lipstick remains, a final holdout of the glamorous secreting away of oneself in full view that was once the epitome of femininity.

No editor will dare to delete sweeping generalizations about the nature of womanhood!

4.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  For instance, don’t bother figuring out whether a shower foam saves time over a shower gel because it doesn’t require lathering.  No one’s going to test any of your baseless claims anyway because, well, they’re insignificant.  (How much time do you spend working up a lather in the shower?  Mere seconds!  See?)  Likewise, don’t waste a moment pondering if you, as the beauty editor, should even be recommending home accessories like candles, even if your magazine has a home decor section where candles would be much better suited.

With practice and persistence, a beauty editor position is easily attainable.  And if you get discouraged, keep the faith:  these four steps obviously worked for Jean Godfrey-June.

Previously:  A Glossed Over Guide: Parlaying Your Pregnancy Into Press

W: Doing Its Part to Incite Class Warfare

At what point is it considered obnoxious to bemoan your station in life?  Because we think that point was reached with W’s “The Babysitters Club,” April, wherein a roundtable of four accomplished, wealthy women complain about their nannies.  Who knew that hiring live-in help was fraught with the potential for so much heartbreak?

We’ve heard our own stories, however, about high-maintenance nannies among this particularly fast set:...

These women have full-time, live-in help, and the nannies are the high-maintenance ones?

There’s the one who asked if the family would be ordering Mr. Chow’s for dinner and the baby nurse who, on a charter jet to go skiing with a family, announced she’s “never been on a private plane this small.”

Oh, we get it now.  There’s nothing worse than when the help doesn’t know its place.

Really, we have to applaud W for broadening our horizons with this child-care provider summit.  We had no clue how incredibly taxing it is to find someone who’ll be a devoted caretaker and scrub the shower.

“That’s a struggle we’re having—most nannies aren’t housekeepers.”

Gasp!  A real struggle indeed!  Have they considered an awareness-raising ribbon campaign?  Or perhaps a telethon?

Worse—if you can even believe this—there are nannies who would rather not dedicate their entire lives to these privileged Park Avenue spawn.  Such gall these sitters display, having their own dreams and ambitions that don’t involve raising someone else’s children!

“I had this great young Brazilian nanny and I was really excited…But she aspired to be something else.  Not a babysitter.  That was such a bummer.”

Sure, Cristina Greeven Cuomo didn’t choose to stay home with her own children, but when the nanny wants a different career, it's unacceptable!  Nannies are...different!  Somehow!  In a way no one quoted in this article can explain!

Sarcasm aside, at least all this blubbering was confined to a mere two pages (albeit two oversized pages).  And we should clarify that, especially after reading this article, we aren’t suggesting that these women give up  their careers and stay home with the kids.  In fact, quite the contrary—we’re thinking that the less influence these women have on their children, the better.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: A Bazaar Boost for Lindsay's Mom

Apparently, it isn’t enough for Lindsay Lohan and her pants-less exploits to be plastered across every tabloid and reproduced in high-res on every gossip website.  Nope, Lindsay’s mom has to get in on the act, too.  Despite a total lack of merit other than her notable offspring, Bazaar features her anyway, in “Lindsay’s Mother on Living La Vida Lohan,” April. 

Dina Lohan speaks out about Lindsay’s rehab, life as a single mom, and how she’s living the American dream—whether her critics like it or not

Translation:  Bazaar couldn’t get Lindsay (or, obviously, anyone else of consequence).  Bazaar 0, Dina 1.

Between her insanely overblown mother-hen persona and Bazaar’s liberal sprinkling of italics throughout,  Dina comes off as downright delusional.  Which we’d normally assume was the point, except the whole article by Phoebe Eaton is straining for drama—it’s replete with bated-breath sentence fragments and a tone so maudlin as to be stultifying amateurish.  For instance:

She wasn’t even supposed to marry [Lindsay’s father] in the first place.  “I’d met a gentleman in the movie business,” she says—a grip working on The Cotton Club.  Her fiancé.  Only then he died in a car crash.

But if that wasn’t enough to make you stop reading (we’re masochists—we muddled through to the end), here are our three favorite bits from the article:

1.    “Oh, the party mom, the party mom, the party mom!” she chants.  “Whoever said that, my ex-husband or whatever, I’m not the party mom!  You throw enough pasta on the walls, some pasta’s going to stick, okay?”

2.    “…Paris [Hilton] is a really smart girl, and she’s come really far.  They’re the American dream.  They’re the Trumps of the little world, these kids.”

And topping those is hands-down the most fatuous statement to appear in Bazaar (or at least in this issue), which combines Dina’s practiced bombast with Eaton’s desperate attempt to make this piece seem at all meaningful.

3. ...Dina won’t let her two youngest [children] ride in Lindsay’s car.  “Look at me,” she says, making deepest, darkest eye contact.  “Diana will happen again,” she says.

Which is a bold statement, and might even come across as genuine concern if Dina’s very appearance in this article didn’t brand her as an attention whore.  Posing with her dress hiked up to her crotch while an assistant applies a spray-on tan?  Sure, lady, this is clearly all about your daughter.

Are we being too harsh?  Indeed we are, intones Eaton at the article’s close.

Until you walk in her Jimmy Choos, do not presume to judge.

Ooh, burn!  If only there were a way for her to avoid negative attention, like, oh, not using her daughter as an excuse to appear in magazines?  Try throwing that pasta at the wall, Dina!

Allure: No, We Still Don't Feel Sorry for You

We were paralyzed by indecision when faced with the March issue of Allure.  Which pressing problem deserved our attention first?  Should we brace ourselves for the no-doubt serious investigation into the mysterious disappearance of “Hollywood’s underpants,” or should we skip to the sure-to-be-obnoxious
Michelle Pfeiffer story?

No contest, really.

We know we come off a bit shrill every time we complain about this, but what is up with the recent spate of beautiful women lamenting how difficult it is to be gorgeous?  Sure, it may be rough to be so good-looking that no one takes you seriously, but it’s totally disingenuous to complain about that and then turn around and make your living off your looks.  (Small but important distinction: We’re not saying that maybe these women aren’t treated unfairly.  We’re saying we don’t want to hear about it while they’re posing for magazines.)  Sorry, but we just can’t bring ourselves to get worked up over stuff like the cover line:

“Beautiful Women Tend to Get Used”

As if being used only happens to beautiful women.

In fact, Pfeiffer explains in considerable detail, beauty was, at times, the very element that thwarted both her career and her personal life.  “When I was coming up in the business, beautiful actresses weren’t really ‘in,’” Pfeiffer recalls…“So I felt then like a lot of women these days feel in a man’s business world: I felt I had to be better than the competition,” Pfeiffer explains.

So let’s get this straight.  She doesn’t want to be evaluated solely on the basis of her looks, but then complains when she can’t use her appearance to land roles?

“When I was doing Frankie and Johnny, that was one of the biggest criticisms: that you couldn’t believe me in the part,” she says resignedly.  “And my argument is always, ‘You know everyone can be damaged.  And pretty people can be just as damaged as ugly people or fat people.’”

We love that she lumps “fat people” in a whole separate category, because apparently someone can’t be both overweight and pretty.  She continues:

“And in some ways, more,” she adds, her face earnest.  “Because beautiful women tend to get used.  And sometimes, their self-esteem is so wrapped up in the way they look that they allow themselves to be victimized much more than somebody whose self-worth isn’t all wrapped up in the face or their body.”

Well, there’s something we agree with.  Life probably is easier for women who bother to develop a personality.

Now that three different celebrities have complained about this in print, we wonder if there may be some validity to their gripes.  But we also wonder how Hollywood’s underwear is faring, because we wish we’d read that story instead.

Previously: Marie Claire: A Model Carps, We Cringe; Vogue's Sob Story: It's Not Easy Being Pretty

A Glossed Over Guide: Parlaying Your Pregnancy Into Press

Hey, famous women!  Don’t have an upcoming project but still want to appear on the cover of a national magazine? Turns out there’s a surefire way to do that: have a child! Just follow the lead of Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay, who appears on the cover of January’s Self. It’s easy but subtle self-promotion—see, there are two whole pages devoted to Mariska and her baby, and only one mention of her long-running TV show!

And what makes it even easier? The fact that pretty much every celeb’s after-baby story is the same.  Just follow Mariska’s example and use these five simple steps in your interview for maximum sympathetic coverage:

1. Carefully let slip how toned and slender you were before your pregnancy.

“Nobody wanted to be pregnant more than me,” says Hargitay, 43.  “From the minute I found out, I was wearing full-on maternity pants. My stomach was totally flat, mind you, but I was just so excited.”

2. Describe how you’re normally strict with your diet and exercise regimen, but—oops!—you threw yourself headlong into your pregnancy and gained a lot of weight during those nine months. Explain that you gained so much that, if you weren’t about to spawn another human being, the extra pounds would otherwise prevent you from ever working in Hollywood.

“It was weird getting bigger, but that just meant that I was going to be a mom,” she says…“To me, the weight gain was a badge of honor.”

3. Launch into a gut-wrenchingly detailed discussion of the post-birth workout plan. Be sure to include several name-checks of your trainer, who is now or soon will be famous in his or her own right.

The 55-minute plan [trainer Jay] Wright devised begins with stretching and a core warm-up of stretches and lunges…she lifts, swings, and squats with Russian kettlebells, then pushes or pulls a weighted sled across the gym floor and ends with five minutes of ab moves.

4. Disclose how very, very inspired you are by your baby. Tear up a bit if you can. Oh, yes, that child is the ultimate inspiration for you to live a healthy lifestyle…forever.

“Next time, I want to keep myself as strong as possible, so everything will go easier for me.”…While her father’s memory inspires her in the gym, her son’s growing body inspires at home.

5. Finally, launch into a self-affirming proclamation about how you love your body and the way its changed. Mention how powerful motherhood makes you feel. Oh, and you think you’re even sexier now that you’ve given birth? Say that, too.

“I’m a mom now, people.  I don’t have to look hot.  I am hot.  I feel like a superhero.”

Now sit back and wait for the offers to flood in! Making fodder of your personal life is, by far, the easiest way to manipulate the media.  If this fails, fear not; you can always discuss your marital problems.

Vogue's Clash of the Fashion Cultures

From Vogue’s “Trading Places,” January:

Can preppy Vogue writer Florence Kane and ultrafeminine girl-about-town Tinsley Mortimer switch styles?

Ooh, the suspense!  We’re guessing that the switch will be tough on everyone, but by the end, both women will have learned a valuable lesson about personal style.  Maybe Florence really can wear pink and bows!

The participants in this daring social experiment couldn’t be more different.  Florence describes herself as

a Brooklynite Vogue writer who shops mostly downtown

by which we think she’s trying to come off as edgy even though she spends her weekends in the Catskills.

Tinsley, meanwhile, is a

New York social girl and purse designer

and she spends her weekends in the Hamptons.  Fasten your seatbelts, everyone—sounds like we’re headed for a full-bore clash of cultures here!

Then the real excitement unfolds:  They declare their common love for Miu Miu.  Tinsley balks at a cardigan.  Florence feels uncomfortable in a form-fitting gown.  Thrilling!  Reading about other people shopping is always an enlightening and helpful experience.

Just when we’re beginning to despair that these two will never find any common ground, an uproarious experience at Paul Smith brings the two brave shoppers together.  We’ll let Florence describe it for you:

The pencil skirt, blouse, and sweater are too long for her, and the ankle boots, which look enormous on her tiny frame, have us in hysterics.

Ha!  That’s...well...actually, we don’t quite see the humor in the situation.

A photo caption tries to explain:

A low boot looks laughably large on Tinsley’s doll-like frame.

Looks pretty normal to us, but we guess you had to be there.  We’re sure it was hilarious.  Could these two fashion pioneers be wrong about anything?

Fortunately, after an exhausting day in the trenches of Soho’s trendiest emporiums, our intrepid explorers arrive at a happy ending: the women realize the value of sartorial compromise.  Still, one crucial question remains unanswered:

Could Tinsley actually take to wearing flats?

As it turns out, the answer is…it depends.  How could they leave such a question without a solid answer?  Clearly, groundbreaking fashion anthropologists like Florence and Tinsley require more than a mere three pages in Vogue to bring us definitive insight into the fashion stylings of women from such disparate backgrounds.  We sincerely hope Vogue continues to sponsor this important research.