Glossed Over

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.

Deep Cover: Noteworthy Stories from the Newsstand

Occasionally, I read something other than fashion magazines! Even so, topics that relate to some of the most frequent complaints about the glossies arise frequently. I’ve culled these points of interest from recent readings:

The February issue of Wired graphed the BMIs of Playboy centerfolds from December 1953 to January 2009, and then compared the results to the BMI of the average American woman over the same time period. The outcome won’t surprise you: The models’ BMI shrank from 19.4 to 18.2, while the national average increased from 22.2 to 26.8. Wired points out that, while the stats could be skewed because the Playmates provide their own weights and measurements, what Playboy thinks its readers will consider ideal is far more revealing than the actual numbers.

 

The March issue of Psychology Today probes the growing frequency of suicide among teen girls. A new book, The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures, postulates that society and the media subject girls to unrealistic pressures, creating strain when girls are expected to become caregivers, excel academically, and still fit conventional standards of beauty. Female role models, the book’s authors claim, are “ultra-sexy, ultra-feminized women, like the female surgeons on Grey’s Anatomy or swimsuit-modeling tennis players…” Ultra-sexy, ultra-feminized women? Like, say, the Photoshopped images that appear in fashion magazines?

 

And speaking of Photoshop, the editor-in-chief of Shape answered readers who wrote to complain about what they thought was the egregious retouching of singer Faith Hill’s bikini-clad body on an earlier cover. In March’s “Editor’s Letter,” Valerie Latona says, “I can emphatically and truthfully say we do not alter stars’ bodies: We select A-listers, like Jaime Pressly (whom we voted this year’s Sexiest Body in Hollywood), who are healthy role models—and have the curves to show for it.” In response to readers’ correspondence, the magazine says, “We never alter any Shape model’s body—including those on our cover. The women we feature put a lot of hard work into staying healthy and should be given the credit they deserve.”

Business as Usual: Blonde Celebs Land September Covers

We’re just a few weeks away from the massive September magazines! That means it’s almost time for the same crop of overexposed celebrities who appear on all the covers to snag yet another one. (Vanity Fair, while not strictly a fashion mag, will feature a handful of models.) Here’s who’ll be gracing, er, appearing:

Vogue: Keira Knightley (and just like last year, I’ll be liveblogging as I read the issue)

Allure: Carrie Underwood

Cosmopolitan: Blake Lively

Elle: Jessica Simpson (who, apparently, was on the cover of Elle’s best-selling issue ever. Ever. How is that even possible?)

Glamour: Penelope Cruz

InStyle: Uma Thurman

W: Kate Hudson

No word yet on which flaxen-haired tabloid fixture will land Marie Claire, Lucky, or Bazaar.

Infomania's "We've Got You Covered" May Render Reading Obsolete

Wish you had the time and money to read everything at the newsstand, but worried about your blood pressure? Me too! That’s just one of the reasons I love the Current network’s show Infomania and the segment “We’ve Got You Covered,” which provides a snappy summary of the latest in periodicals. This week’s edition features Glamour, Vogue, Lucky, some other magazines I often buy but rarely read, and, um, a slime mold.

Head to Current’s site to watch Infomania in its entirety.

Where credit is due • I read an issue of Missbehave a few months ago and haven’t picked it up since, but I’m tempted by Issue #8 solely because of two of the cover lines. (Never mind the banana-hugging model.) In the lower left hand corner, it says

Perez Hilton is vomit

and in the upper left hand corner:

Lose 10 pounds! Or don’t! Nobody cares!

Both of those lines seem much more sensible than InStyle’s “Anne Hathaway Makes Fashion Fun!,” and I read that dreck every month.

A Glossed Over Guide: How to Be Carine Roitfeld, Editor of French Vogue

Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, is the subject of a profile in the current issue of New York magazine. The article by Amy Larocca radiates a staggering amount of antipathy—perhaps best exemplified by the choice to recreate Roitfeld’s Gallic accent and broken English verbatim. (Actual quote: “I have in my office—what you call in America?”)

Perhaps because we’re so accustomed to the sickly sweet world of fashion magazine profiles, where everybody loves everybody else, we were thrilled to see an actual, honest-to-goodness point of view. Whether we agree with Larocca’s take is almost irrelevant; we learned so much from this profile. Roitfeld may be near  universally revered as an arbiter of chic, but many of her secrets were laid bare. What did we learn about navigating the tricky path to becoming a top magazine editor?

1. Portray yourself in the best possible light. Literally.

She is a fiftyish woman having a double espresso in the lobby of the Carlyle on Madison Avenue. “For me, it is best to be the youngest in hotel,” she explains, “and I was not having this feeling at the Mercer.” She has come to New York for her son Vladimir’s 23rd birthday, which she celebrated the night before with dinner at Indochine. “It makes me happy because there is vewy great lighting,” she says about the restaurant. “Vewy flatter.” (Roitfeld has reached a compromise with the hard American r by converting them all to ws.)

2. Believe in yourself, regardless of immaterial details like training or education.

“Some editors, they have that, they know all the designer from the beginning of the nineteenth century. They know this is triple cashmere, this is simple cashmere. Maybe they went to fashion school. Me, I don’t. I just get a feeling about what is exciting. It is all just from feeling. So I don’t know”—she pulls her lips into a pout and gives one of those poufy little French exhales—“I think maybe I have a talent.”

3. Do everything you can to keep fashion the exclusive province of the wealthy and slender.

Because of this, Roitfeld’s French Vogue is the polar opposite of most American fashion magazines. It is unconcerned with making fashion wearable or accessible to its readers. It is not inclusive: There is no advice on how to dress if you’re shaped like a pear or about to turn 50.

In Roitfeld’s world, models are never too skinny, diamonds are never too expensive.

4. Lob passive-aggressive insults at more influential editors. (Excellent! We’ve got a head start on mastering this one.)

“The American editors are very, how you say, slick,” Roitfeld says. “Very perfect. Hair is perfect, they have a manicure. They are very clean, they follow fashion. I don’t think they take many risks. They do the total look of Prada. Me, I wear a lot of Japanese piece mixed with a bit of classic Hermès and Prada. Even though jeans suit me, I never wear jeans.”…

“It’s very difficult not to become a puppet,” she says of it all. “Like Anna, she becomes so iconic that she becomes like a puppet. I don’t want to be like that, I don’t want to wear this uniform, I don’t want to be just an envelope.”

Roitfeld styled a shoot last year in homage to Wintour’s look, puppetlike or not, starring a model with a bob, dark sunglasses, and many a fur coat. (“PETA, they like to pay attention to her, not to me,” she says, “so this is good for me.”)

5. Bite the hand that feeds you.

In an industry where accessories count for the bulk of her advertisers’ revenue, she has this to say: “Right now I think that fashion in the world becomes a bit boring. There is so much money, and I feel a bit when you go to shows they want to sell so many handbags, and for me, well, I do not like handbags. I do not wear handbags. It is not a nice look, to carry a handbag.”

6. Look for the good in everyone!

“…So people always say that I weigh my staff, and it is totally wrong. All my girls are very skinny and very chic and very beautiful. And if they are not beautiful, well, then they are very charming. So people always say that I weigh them, but no. I don’t weigh my girls.”

7. Know what tools are essential for doing your job well.

Her desk is nearly empty—Roitfeld does not know how to use a computer—save for a telephone, a pair of black suede gloves, some color printouts of a fashion shoot, and a tiny snakeskin clutch.

8. Have an open mind about other cultures!

Roitfeld is 48 hours off a ten-day vacation in Thailand during which she worked a great deal on meditation.

How was this trip?

“You think this will be so glamorous,” she sighs. “You have the idea in your mind and then you get there and the people in the hotel …” She grimaces and gestures hugely in the hip area. “There were lots of people who were so fat and like that.”

Well, we hope they were at least charming!

More Glossed Over Guides: Parlaying Your Pregnancy Into Press; Becoming a Big-Time Beauty Editor

W: Inside the "Fantasy" World of Hilary Swank

The January issue of W weighs in at a slim 112 pages, and 18 of those pages are devoted to “Wait Until Dark,” a so-called “erotic fashion fantasy” starring Hilary Swank and a male model whose slender build and bleached hair make him appear to be about 15 years old.  Is there anything sexy about these pictures?  Well, Swank’s bra is visible in two of the shots!  And the boy is bare-chested!   Scandalous!  Unless you’re fond of doves, blindfolds, and dudes with a tiny metal spike protruding from the lower lip, there isn’t a single interesting thing about this spread, with the possible exception of a “wool and coq feather vest” by Ann Demeulemeester as worn by aforementioned model, seen here with, oh yes, the aforementioned dove.

What the hell is that all about? 

We just don’t understand.  Why is he wearing a shirt collar with his necklaces?

What with the positively ludicrous, poorly lit “erotic fantasy” preceding it, we hoped for an equally dark interview.  And we got it!   Sort of.

Don’t expect to see Hilary Swank checking herself in at Promises any time soon.  But the actress does seem to have a bit of a pill problem.

Amphetamines?  Diet pills?  If only!  No, Swank takes a lot of vitamins, “nearly 45” every day, and gets in a nice plug for her nutritionist in explaining her daily intake.

A devotee of celebrity nutritionist Oz Garcia for the past seven years, Swank sees her regimen as one of the secrets to her success.  “Oz has changed my life.  The Longevity Pak is so awesome,” she says, eyes shining.

Only two paragraphs in, and our eyes are shining, too.  With tears of boredom.  The article segues into the usual: She has a high metabolism!  She’s on her second pastry of the day!  She was just on Oprah!  She’s really, really enthusiastic about everything! 

But here’s where it gets interesting.  After a boilerplate synopsis of P.S. I Love You, writer Catherine Hong spends three paragraphs taking Swank and her “mile-wide maw” (really!) down a notch.  There’s a thorough catalog of the actress’ box office flops and a discussion of Warner Bros. honcho Jeff Robinov announcing that the studio would no longer release films with female leads.  (Swank, for her part, claims it’s not clear whether he made that statement.)

And then the swipes continue:

…[Swank’s boyfriend] tagged along at events as run-of-the-mill (for A-listers, anyway) as an Escada store opening, a press event for Pantene and a lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air she hosted for Guerlain.

Two weird things there: the vaguely passive-aggressive “for A-listers, anyway” comment, and the failure to mention that Swank is actually the face of Guerlain fragrance Insolence.  Perhaps the latter can be explained by Guerlain’s lack of advertising is this issue?  (No hard feelings, W:  Swank is on the cover of BlackBook, which gives her a relentlessly cheerful profile, and Guerlain didn’t place an ad with them, either, though we did spot a full-page ad in the current issue of French Glamour.)

Next, Hong takes on the actress’ recent move to L.A.:

…the reasons she gives for abandoning the Big Apple are far from convincing.  “I looked and looked and looked for a place in New York.  I just didn’t find anything,” she insists.  “Prices have just skyrocketed!”  (For the record, she and [ex-husband] Lowe sold their four-floor town house on Charles Street for $7.5 million last January.)

Zing!

And this sort of awesome, though perhaps petulant, question when the topic turns to Swank’s boyfriend:

So, is she in love?  “Of course I’m in love,” she says somewhat curtly.  “Or I wouldn’t be in this relationship for as long as I’ve been…”

Ooh, surly!  Before the interview gets too out of hand, however, Hong wraps up with the typically effusive quotes from pals.  And then Swank trots out this statement, which is so frequently recited by celebrities that it must be handed to them on a laminated wallet-size card when they step off the plane at LAX.

“...You know, it’s tiring, but I can’t complain, because I’m getting to do what I love.”

Aww!  Picking apart your interview lets us do what we love, too!

Airfare Costs More Than Lipstick •Many years ago, a man from Amsterdam posed this question to us: “If a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, and a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, what do you call someone who speaks one language?”  He smirked and leaned toward us before giving the answer. “An American,” he said.  Ha!  Wow, that guy was a jerk—albeit pretty much on target.

We were reminded of this while flipping through our stack of French magazines. Each of them has a feature on international travel. Of the American magazines, only Vogue has a regular travel section, unless you count Lucky’s city shopping guides, which…we don’t.  Of course, American mags never come with Paris Hilton tarot cards, so we guess it’s a fair trade.

Lesser Celebs, Lessons Imparted In Life & Style Weekly

We don’t normally read Life & Style Weekly—for reasons that should be fairly obvious—but when a few pages from the new issue popped up in our inbox, we couldn’t resist taking a look.  Check out the caption on this photograph of Heidi Montag (from The Hills, which we do watch, for reasons that should be fairly obvious) modeling an Ashley Paige swimsuit at Miami’s Fashion Week.

Good thing she got that boob job!

Really, why is it a good thing?  The suit would have stayed up on its own, so...is it good because without the implants she could never have modeled? (Doubtful, considering the size of the average runway model, not to mention that this modeling gig is more likely the result of MTV’s cameras than Heidi’s merits.)  Because without fake breasts she would never have been considered attractive? (Nah, we think she looked better before the surgery.) We’re stumped. 

If her new shape makes her feel confident and  happy, great—but why is a magazine promoting breast implants?  There’s just no reason for a magazine to say it’s a “good thing” in a foreboding tone, as if some horrible fate awaited her otherwise, as if all women should be expected to have bountiful breasts, as if only big-breasted women are beautiful.

That may be the most blatant promotion of plastic surgery we’ve ever seen in print.  Still, in Heidi’s case, it probably is a genuinely good thing.  See, without the surgery (and the engagement—why do we know this?), she might not be getting any attention whatsoever.  Looks like the surgery helped her elude the unspeakably terrible fate of anonymity...for now, anyway.