Glossed Over

Lowest Common Denominator: Glamour, May

26, 22, 24: Ages of the actresses appearing on Glamour’s multiple May covers (Freida Pinto, Emma Stone, and Ashley Greene, respectively)

39, 40: Ages of Amy Poehler, who’s profiled on page 214, and Tina Fey, whose book is all-too-briefly excerpted on page 72

8: Women in swimsuits depicted on page 32 as the epitome of “total confidence we all envy”

50: Percent of those women who are professional actors or athletes

$45: Price of a dress from Express suggested for its similarity to the D&G dress Stone wore on her cover

$1,395: Price of Stone’s actual cover dress

2: Letters published complaining that size 12-14 model Robyn Lawley, whose photo accompanied March’s “97% of Women Will Be Cruel to Their Bodies Today,” was too “perfect”

Zip: Amount of acknowledgement from Glamour about the same readers’ pleas to include all shapes and sizes in their photos (though they did interview Lawley about the readers’ criticism, as if that’s Lawley’s fault)

98: Page on which Glamour recommends a $132 t-shirt screenprinted with a cat’s face 

5: Tricks cited in “What Helps Reese [Witherspoon] Look Like Reese”

0: Mentions of genetics in “What Helps Reese Look Like Reese”

10: Items writer Josh Aiello’s girlfriend carries in her purse, according to “Inside Her Bag: The Final Frontier”

8: Number of times Aiello busts out a girls-are-so-strange stereotype in his commentary. Women carry a lot of stuff! How do they find things in their bags? “I have hands. Do they need cream?” he asks about a tube of L’Occitane lotion. The aneursym-inducing conundrum of differentiating between lip balm and lipstick, he says, “boggles the male mind.” Sheesh.

$20: The “highly affordable” fee for a lap dance, according to “What’s Up with the Stripper Thing?”

None: Despite the claim on the cover and the NSFW tag on the article, actual photos of naked man parts in “The Ultimate Guide to His Man Parts” (There are two models with bare buttocks, but that’s hardly what Glamour’s trying to imply by boasting “with pictures!” on the cover.)

2: Couples who got engaged after the woman cooked “Engagement Chicken,” according to “7 Dishes to Get You Everything You Want in Life”

Thousands: Approximate number of Google users searching for the term “engagement chicken” who've landed on this blog since I first posted about it in 2006. Is my shameless ploy for Google traffic better or worse than believing that a chicken dish can compel a man to propose? You decide!

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?

Marie Claire's Marriage Advice for Millionaires

So! Hello. A lot has changed for me since I wrote here last: The most significant thing is that my husband got a new job on the East Coast. In just a few weeks, we’ll be packing up our cat and moving from a spacious two-bedroom in L.A. to a tiny studio in New York. And in preparation for the move, I’ve left my job.

With all these changes imminent, I eagerly flipped open Marie Claire’s April Couples issue. What timing! Surely with the stress of the move, my search for a job in New York, and the drastic reduction in our living space, I could use some level-headed relationship advice.

Unfortunately, Marie Claire should have required income verification for anyone planning to read “The New American Couple.” Not in a top tax bracket? Then this article is not for you.

One of the couples profiled is Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, who works from Atlanta, and her husband, Jesse Itzler, Marquis Jet’s cofounder, based in New York. Here’s how they manage:

Not surprisingly, to make their warp-speed, frequent-flying lifestyle work, they rely on a team of minders: personal assistants, drivers, chefs, a 24-hour nanny on call, and “house managers” who ensure that, at any given time, there’s Diet Coke in the fridge, gas in the tanks, and clean sheets on the bed.

That’s clean sheets on the beds in four different houses, by the way. 

Meanwhile, Michelle Rhee, former D.C. schools chancellor, and Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson faced a challenge I’m sure we can all relate to:

Q: Why did you call off your wedding last September?

Kevin: We wanted to get married in Sacramento—the publicity would have been good for city business—but it quickly became a media circus.

Michelle: The local paper got a hold of our invitation and printed it. There were security issues.

And then there’s Sima Baran and Paul Robertson, whose occupations are rather obnoxiously listed in the article as “sailors on their 41-foot yacht, Leander.”

They’ve been sailing since October 2007 and plan to keep sailing for another year and a half. (That’s five years at sea, for those of you keeping track. FIVE YEARS.) Here’s how these nomads keep romance alive:

On Valentine’s Day 2010, we were in Malaysia, and Paul surprised me with local pancakes from a street vendor and a bouquet. We don’t have the “I’m too tired to fool around after work” dilemma. We have time on our hands, which is fun.

What a revelation! People who don’t work aren’t “too tired to fool around after work”? If only I’d known that my sex life could be improved simply by forgoing a paycheck and employer-sponsored health insurance!

Seriously, Marie Claire, who is this article for? Something like 0.002 percent of the population? (And are those people even reading Marie Claire? I assume they’re reading Millionaire Aircraft, Millionaire Fashion, and Millionaire Jewelry with a stack of sticky flags to mark their future purchases.)

On the plus side, the article contains a refreshingly honest recollection from journalist Lisa Ling and her husband, Dr. Paul Song, about going to marital counseling, and the article also includes Louanne Brickhouse, a Disney production VP, and Ilene Chaiken (The L Word producer), a nice break from the typical default heteronormativity of women's magazines.

Of course, Marie Claire tries to paint the couples in this article as the new American norm. And in some ways, this is good: interracial couples, non-hetero couples, women running companies? Yes! More of this in magazines, please!

But in portraying these wealthy couples as typical, the article fails to acknowledge that their solutions—hiring household staff, quitting their jobs to travel, even putting off a wedding due to press interference (guess neither needed to get married for health insurance!)—come not from great relationship skill, but from money and privilege. And that has the unfortunate effect of making the advice on these pages as out-of-reach as the designer clothes on the rest of them.

Un-Lucky Break for Kim France: She's Out, Holley's In

It was announced this morning that Brandon Holley will replace Kim France as the editor-in-chief at Lucky. France is leaving Conde Nast altogether, according to a press release posted at Business Insider. Holley is currently editor of Yahoo!'s Shine and formerly was the top editor at Jane and ELLEgirl.

Jane's demise was attributed in part to its failure to attract high-end advertisers, a condition aggravated by the magazine's editorial focus on smaller designers and mass-market brands. As much as Lucky has veered toward pricey merchandise in recent years, it's still no Vogue.

Under its new leadership, will Lucky become even more inaccessible in order to meet this challenge? Why is France leaving? And can she take Jean Godfrey-June with her? Hey, internet, we need answers! (In the meantime, speculation is welcome.)

Vogue Liveblog 2010: The One with Halle Berry on the Cover

The other day someone asked me why I still do the liveblog. After all, I've done it three years in a row. Isn't it time to move on? To which I say: Definitely not! I've been so focused on my day job lately that I'm barely finding time to read anything. (Alas, snarking on fashion magazines does not pay the rent, though I'm willing to entertain offers.) If not for this liveblog, I might never read September Vogue. That page count is intimidating!

As always, the rules: I have not opened this issue of Vogue. I have not read what any other writers thought about this issue. I'll be looking at everything except the cover for the first time. The liveblog happens in real time, so just hit refresh on this post to see the latest entries. And I'll be posting periodic updates on Twitter and Facebook throughout the day, too.

Here we go!

Vogue Liveblog: Monday, September 6

While you're at the beach or hitting the mall for Labor Day discounts, I'll be plowing through the September  issue of Vogue. In one day! Blogging as I go! Join me starting at 10 a.m. Pacific on Labor Day for this annual event (or, you know, check in when you're back in the office on Tuesday). Will I make it through? Will I lose my mind in the process? There's only one way to find out! 

Can't wait? Check out my liveblogs from 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Yes! The Vogue September Issue Liveblog Is Happening

Here's the catch: I don't have a firm date just yet. But I will be sure to let you know—here, on Twitter, and on Facebook—as soon as I've scheduled my day of masochism Vogue immersion. In the meantime, take a look back at thousands of pages of Vogue with the liveblogs from 2007, 2008, and 2009. [Updated: I do have a date!]

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.

Is Elle Bad for Women? Elle Editor Says No

The August edition of Elle is out, but I’m still chewing on the “Editor’s Letter” from the July issue, wherein editor-in-chief Roberta Myers defends herself and the magazine. The charge: is women’s media harmful to women?

If you guessed that Myers said “no,” congratulations! Here’s her inauspicious start:

On May 3, I went on the Today show, and in a segment about the winds of change blowing down last season’s runways, I uttered the words “[Elle Macpherson] is not a skinny girl.” Not skinny as in, not one of the anorexic, near-dead models that Ann Curry and I had just been talking about… How ironic that I was actually praising the presence of an almost 50-year-old demonstrably busty and athletic woman as a hopeful sign in an industry where the models have always been way too skinny (read: underweight).

This might be an understandable explanation if Elle had never taken part in the industry tradition of using “way too skinny” models, and if comparing favorably to a “near-dead” model were a meaningfully positive evaluation. Is that how low the bar is now?

“Well, Roberta, she’s definitely still among the living. I even held a mirror in front of her face and detected exhalation!”

“She'll look great in the new Vuitton. Let’s book her!”

[The furor that erupted following her statement] was about what it was about 15 years ago, when I was an editor at Seventeen, and 10 years ago, when I was an editor at Mirabella: In the “who’s responsible for my self-hating body image” debate, there’s no debate at all.

That’s because, in the “who’s responsible for portraying pre-menarche girls as the pinnacle of female achievement” debate, there’s no debate at all.

As New York blogger Amy Odell put it, magazines for women “make us feel bad about ourselves.” I wrote to Amy, hoping she might…explore that a little bit on assignment, but she never wrote me back. Alas.

If only there were more than one blogger who might explain this! If Amy isn’t available, I certainly am.

Why do images of women who are prettier, slimmer, younger, darker, lighter, smaller, taller seem like an affront to our self-worth?

Oh, only because they’re used to point out how flawed we are in comparison, and then sell us products to fix ourselves.

And would self-esteem generally rise were models to look more like the rest of us—5’4” and 165 pounds, the current build of the average American woman?

Um, YES. Obviously.

It’s curious to me that there’s still a belief that the media puts too much pressure on women to be thin, because as a measure of influence it’s an utter failure: The average woman has added 20 pounds to her frame in less than 30 years. More than one third of adult American women are obese, a medically devastating (and expensive) condition.

Hey, did you hear that? It’s the death knell of print media. Isn't the publishing industry’s profit model entirely predicated upon influencing readers and then peddling that power to advertisers?

But seriously: It’s curious to me that Myers ignores the increasing amount of research that being overweight is not necessarily an indicator of poor health. And that the relative affordability of processed and fast foods and the sluggish economy might have more to do with the general rise in the population’s weight than her magazine. And that Elle vacillates between influential and ineffectual depending on whether it suits her argument.

The attractive people favored by media as a whole—movies, TV, magazines, websites—can seem oppressive at times, though they do reflect this truth: Good-looking people get attention.

While this may be true, it also ignores that, beyond the fashion industry, there is no universally accepted definition of “good-looking.” Any model who deviates from the youthful, emaciated standard is shoved into a story about camouflaging those flaws or becomes an excuse for a magazine to onanistically praise its own open-mindedness. Which, you know, could "seem oppressive."

As we grow up and out into the world, how much does the presence of women who have more of whatever it is (brains, success, piano-playing ability) that bothers us about ourselves really hurt us? ...as an adult I realized it felt good to be told I was attractive. And it didn’t diminish my accomplishments one bit.

In other words: “I don’t have self-esteem issues, so I don’t understand why anyone else would. And I’m not publishing this in a national magazine because I feel the need to prove anything.”

And it’s a fair question to ask if media is setting, or reflecting, the cultural norms. Feminism allows us to be, pursue, remake ourselves however we like, so it’s challenging to consider what’s the right amount of “change” advice (let’s not call it improvement) for Elle to offer...

You know, I'm loath to make any kind of definitive statement about the nature of feminism, but I’m going to have to go out on a limb here: I’m pretty sure feminism doesn’t exist so we can “be, pursue, remake ourselves” according to Elle’s high-priced doctrine. It’s so we can “be, pursue, remake ourselves” as anything we want. Anything! Even, say, equal to men, whose magazines—last I checked—don’t contain nearly as many condescending explanations of why their readers’ feelings are totally unjustified.

Do we think that if Elle and the rest of “women’s” media stopped running stories about the latest skin saver, we’re all stop caring about our faces?

Scare quotes and a straw man.

And if the average model (under 20, 5’10”, and 124 pounds) were suddenly replaced by a 35-year-old five-footer, would we no longer find the leggy teenager beautiful?

Is there a reason we can't have both? Because—this might blow your mind—we could find them both beautiful.

Yes, we love [the musicians in this issue] for the way they look! And for the way they sing, write, perform, and otherwise rock our worlds. In every way, I flunk by comparison. And the world is so much more interesting for it.

Wait, so Myers admits to feeling inferior in comparison to these women...when that’s the same attitude she decried earlier.

Admittedly, it’s a daunting task to justify the existence of an entire industry. And while I don’t think anyone expects Myers to launch an all-out attack on her own livelihood and, like, immediately cease Elle’s publication, it isn’t unreasonable to hope for a genuine attempt to answer the fashion industry's critics. Instead, we get clichés, contradictions, and almost zero acknowledgment of magazines’  role in promoting the outrage that inspired Myers’ response. Women’s magazines can't speak for all women, but it would be a vast improvement if they at least tried to speak to us.

Related: Elle Editor Goes on the Offensive, Gets "Real"

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].