Glossed Over

Daily Mini: Bulimia The Best New Accessory for Winter

From the Daily Mini’s “How You Indulge…and De-bulge,” December, comes a suggestion that confirms our worst suspicions about the fashion industry’s influence on body image:

The only way to stay thin is to have some sort of functioning eating disorder. I’m exercise-bulimic. As a short person, I’m terrified of becoming squat.

—Simon Doonan, Barneys New York

Leave it to the retail guy to spin what was the provenance of the rich and famous into a holiday must-have for the whole world.  It wasn’t enough for every teenage girl to get a Vuitton bag—now they get bulimia, too.  Is nothing sacred and exclusive to the fashion industry elite?

The Week: A Preponderance of Potential Disasters

• Watch this video.  Suddenly the existence of a 30-year-old virgin won’t seem so improbable.

• Marie Claire may be down in ad pages (scroll to the bottom), but it is way, way up in breasts.

• Is Jane stealing from Details? Does anyone really want to claim credit for this idea anyway?

• Looking for work?  You too can be the next Andrea Sachs Lauren Weisberger brutally overworked Anna Wintour minion.

Think There Are No Stupid Questions? Think Again, Glamour

It’s not often that an interviewee calls out the interviewer, as occurs in Glamour’s “Sandra Bullock: The Undercover Artist,” December. Sure, those of us at home (ahem) may be thinking unprintable thoughts about the reporter, but it’s rare we see those musings voiced so plainly:

Glamour: Speaking of Harper Lee, how did it feel to, for the first time, play someone around 40, basically your own age?

Sandra Bullock: I don’t know how to answer that. It’s a stupid question.

Unfortunately, such a total lack of disregard for the reporter’s feelings is not widespread among actresses. Really, it’s a shame, because we would have loved to see Rachel Weisz excoriate Carole Radziwill for this overly chummy salvo in “Lunch Date: Meet ‘The Smart One’”:

CR: Where did you end up putting the Oscar?

RW: It doesn’t have a special place yet.

CR: Can I have it?

We wonder what kind of response Radziwill was expecting—“Why yes, and take my newborn son, too!”—but we’re not going to spend too much time pondering what might also prove to be a stupid question. After all, we’d have a hard time believing that, at that moment, Carole Radziwill was thinking anything at all.

Outdated and Out of Style in Elle

Wondering how to wear red? Here’s some advice on the topic from Elle’s “Fashion Know-It-All,” December: 

The trick is to wear it casually and rein in your personality. No shouting or guffawing unless you’re Jerry Hall, please. The one thing I learned in school is that it’s okay to draw attention to yourself if you remain tactfully mute.

“Rein in your personality”? “Remain tactfully mute”?

Apparently, columnist Anne Slowey’s ludicrous notion of propriety forbids women from doing anything outlandish—like, we’re guessing, daring to speak in public—while wearing anything but the muddiest, most camouflaging shades of gray.

Next month in Elle, Anne Slowey tackles the thorny question of what to wear when appearing in public with a male chaperone—you wouldn’t want to clash with him!—and lists the fashion essentials for every woman’s trousseau. And is your dowry big enough? Find out in the January issue!

Keeping a Talley on André in Vogue

Something unusual happened when we sat down to read André Leon Talley’s column in the November issue of Vogue. Sure, the usual wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm our senses, but for one brief moment, we happened to agree with one of his pronouncements. Despite his past transgressions—for instance, acting like wearing Miu Miu shoes to high school is perfectly normal—he managed to string together one perfectly reasonable sentence.

If you ask me, most grown women, women with careers, are not dying to revisit the trapeze dress or the baby doll.

Totally logical, isn’t it? We were nearly shocked into speechlessness.

Unfortunately, Talley is, at this point in his piece, digging himself out of a hole. Why? Because near the beginning of the piece, he said this:

“It is very elegant, this suite of rooms,” said my friend Manolo Blahnik, who elevatored down from his room upstairs…

Elevatored? Elevatored?

Good thing André specified, because otherwise we would have thought that Blahnik, oh, teleported from one place to the other. And had he not chosen to coin such an unfortunate (and unnecessary term) for intra-building travel, we might have finished the article thinking that André was a levelheaded kind of guy who earned his seat in the fashion-critic pantheon with cogent commentary.

Sadly, Not Everyone In Vogue Is In Vogue

From Vogue’s “Contributors,” October:

(Yes, we really do read the contributors’ bios every month. We know.)

What is your greatest fall fashion indulgence?

Janine Di Giovanni: “My new flat on the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris (on the same street where Hemingway and Gertrude Stein lived)”

We’re troubled enough by this that we’re going to break our usual form and directly address the offender in question.  Ahem.

Dear Janine:

First, an apartment is not a “fall fashion indulgence,” and every other contributor disclosed a fashion or beauty purchase. Pay attention to the question! Unless you deliberately ignored the question in order to show off your apparent wherewithal, in which case, you’re beyond our help.

And second: Living on the street that Hemingway and Stein once lived on does not in anyway associate you with their literary legacy. The same building, the same apartment—sure, that’s interesting. But the same street? You’re stretching. It’s a great little factoid to share with your pals, but to announce that to the entire readership of Vogue? That’s trying too hard, Janine.

Finally:  that author picture. Sitting on a slipcovered sofa in what appears to be an ill-fitting housedress, your hair messily pulled back, is supposed to give us the impression that you’re a serious journalist.  We’re supposed to think that you’re so consumed with writing in the leatherbound journal you’re holding that you haven’t a single moment to spare on improving your surroundings or your appearance. But what it really projects is that you’re pretentious, or a slob, or both.

Love,

Glossed Over

P.S. On the plus side, your story was fascinating!

An Eyeroll-Inducing André in Vogue

André Leon Talley is either completely lacking in perspective, or his weight loss—“70 pounds thinner than when I began my diet odyssey, dear readers!”—has consisted primarily of brain cells. 

Our evidence for making such an assertion? His more-ludicrous-than-usual column in October’s Vogue, in which he goes shopping with seventeen-year-old Zara Beard. 

For her debutante ball.

Which will be held in Paris.

As if that premise isn’t nauseating enough—a teenager who exercises “up to four hours a day” and has seemingly endless amounts of cash to drop on designer clothes? That’s more terrifying than a marathon of My Super Sweet Sixteen—André writes up their stops at Gucci, Chloe, and Louis Vuitton as if they’re perfectly normal occurrences. 

He even gives us the obligatory disclaimer:

Zara knows what she likes, yes, and what looks good on her. But she is not spoiled. She isn’t one of these tabloid heiress/pricensses.

And this is where we learned that ALT’s definition of spoiled must differ greatly from ours, because a mere paragraph prior to this statement, the teen snatched up a $1,300 pair of Christian Louboutin stilettos. Not spoiled, eh?

And then there’s this:

[At] Miu Miu, Zara fell for a pair of navy velvet ballerina slippers encrusted with crystal decoration. “These are great for my school uniform, which is navy,” she said. “I can wear them to school.”

A teenage girl angling for something pricey with the excuse that she can wear it to school? That may be the only vaguely normal thing about this article.  The part where André places an “emergency call” to his nutritionist certainly doesn’t qualify.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: The Un-Lucky Life of Jean Godfrey-June

We hate to admit it, but this week’s installment of We Read It So You Don’t Have To will only save you the time it takes to peruse one page of September’s Lucky.  Still, it’s an egregiously obnoxious one page, so we’ll forge ahead with our summary of Jean Godfrey-June’s “Beauty Spy.”

This month, just like every other month, she initially doubts that she’ll like the product she’ll eventually promote. Is the fragrance too strong? Can any anti-aging ingredient live up to the dramatic claims of its manufacturers? Will the results really be worth the thirty seconds a day it takes to apply the product?

Then, also like every other month, she relates a dull anecdote only vaguely related to the product in question. She rides an elevator with someone who comments on the way she looks and/or smells. Her kids and/or husband question her religious use of some new-fangled device. Or there was this one thing that happened a very long time ago that, through a highly dubious sense of which topics are related, she manages to connect to the product in question.

And—you guessed it, just like every other month—she falls irrevocably in love with the item, cost be damned, and she hoards enough to last through a nuclear winter.

At this point, if these columns are to be believed, the woman must own enough beauty products to stock a Sephora.  And have you seen her on TV? She doesn’t even appear to wear makeup. What is she doing with all of this stockpiled stuff? Should we organize an intervention? Is Lucky complicit in her addiction by depicting her as a charmingly slender and well-dressed cartoon character each month?

But never mind all that negativity—it’s not important. We choose to look at the upside of this potentially disastrous situation: if Jean Godfrey-June continues to trot out these tired tropes month after month, we won’t need to bother reading her page. And we don’t have to relate a boring tale from our childhood to know that skipping this nonsense is something we can recommend to everyone.

The further adventures of Jean Godfrey-June: Lucky Sets New Standard for Passive-Aggressiveness, Long Lashes; Now Which Staffer Will Take Care of Her Hair?

Photo of Jean Godfrey-June and her ever-increasing collection from the News and Observer

Vogue Momentarily Manages Normalcy, Politeness

Vogue normally brings us up close and personal to people with whom, given the choice, we’d rather not share the planet (William Norwich, for instance, though we acknowledge that his slice of Earth and ours are literally and figuratively quite removed). Happily, August’s issue of Vogue bucked the trend and introduced us to two people whose sensibilities are a bit closer to our own:

First, we were pleasantly surprised (and our sentiments validated) by Dana Ridell’s letter in “Talking Back: Letters from Readers”:

I feel compelled to ask why you insist on publishing the drivel turned out by the irritatingly pretentious Plum Sykes…It brings down the whole tone of Vogue.

We couldn’t agree more, Dana. Now can someone please write a letter about André Leon Talley?

After that small triumph, we were sure things would take a turn for the worse, especially when we arrived at the typically ludicrous “Norwich Notes.” But in this month’s edition, “Fashionably Late?,” actress Chloe Sevigny gained several points of our esteem with this bold statement:

“I pride myself on my punctuality,” Chloe said…“I don’t want to make people wait. That’s obnoxious.”

Her comments were in stark contrast to the other luminaries in the article—including Vera Wang (who was late for the White House!), Cynthia Rowley, Shalom Harlow, and Gemma Ward—who freely admit to compulsive tardiness, and we hope her comments were directed squarely at those blasé latecomers. Catty comments in the hallowed pages of Vogue?  Delicious. 

Also, we’re fervently hoping punctuality will become cool.

Alas, our surprisingly pleasant trip through the pages of Vogue screeched to a halt when we happened upon this silliness uttered by jewelry designer Temple St. Clair:

…Sometimes my customers in their 40s and 50s will complain about how their hands look. I tell them, “Wear a big ring and nobody’s going to be looking at your hands!”

Unless Temple is advising her clients to wear their rings on a chain around their wrinkly necks like they wore their boyfriends’ class rings, a flashy bauble will almost certainly draw attention to their hands.  That is the point, isn’t it?

Still, it’s better we came crashing back to earth so swiftly. This issue also contains an article canonizing the Olsen twins because—gasp!  shock!—they don’t use a stylist to pick out their clothes, which, given their heavily layered looks of the past, is not at all surprising.  We’re already certain we won’t enjoy that profile at all.

Lucky Sets New Standard for Passive-Aggressiveness, Long Lashes

Lucky’s beauty editor, Jean Godfrey-June, uses her July column to relate an unusual ritual taking place at the magazine’s HQ:

We all love one mascara until one person’s lashes mysteriously look longer than everybody else’s, and two days later the entire office has run out and bought the new version du jour.

Sheesh. It’s like “Harrison Bergeron” come to life—one staffer simply cannot have longer lashes than anyone else! Everyone must be equal, or at least have equally full and glossy eyelashes.

How does this work, exactly? How do Lucky staffers manage to publish a magazine while so utterly wrapped up in the quest for the longest lashes? It must be incredibly time consuming keeping tabs on everyone: They have to ruthlessly inspect each woman in the office to see who maintains the lushest eyelashes, they must interrogate to find out what product(s) she’s using, they need to scheme to compensate for any kind of genetic advantage she may have, they’re forced to run to Duane Reade/Macy’s/Sephora and purchase those potions at any cost, and then it is absolutely crucial that they apply their purchases religiously. Then just show up to work—voilà! Everyone’s equal! No one has any kind of advantage whatsoever!—and repeat as necessary.

This anecdote only contributes to the not-entirely-misguided notion that fashion magazines set unrealistic beauty standards for women—based on Godfrey-June’s story, merely working at one is a fatal blow to any sense of individuality.  Worse, the competitiveness makes working at Lucky sound akin to being back in high school, except that in high school the skirmishes were occasionally related to something that actually mattered.

Unless, of course, winning the unofficial crown of “Longest Eyelashes in the Office” is truly important to these women.  In which case we probably shouldn’t put much stock in anything they say.