BlogHer - A meditation on crow's feet and snake oil; or, why Redbook did it - Comments

Susan I'm very late to the party to tell you

Lisa Stone — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:08:17 -0500

How much I love this post. Thank you!

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

1 for the "Real" Faith

acancerfreeutah — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:23:57 -0500

Personally, I think she looks prettier in the "real photo".

BTW, thanks for plugging the importance of reliable sunscreens.

Danielle M. White
http://onlyskindeepbook.blogpspot.com
info@cancercrusaders.org

Thanks, Susan!

ClizBiz — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:14:19 -0500

I'm so glad you are keeping this conversation going, Susan. Even though I posted on this last week, I cannot stop thinking about it. I KNEW this went on in the magazine industry but I now have a new level of awareness. When I look at newsstands now, I am alarmed.

Also, so glad you pointed out the thumbnail images of BlogHer readers - such gorgeous ladies! I'm so proud of all of us, just for speaking out on this.

Which reminds me, I'd really like to continue this conversation at BlogHer this week. Maybe as a topic for Open Space? I'd really like to see a nationwide movement, something organized where we can approach the publishing industry and letting them know - we are on to them.

Finally, has anyone heard from Ms. Hill on this? She's a smart gal, I wonder if she has any reaction to all this?

~Heather

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Photography
Proprietor, ClizBiz

I was wondering the same thing, Theresa!

Susan Wagner — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:53:47 -0500

About Tim McGraw, I mean. But I suspect he was not photoshopped to the same degree, if at all, because honestly, it's okay for a man to have wrinkles and gray hair and a little extra around the middle. (See, for example, Sean Connery, who is STILL a sex symbol.)

Friday Style
Friday Playdate

I wonder if Tim was touched-up too?

tshadrix — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:17:08 -0500

Susan,

When I originally saw the cover, I remember thinking that her arms looked touched-up because they are so thin and I could tell her eyes were worked on. Honestly, it didn't alarm me because we might hate it, but we know it happens.

On a side note, I didn't read about the touch-up until this weekend and found it ironic that I wrote about the obsession with youth in my newspaper column on Sunday. Keep in mind that I actually wrote it last week. (It also has some over 40 fashion tips.) Also, today, a reader linked to a Forbes article about the average age in Hollywood - 36 - in the comments.

All The Rage: Over 40 & no longer swimming in the fountain of youth?

Blessings,
Theresa Shadrix
All The Rage Fashion Columnist

Good point, Laurie

Susan Wagner — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:09:06 -0500

I think you're dead on.

As I'm reading these comments, I'm looking at the photos that you all have chosen as your thumbnails, and at how happy and beautiful you all are.

What irked me the most is the way that the July cover so dramatically conflicts with Redbook's stated mission, and how clearly it indicates that their goal--and honestly, the goal of ALL consumer-driven media--is NOT to value our best selves but to make us question those selves, and then sell us a whole boatload of products designed to better ourselves.

I love me some product, but come on already. You girls are beautiful, period, and it's a delight to see your faces next to your smart smart words.

Friday Style
Friday Playdate

I don't know about less happy...

lauriewrites — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:20:50 -0500

but a retouched photo really can't indicate genuine emotion, because it's not...genuine. The second version makes her face more chiseled, less (normally) full, and it totally changed her expression. Sad.

Laurie
LaurieWrites

Is it just me?

Valbee — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:57:00 -0500

Or does she actually look *less* happy in the retouched photo?

I guess it's because they removed the laugh lines. How sad that in order to achieve a level of perceived perfection, they took away the thing that made her most beautiful in the first place.

Disorderly Conduct

Disturbing

Another Gray Hair — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:50:10 -0500

This just fuels my determination to shelter my daughter from Hollywood's unreasonable aesthetic standards. She's only two and I'm already worried about her body image. Kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis for her revolutionary act of releasing an actual untouched photo and thumbs down to Redbook for not bringing us Faith Hill in all of her natural glory.

Thanks for a great piece!

Julianne Hale
http://www.anothergrayhair.com

Thanks, Mama Zen

Susan Wagner — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:34:43 -0500

The "real" Faith Hill is incredibly beautiful; I'm just so happy that the folks at Jezebel were able to share the unretouched photo.

Friday Style
Friday Playdate

Give Me A Break!

Mama Zen — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:56:49 -0500

This is such a great post! I love the picture of the "real" Faith Hill. Shame on Redbook!

www.thezenofmotherhood.blogspot.com

A meditation on crow's feet and snake oil; or, why Redbook did it

Susan Wagner — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:43:09 -0500

By now, you have surely heard about Redbook's dramatic photoshopping of Faith Hill for their July cover. Jezebel has provided readers with both a flash animated comparison of the before and after photos and a very funny annotated analysis of what precisely was edited out (crows feet, mole, extra fifteen or so pounds, etc).

The response to Redbook's choice has been overwhelmingly negative. BlogHer's own ClizBiz wrote eloquently about her own experience with a recent family photo and her mixed feelings about airbrushing. "True confession," she wrote. "'When they airbrushed my arms, couldnâ€™t they have swiped off some around the middle too?' I thought to myself. So now, I am double shamed by this ghastly photo as well as this unhealthy urge to photographically alter my unsightly bulges." That tension is what Redbook is counting on, honestly. Back In Skinny Jeans sums it up nicely:

For crying out loud! If someone like Faith Hill is not good enough as is to be on the cover of a woman's magazine, than doesn't it make you question why some of us are killing ourselves trying to look celebrities who don't even look like themselves. It also sends the message that no matter how beautiful you are, you're still not perfect enough. Hmmmm?

So what IS Redbook after? Why would they choose to so dramatically alter Hill's image for their cover? And what on earth does it have to do with my regular dispensing of style and shopping advice? Simply this: it's all about marketing.

Jezebel followed up their initial Losing Faith post with this impassioned analysis of "Why We're Pissed":

Honestly, it sort of broke our hearts that it was Redbook; the magazine has been criticized before for some questionable covers (see Aniston, Jennifer; Roberts, Julia) and, after all, readers of magazines like Redbook worry that they can't have it all as it is (the great career, the loving husband, the healthy kids, the perfect body). Plus, at this point in the evolution of the celebrity-sartorial complex, who or what exactly is Redbook -- or any number of other women's magazines -- fucking kidding with such a female forgery? Go to any name-brand, pop culture website and you can see galleries upon galleries of images of celebrities (female and male alike) in their normal, un-retouched, unlit and still-sickeningly-hot states. These pictures are perhaps the new cultural currency, as Virginia Heffernan of NY Times wrote the other day (they certainly increase our traffic!) So why do women's magazines continue to insist on providing readers just the opposite? Is it stubbornness? The selling of fantasy? Or the selling of other things, i.e. advertising revenue? And if so, is it really necessary to shave 10-15 pounds off a woman and erase exactly what it is (the freckles, the moles, the laugh lines) about her that makes her human and accessible and interesting in order to sell a bit of fucking soap? Look at the picture above, and tell us that Faith Hill is not fucking gorgeous and vibrant just the way God -- not Photoshop -- made her.

I am fascinated by this vexed relationship between idealized beauty and consumerism. Women Hill's age--women MY age--have a tremendous amount of buying power; we shop for ourselves and our children and our spouses. We need clothes for work and play; we need reliable sunscreen and fuss-free hair product and versatile lip gloss. We worry--because of images like the altered Redbook cover--about our laugh lines and our skin tone, and we spend money on products that promise to make us look more like Faith Hill.

Except that not even Faith Hill looks like Redbook's Faith Hill.

A decade ago, Joan Lunden did a piece for Behind Closed Doors about body image and marketing. The segment that I remember the most clearly was about how precisely catalog models are dressed, how the garments they wear are pinned and hooked and clipped to ensure a perfect fit (or at least the illusion of one) in photographs. The moral, of course, was that the dress you lusted after in the catalog will never look, on you, like it looked on the model, not only because she's littler than you are but because the dress isn't made to look like that; the image was manufactured to guarantee that you would buy the product.

More recently, Jamie Lee Curtis posed in her skivvies, without makeup or hair styling, to make the point that even celebrities need extra help looking perfect. Curtis has said that the More magazine piece "was a way of making amends, of saying, 'I'm sorry I made you feel less than. Because I am just like you.' That was my goal. I knew that on some level, women who had struggled with that would appreciate it."

When you shop, you need to hold these images in your head--not the airbrushed, professionally styled images, but the real images, of Faith Hill with crow's feet and Jamie Lee Curtis with her little poochy tummy. For the most part, media is designed to play on our fears, on the worry that one day we will be old and wrinkled and no one will love us any more. What Hill's unretouched photo shows us that this isn't true, that being a 39 year old wife and mother and career woman can be beautiful in itself.

Redbook bills their magazine as "the total-life guide for every woman blazing her own path through adulthood and taking on new roles â€” wife, mom, homeowner â€” without letting go of the unique woman sheâ€™s worked so hard to become. . . . Our mission is simple: to help millions of readers face lifeâ€™s complexities and joys with energy, optimism, intelligence, and styleâ€”the true trademarks of todayâ€™s young women." The problem is not with Redbook's mission, which is essentially laudable; the problem is that they are selling us a load of snake oil and expecting us to buy it. For our crow's feet, of course.

Susan Wagner writes about fashion at Friday Style and about everything else at Friday Playdate. You can see her unairbrushed crow's feet in her thumbnail photo.