Fug The Cover Archives

November 19, 2009

Fug The Cover: Clint Eastwood

Fug file:

GQ,
Man Fugs

I understand that the whole point of this is that Clint Eastwood is a badass.

[Photo: Splash News]

But Clint Eastwood is a badass by nature -- by the glint in his eye, the twitch of a brow -- not because he knows how to make himself turn purple while the vein in his forehead pulses. So while I'm relieved to see that, my awards-show-based fears to the contrary, Clint CAN still move his face, I do wish GQ had decided to let him be his regular innately fierce self as opposed to suggesting he act constipated. While sitting on a stool. (Oh, come on, it had to be said.) THAT'S NOT OKAY.

November 11, 2009

Fug the Cover: Demi Moore

Can we talk about this? Okay. There are some truths that I hold to be self-evident: namely, that no one can deny the hotness of Demi Moore. She is crazy hot. She may be bathing in the blood of virgins, or drinking vanilla extract under the blue moon while standing on her head, or eating Bacon, Lettuce and Kitten sandwiches to maintain this level of hotness, but hot she is. Bravo, Demi.

HOWEVER. I am unclear as to why W has taken a super hot, very successful, grown woman and Photoshopped her until she looks like a waifish, hungry 19 year old who is just waiting tables at Caeser's Palace until she gets her big break. I have seen Demi Moore in person and she looks FANTASTIC, but she looks neither this fragile nor this hungry, and frankly, I am as tired of fragile, hungry-looking cover models as I am of epaulets. She's nearly 50. Surely there is more to highlight about her than an artfully-shadowed clavicle.

October 20, 2009

Fug The Cover: Kristen Bell

Fug file:

Lucky

So, between Forgetting Sarah Marshall and her recent Q&A thing with Entertainment Weekly, I have decided I totally like Kristen Bell. I mean, the girl admitted to watching Tool Academy. Anyone who shares my obsession with that show -- which yielded a contestant who called himself Matsuflex; the quote, "You may be dead but what's in my pants is very much alive"; eliminates people by saying, "I'm sorry, you're just a tool"; inspires the contestants to get rabid about protecting the integrity of the academy (seriously); and features them coping with anger by tearing off their shirts -- rates highly in my book.

As does this dress:

I know it's kind of busy, and I know that I can't completely tell what the pattern is because I'm squinting at my laptop screen due to the fact that I'm forced to work at a Coffee Bean that appears to be located on the surface of the sun. The skirt, through my near-closed eyes, reminds me a bit of very cold bumblebees being squashed, although maybe that's just me projecting my dislike of bees. Yes, I've heard they have secret lives, but they also want to violate my flesh, which is NOT OKAY.

Anyway: Regardless of all that, I think this is cute on her. Much more befitting of a girl who seemed, in that EW questionnaire, like she might be fun to hang out with, or whose DVR list at least might resemble mine. Which means that if she walks in here to order a pumpkin ice-blended in five minutes, I can walk up to her and be all, "Dude, what is UP with Hillbilly Tool wanting to use his prize money to buy 200 trailers?!?" and she'll go, "I KNOW, and I totally miss Matsuflex and that other tool whose girlfriend that brought him to the academy got ousted in favor of his ACTUAL girlfriend of six years that she didn't know existed, and who at the reunion show had a THIRD girlfriend who was pregnant!" Sigh. Good times.

Unlike this cover:

Continue reading Fug The Cover: Kristen Bell.

October 14, 2009

Fug The Cover: January Jones

Fug file:

GQ,
Mad Men

Again, much like with Maxim, I get that the point of this cover has absolutely nothing to do with January Jones' face.

And when you have someone as delicately beautiful as January is on Mad Men, I understand roughing her up and making her edgy and bad-ass because it plays against her alter-ego, and thus Joe Schmoe at the newsstand might buy the magazine because he's pretty sure she's the kind of girl who will do naughty things with his tire iron. But none of that explains why GQ chose this particular angle on her face, which I don't think works to her advantage. She looks menacing, kind of clunky, and vaguely tired, none of which she is -- well, okay, she might be tired. I don't know her life. At least the advertised story on where to find the best coffee in America could help her with that. Hey, wait, maybe THAT'S why GQ chose this angle on her face. Brilliant! Forget I said anything.

October 12, 2009

Fug the Cover: The Ladies of Nine

Fug file:

Vogue

I feel like, for the last several years (about thirty-five, by my best guess), Vogue has been featuring cover models in who I truly could not be less interested: Sienna Miller (SNORE), Renee Zellweger (BLAH), Nicole Kidman (YAWN). The magazine arrives at my house every month and I read it because it's sitting on my coffee table and I like to read and there's always SOMETHING entertaining in it -- if only a two page spread in which a $150 bikini is presented as a tremendous and life-changing steal -- but if I were standing at the newsstand every month, I suspect I would have no problem passing over yet another Vogue featuring whichever of the seven Wintour-approved actresses was taking her turn on the cover. So the first of my issues with this current issue is: OMG THESE FOOLS AGAIN? (No offense to Marion Cotillard, who I love, and whose cover issue I would actually buy. Sadly, this particular cover has somehow transformed Marion into a Kate Hudson clone, to the point that I actually felt confused when my eyeballs reached the REAL Kate Hudson over there on the right, looking deeply bizarre, slightly confused, and as though she just randomly materialized from out of nowhere.)

My second issue with this cover is that everyone appears to have randomly materialized from out of nowhere -- Planet Botox for at least three-fourths of them, I suspect -- and been Photoshopped together in front of a backdrop painted by a marginally-talented studio artist with a Pre-Raphaelite fetish, despite the fact that allegedly Annie Leibowitz snapped this in Malibu.

My third issue with this cover is....well, you should sit down for this. So, they did a huge feature about the cast of Nine, right? And the ladies in the cast who aren't featured on the cover are Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, and Fergie Ferg. Check it:

Continue reading Fug the Cover: The Ladies of Nine.

October 12, 2009

Fug or Fab the Cover: Marge Simpson

Fug file:

Playboy

Look, I'm not here to judge whether Marge is crazy to decide to follow in Heidi Pratt's footsteps and pose for Playboy. (I do have to wonder whether or not she's thought about the fact that her goodies are going to be oogled by everyone in Springfield, from Kent Brockman to Supernintendo Chalmers to Milhouse. I mean, the reaction from Ned Flanders alone is going to make inter-neighborly conversation mildly unbearable for at least a month, don't you think? I can't even conceive of poor Lisa's reaction -- horror, surely.) But suffice it to say, I find it bizarre that such a sensible, grounded celebrity as Marge Simpson -- who was once a member of the Citizens' Committee on Moral Hygiene and bulldozed a house of ill-repute! -- would decide to make this career move. Perhaps it was inspired by that time she worked at the erotic bakery? Is she having a mid-life crisis? Does she really need to get Homer's attention (because if so, I hope the pictorial inside involves posing with a donut over each breast)? Clearly, we'll never know. But what I do know is that there is NO WAY the fine people at Playboy didn't have a better option for this cover: Marge is one hot number -- especially for her freakishly indeterminate age -- and she surely could be WORKING this beehive-and-chair look. Instead, I feel like she looks a bit cold and a little freaked out. I expect more hotness from a woman who's been working the same strapless dress for twenty years, don't you?

poll by twiigs.com

October 1, 2009

Fug The Cover: Audrina Patridge

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I get that whether your face looks good is totally beside the point of a Maxim cover. But come on:

This looks like it's her a mug shot from being arrested for Public Greased-Up-Itude. Also, what's with the veiled "empress has no clothes" insult? Usually when you invoke The Emperor's New Clothes, you're referring to someone who believes he or she is one thing, but who is in fact less than that. It's only because I know Maxim that I'm confident the editors legitimately are just saying, "LOOK! BOOBS!" -- otherwise, I'd take it to mean that Maxim got her naked and then decided it didn't find her that hot or special, and is using the cover line to snark on her subtly to all its douchey dude friends. Which, gentlemen, isn't the greatest thing to do to a girl when she's taking off her clothes. That kind of behavior gets you a boot to the nads.

At least if you're going to use careless literary references that are accidentally insulting, Maxim, pick a photo of Audrina's face that doesn't look like she's in a police line-up, okay? Give a girl a break.

September 11, 2009

Fug The Cover: Redbook

Fug file:

Redbook

If you want to do a big story and cover line about looking and feeling your hottest, I think it would be a good idea -- although bear in mind I am not a professional -- to make sure all your cover subjects look and feel their hottest.

So, whoops:

Alicia Silverstone? Cute! Connie Britton? Enviable! Ashlee Simpson? Cock-eyed, tired, and wonkus. It reminds me of when I was making a version of myself on the Tiger Woods golf game for the Wii, and just for fun I kept inflating all my features to really weird sizes. It is the worst possible angle on her and it makes her surgically streamlined and generally flattering nose look more like a honker of a schnozz -- plus, you KNOW how much I hate makeup that GIVES you undereye bags (see also: Deschanel, Emily). If this cover is supposed to make women in their 30s and 40s feel better about themselves by making them feel way hotter than the twenty-something, then congrats, because that strategy may have worked. Yeah, Connie Britton is shoved in there at a weird body angle but she's hot.

Then the attack migrates to the thirty-somethings. Look at the picture they chose of Alicia Silverstone for inside the magazine:

Continue reading Fug The Cover: Redbook.

September 2, 2009

Fug the Ad: Jessica Simpson

Seriously. I will send Jessica Simpson $100 if she ever poses for an advertisement for one of her many products in which her mouth is CLOSED. I SWEAR IT CAN BE DONE.

August 19, 2009

Fug the Cover: Robin Wright Penn (?)

Fug file:

random-ass magazines

Wow, Robin Wright Penn just cannot win: First, she divorces Sean Penn for like the FIFTIETH TIME and now she's got no neck and finds herself caught in a straitjacket of her own arms. If this is More, I feel like she might prefer less.

Fug The Cover

Fug The Cover: Clint Eastwood

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Fug the Cover: Demi Moore

Fug The Cover: Kristen Bell

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Fug The Cover: January Jones

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Fug the Cover: The Ladies of Nine

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Fug or Fab the Cover: Marge Simpson

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Fug The Cover: Audrina Patridge

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Fug The Cover: Redbook

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Fug the Ad: Jessica Simpson

Fug the Cover: Robin Wright Penn (?)

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