Fug The Cover

Wow, since when did Jessica Simpson lose every single line in her face?

Please please please please tell me this is what we old fogies used to call air-brushing (every time I use the phrase "air-brushing," I get an email which reads, basically, "IT'S CALLED PHOTOSHOP YOU IGNORANT OLD BAG!!!!" and I do understand that almost no one actually "air-brushes" anymore, but it's just such an evocative phrase that I like to keep it circulating) and J. Simp didn't get an eyelift and beaucoup Botox. I spent ten minutes at my corner market today staring at this cover, Diet Coke in one hand and a bag of half-off Halloween candy in the other, trying to figure out if she looked good here or not. And then I realized, if I have to think about it, the answer is probably no.

Cute dress on ScarJo here, but what's the deal with her face?

Look: I know what this girl usually looks like. And she's really, really good-looking. So how is it possible that ScarJo's been plonked on the cover of Elle looking (facially, anyways) like a moderately bloated, totally cranky college freshman who's just been informed that the cafeteria ran out of fat-free cream cheese? There is no way someone at Elle didn't look at this shot and say, "dude, what happened to her neck?" and then someone else probably said, "You've been watching a lot of Top Model, eh?" and then the first person was probably all, "NO. I...I love it! No one has necks for fall, haven't you heard?" And now, when all poor ScarJo wants to do is read the article about the benefits of alcohol (whoo!) or "What One Woman Did to Save Her Butt" (which I admit that I SHOULDN'T want to read -- because seriously, how bad could her butt have been? -- but I totally do, because HOW BAD WAS HER BUTT? I have to know!) but she is constantly greeted by the image of herself making an uncharacteristically generic bloaty face, kind of looking the way the rest of us do when we stumble into the bathroom after a night of beer and wings. Although thinking about wings makes me think about my own butt and in doing so, I am pretty sure I just discovered the method to this mad, mad cover: ScarJo is merely helpfully illustrating the face that woman made when she realized what she was going to have to do to save her butt.

When I went out and got my mail the other day, I shifted through the usual mish-mosh of bills, and SPECIAL OFFERS entreating me to subscribe to Dry Cleaners Union Weekly, and random coupons for auto detailing, and menus from Thai food places, and magazines, I saw this and thought, "Since when am I getting Cosmo?"

From the pink background, to the classic Cosmo model pose, to the breathless promise of TOTALLY BRAND NEW sex tips (which is a lie. There hasn't been a new sex tip in a magazine in ten years), to Mariah's kind of fascinatingly upscale(ish) yet trashy(ish) tight little frock that appears to have very large rhinestones affixed to it and therefore seems like it might be uncomfortable to sit down in because all you will feel are those stones digging into the delicate flesh of your posterior, I flicked this thing open fully expecting to find a spread on the latest Fun, Fearless Female and was instead greeted by....Glamour.  Surprising. I was relieved to learn that I haven't developed the magazine-ordering version of that disorder people get where they get up in the middle of the night and eat an entire chocolate cake, and that I won't be getting, like, American Cowboy and Inside Triathlon all of a sudden. But, while I'm sure Mariah is pleased with what the photoshoppers, and her trainer, and the dude who does her hair extensions hath wrought, I wonder if "Looking Exactly Like Cosmo" was the best way to go this month.

I LOVE fashion magazines from other countries. Probably because they feel like a new treat, rather than the same-old same-old I'm accustomed to (when you subscribe to like 10 glossies, you start to get burned out at some point), and also, you get to do fun math to figure out the currency conversations on all the stuff therein (please note: the "fun math" I did last time I was in Great Britain involved me just deciding that everything was priced in dollars so that I didn't get too bummed out by my TopShop receipt). It's also fun to see what is au courant in other places.   Apparently, our Canadian friends are currently wearing make-up the likes of which makes them appear to be burning with the supernatural flush brought on by the fevers of galloping consumption:

K Kni is lovely indeed, but she looks so feverish and overly warm here that I feel the urge to fluff up her pillow, dab her forehead with a cool cloth and then spoon lukewarm broth into her mouth, whilst murmuring soothing things like,  "no, no, no one wants to strangle you. That's just your dress," and "Johnny Depp will be here at 4."

Do you think the folks at Maxim looked at the proofs from this frankly embarrassing Lindsay Lohan photoshoot and just shrugged and said, "well, everyone knows she's totally strung out. Why pretend otherwise?"

At least, let's hope that's the thought-process behind running this extremely glazed-eyed photo of a girl with very well-publicized substance abuse problems. Because otherwise, it sort of seems like they might as well have subtitled it, "Nothing's Hotter Than a Vulnerable Girl With Daddy Issues Who's Only Marginally Capable of Giving Consent Thanks To Her Massive Drug Problems. She's A Mess, and That's Awesome!" And while I'm not the biggest Maxim fan in the world --   it's like Cosmo for men, and just as silly (I mean, seriously. "Clothes That Seal the Deal"?)  -- I'm pretty sure they're not actually making the argument that the sexiest girls are the ones who can't stand upright and are prone to throwing on other people's coke-lined trousers. I mean, at the very least, she's NEVER going to offer to be the designated driver.

Oh, Vogue. Why you gotta play me like this?

I'm not even going to mention the Giant Heavy Brows -- which aren't at all flattering to her, although I personally think a heavier brow is often nicer than a too-thin Kelly Taylor Circa I Choose Me brow. So it's not like I am leading some kind of Anti-Brow Brigade, I just think that what looks good on some faces looks positively Crayola on this one -- or the ridiculous fact that EVERY SINGLE HEADLINE is alliterative ("Fashion's Feistiest Icon" and "Perfect Political Partner" and "Fearless Fashion" AND "Magician of Makeup"? Was there no room for "Piles of Positively Peerless Pants" or "Scads of Seriously Sexy Skirts" or "My Mailman Refuses to Deliver This Because It Weighs More Than Some Babies"? Wait, that last one doesn't have any alliteration. My bad). Or the fact that she's dressed like an ostrich. I mean, it's Vogue. Someone has to be dressed like a bird or Anna won't let them go to press. But what I primarily take issue with here is her terrible, terrible, terrible hair. This is what my hair looks like when I get back from the gym (we're pretending that I go to the gym this week). This is what my hair looks like when I'm trying that thing you do where you give up shampoo in the hopes that your hair "gets used to" being washed less often and you only have to wash it like once a month and it's still all full and shiny (this usually lasts approximately three days before my hair starts looking like...this. And then I wash it). I find it very hard to believe that Vogue couldn't do a more flattering up-do. Something a bit less Shit My Poli Sci Paper Is Due Tomorrow And I Haven't Even Started It and something a bit more I'm The Best God Damn Dancer In the American Ballet Theatre! Who The Hell Are You?

I mean, Vogue IS supposed to be aspirational, right?

I feel like I make an embarrassing revelation in this space about every three weeks. The whole Ghost Whisperer thing being the most embarrassing thus far.  But here's another one: I like Gwyneth Paltrow.  I know she's been accused of snobbery, pretentiousness, being an unbearable beeyotch, being annoyingly obsessed with macrobiotics, being the first major celeb to widely publicize the Brazilian and thus dooming legions of women to the agony of ripping out every hair they have with hot wax, etc, etc, etc and I don't doubt that all these things are true. But I think she's pretty, and I (used to) love her hair (would it kill her to get a trim?), and Apple was my most favorite celebrity child until Suri Cruise came along and bewitched me with her adorableness, and her outfits in The Talented Mr Ripley are AMAZING.

Which is why I was rather stunned to see her looking like this on the cover of W:

She is literally unrecognizable. I know her name is right there, splashed across her chest, but I am still not entirely sure that this is her. I feel like it might actually be a dude. A totally fierce dude, yes, but a dude just the same. And while I actually long for the day when a totally fierce dude lands on the cover of W, I really don't think Gwynnie wanted people to have to stare at her face for twenty minutes, reconfiguring it in their minds, so as to convince themselves that it was actually her. If this is the way she's gearing up for a comeback, as the cover promises,  that comeback is going to crash and burn.

Which do you think Elle is feeling more red-faced about today?

That they're promoting the successful rehabilitation of poor little Lilo -- maybe the pull quote should have read, "I'm glad I went to rehab -- I needed to get away from everyone and I didn't know now. In fact, I think I'll go back!" -- or that they've made her look exactly like Dina "The 'Everyone' Lindsay Needed to Get Away From" Lohan?

Um, here's the thing. I've seen lots of pictures of Anne Hathaway in my time, right?

Did she always look so...rabbit-y? I'm pretty sure the answer is no.  Which makes me wonder if perhaps her rather over-bite-y expression here is not actually due to some kind of magical Two Front Teeth Extra Toothifying Serum that she accidentally took, mistaking it for mouthwash, but rather to the fact that maybe a certain famously bobbed editrix made an off-hand comment in the Conde Nast elevator to the effect that maybe it might be, shall we say, hilariously devilish if Ms Hathaway didn't exactly look her very best while splashed across America's newsstands. Just this once.

"God, I wonder if we can we stop for a second. I'm getting a nasty crick in my back. I'm sitting here rubbing my freaking BACK in the middle of a photo shoot and nobody even cares. Whoever told me to lean against this wall for this entire shoot is going to be FIRED by the end of the day. My... OW! MOTHERF&%*ER! My ass is falling asleep, I chugged two Diet Cokes and now I kind of have to go to the bathroom, and now my freaking KNEE IS GIVING OUT and I can't even focus my eyes in the same direction. Deep breath, Sarah Michelle, stay calm, stay on top of it, try to make it look like you're giving yourself sexy massages... Okay, shit, this position is really uncomfortable. I'm pulling the muscles in my neck and all the tension there is giving me a migraine, and now my sternum looks two feet longer than it should somehow, and yet this person is STILL TAKING PICTURES OF ME LIKE THIS?!? This photographer will never work in this country again. Yes, that's right, ass-clown, I'm going to get you canned so hard your GRANDCHILDREN will be unemployed for eternity. Oh, it's going to be so sweet, I can almost smile through the rage. I'm coming for you. Buffy is going to vampire-slay your sorry ass into the next dimension of Hell. And send you my frickin' medical bills."