Fug The Cover

There's been a lot of brouhaha over Harper's Bazaar appearing to Photoshop Halle Berry on its cover. And I get reacting to that with an eye roll and an "Oh, gee, what a shock that people use PHOTOSHOP," because we all know magazines want to sell copies, and what most people actually look like isn't going to do it. If anyone were stupid enough to put me on a magazine cover, I would probably put a "Please Photoshop my face" clause right at the top of my contract.

No, what's MORE interesting to me is that whatever Harper's did or didn't do, it yielded a cover of Halle Berry that's mind-bendingly awful.

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Let's set aside for a second the fact that the ENTIRE thing is the color of a sunburn and makes me want to go bathe in aloe. Why would you want a cover of one of the world's hottest women, only to pick one in which she looks like a very cheap Halle Berry impersonator wearing a Jaclyn Smith wig she picked up from K-Mart? What's next? Photographing Angelina Jolie in a full mask? Putting a wig on a stick and calling it Nicole Kidman?

With any luck, by the time that happens, I'll already have gone blind from staring at this cover too long. It's like gazing directly at the sun. Everywhere I look now, I see angry all-caps words screaming at me from hot-pink backgrounds. Pray for me. And SAVE YOURSELVES.

I'm really not sure to whom this poster is supposed to appeal -- for one thing, it makes Grey Gardens look like it's a hybrid of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Driving Miss Daisy:

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And for another, despite the fact that we've all JUST read on every gossip site how much weight Drew Barrymore lost during shooting, her picture appears to imply there is a very uplifting story arc in which Little Edie gets her wisdom teeth out. So it's for... very elderly yet plucky former dental hygienists? Glad we cleared that up, HBO.

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Tatler is one of those magazines that I don't buy regularly -- especially since it's so pricy here in the US -- but I consider a glossy treat for long airplane rides. (Also in this category: Teen Vogue and British Glamour, AKA anything purse-sized and/or foreign, preferably both). I'm going on a trip in the near future and I seriously think I will pick this up for the ride -- it's promising me MURDER, royal shenanigans AND, presumably, the story behind why Elle's dress is trying to make a run for it. I've got to uncover the truth on all three fronts.
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[Photo: Nylon Magazine]

(a) Congrats to Nylon for making it 10 years; especially considering the current state of print media, that is an accomplishment.

(b) Congrats to whomever scrubbed the spray tan off Lilo. I hope you got a bonus.

(c) I had boxer shorts in the same print as whatever those bottoms are IN 1999, and I felt like Kelly Taylor when I wore them around. Kudos for verisimilitude!

(d) IS Lindsay Lohan REALLY a "pin-up for a new era"? I feel like, "a hot mess for a new era" might be more accurate. Or, "a Meredith Baxter Birney for a new era."

(e) Those are...some extensions.

(f) If cropped sweaters are coming back, I quit.
 
This may be the best thing that's ever greeted me in the morning:

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Yes, SWINTON. YES. Tyra Banks would drown in her own joyous slobber if one of the ANTM girls managed an angular, lean, high-fashion pose like that (instead, next cycle, she's picking only a bunch of short girls, presumably so she can then lament that none of them know how to look tall and then cut them for not growing). SWINTON is a skyscraper of a woman, but whatever optical illusion they're using -- a step-stool under the skirt? -- makes her look like a veritable beanstalk. Indeed, I wish this could be the Fug Madness statuette. If we kept an on-site metal-worker at GFY HQ, that person would be hard at work today as Intern George danced around clapping like a little girl at a Dora The Explorer festival.

Having said that, of course, it's definitely also a tiny bit freaky. Especially the way it looks like she's the love child of Max Headroom and one of the ashen, ethereal, bloodless Cullens (as described in the hideous Twilight book, as opposed to as depicted in the possibly even MORE hideous Twilight movie). But on the other hand, it's exactly the kind of cover styling one should use for SWINTON -- imagine how discordant it would feel if, say, she showed up on the cover of Redbook in a Talbot's floral smock and pastel lipstick. We'd all look up to make sure the sky wasn't falling, then run to confession just in case.

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I have to say, in Glamour's defense, the inside of this issue is actually quite good. It's full of useful stuff and pretty pictures, unlike Vogue, which is full of pretty pictures and long articles about secret hair salons on the Upper East Side that require you to present three letters of recommendation and exchange an egg just for a trim. Don't get me wrong: I deeply enjoy reading those articles. They're just not very applicable to real life. As for the cover, it may be a bit TOO MUCH like real life for me, in that I can't get over the fact that Joey Potter's hair looks really dirty.  Let's be honest: so is mine, right now. But I work from home. If I were going to be on the cover of a magazine (God forbid), I am pretty sure I'd wash it.


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Oops, Fashion magazine -- because if Mary-Kate really "can't stand looking like everybody else," then she's probably going to hate this cover, in which she looks like: a) a fairly generic, if still pretty, tousled blonde with dark eye makeup wearing a boring white sweater; b) the Joker before he's applied his makeup for his daily fear-mongering rampage; and c) an actress who's had so much collagen shot into the skin under her nose that one might assume a duck bill had been implanted in there surgically. Now, I realize the quote probably means she hates DRESSING like everyone else -- which means she must be irate that the likes of Shenae Grimes and flame-haired fame-whoring doofus Phoebe Price have taken to wearing shredded, homeless-looking leggings, since M-K gets credit for first plucking that style from Zoolander and turning it into a fug phenomenon -- but it's also still kind of a weird choice for the cover from a girl who has a near-clone as a twin. You know Ashley's going to run across this cover and think, "Wait, is THAT why she never gets up to watch Full House with me during the early-morning reruns? I always thought she just hated my popcorn," and then we might be barreling toward a massive miscommunication and subsequent twin estrangement that not even the soothing touch of John Stamos can mend, and then where will we be? LOOK WHAT YOU'VE MAYBE DONE, FASHION MAGAZINE. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY WITH YOURSELF.
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We just got an email about this cover from a reader, who noted that she's totally going to wear this into work tomorrow. Which is funny, because I wore my quasi-doublet and my shortie pantaloons YESTERDAY.  The thing is, I get that this is "THE FASHION ISSUE" and ergo the cover must be devoted, not to fashion or even Fashion, but to FASHION, which leads to....you know, boxer shorts-esque shortie short bloomers and a half-fantastic/half-inspired-by Mickey-Mouse-ears jacket that is one of those things where you're like, "yes, I grasp the fabulousness while also recognizing that it's kind of ridiculous and literally no one, NO ONE could wear this for real ever and therefore it sort of has no point and is like the clothing version of a tree not making sound if it falls in the woods and there's no one to hear it," but my question is, if you're going to be putting someone in your Tree Falling In the Woods outfit, wouldn't you rather have, like, Linda Evangelista? At the very least, she could pose without losing her neck.
February 2, 2009

Fug the Cover: Kate Hudson

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This little gem comes courtesy of our friends at Girl With a Satchel, and may I be so bold as to wonder what the people over at Aussie Cosmo are smoking, and why it prompts them to use so very many different fonts? Also, obviously, I would like to know what happened to poor Kate's face here. That doesn't seem to be the chin I imagine her wearing (in all the time I spend thinking about Kate Hudson's face, which is not as much as this post would suggest, in that I hardly think about it at all), and I think we can ALL imagine what Miss Tyra would say about her neck, or lack thereof. None of this, of course, is Kate's fault: I suspect that someone over at the magazine got so distracted by the headline "Sex GPS: Take the scenic ride to Mount Pant-orama" that they didn't notice what, exactly, they had done to her in that one fated moment of Photoshoppery and by the time they recovering from the eye-rolling, it was too late. Mount Pant-orama is where I buy jeans, by the way. The deals are exceptional, but the altitude will kill you.
January 23, 2009

Fug The Cover: Camilla Belle

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What is going ON here? Not only is Camilla Belle wrapped in a hellacious hodge-podge of pieces -- a cropped coat with alien tentacles attempting to steal second base, a blue shirt with what looks like a piece trailing down the front of some high-waisted formal bloomers, and leggings that look like half-migraine, half-villain in a video game -- but she looks super cranky about it. Which does not give me much faith that I will fall in love with any of the 243 looks Nylon insists will tickle my heart. Especially not if I'm supposed to wear this many of them at the same time. If I were in Franz Ferdinand, and I saw this cover, I might react to being named Nylon's best-dressed band in the world by immediately burning my entire wardrobe and moving to an alpaca farm in darkest Peru.

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