Desperately Seeking Something

This is Hilary Swank on the cover of the December issue of UK Tatler. Now, say what you will about her, I actually think she looks quite pretty, relaxed and natural here. Except there’s something weird going on with the with her hairl and face. Clearly one of the two has been added on later, or altered – the angle’s all wrong! Just keep looking at that hairline, and it begins to look like an optical illusion. It looks like they just got a picture of her face and added it on to someone else’s body. (Which makes the “pretty, relaxed and natural comment” go out the window.) Or, they’ve added the hair on after – like one of those websites where you can test different hairstyles!

However, my favourite bit* of the whole cover is her expression. It’s like she’s saying “You guyyys!” Maybe the whole sentence was “You guyyys! Photoshop in my hairstyle later…that’s hilarious!”

*Actually, that’s not strictly true. My REAL favourite bit is the “The champagne workout: Party hard & stay thin” line. Hmm, best get down to the newsagents tomorrow…

Christina Aguilera has gone where so many before her have – she’s showing off her baby bump, “nude”, on the cover of a magazine. (Honestly, you don’t know what you started, Demi Moore! Now it seems like every celeb has to do the same as if it’s some sort of pregnancy ritual.)

Except…goodness knows why Christina is such a weird colour. It’s like they put her in the oven for 5 minutes to “brown”. I know the expression “bun in the oven”, but I thought that referred to someone being pregnant, not what they actually went through.

And please, please, please Christina – tone down your make-up! You’d think that she’d go for a lovely natural look, to bring out her own beauty and her pregnant woman glow. On the other hand, given how much make-up she usually piles on, perhaps this is natural for her. Hmm. Wonder how much make-up she’s going to be wearing when she actually gives birth?!

In another clear example of getting celebs to pose weirdly for the cover of magazines, here I bring you Nigella Lawson on the cover of the December 2007 issue of Red magazine: (What’s that??)

In many ways, she’s still got that whole domestic goddess thing going on. It’s like she was baking something deliciously yummy for her hubby Charles in the nude – as you do – when, oh! The doorbell goes. Ooh, let me just grab some sumptious satin curtains around myself to answer the door. Why, it’s just the photographer from Red. Yah, sure, just take my photo like this, I’ve already done my hair and makeup, and this delightful breese is giving me a bit of a windswept look.

Except she’s still got that slightly puzzled look on her face, as if she’s standing their with a fixed expression thinking “Have you taken it yet? Have you taken it yet? Haveyoutakenityet??? Have you taken iiiiiiit yeeeeetttttt? Oh wait, you just took it? I wasn’t already!”

 
Kate Moss in ad

Oh, okay. She’s not been banned from anything. In fact, it’s just print and TV adverts in which she features that have been banned. Adverts for Rimmel’s Magnifeyes mascara show her having impossibly long eyelashes, and two viewers complained that they did not believe her eyelashes were real, or that the mascara could produce such results. The ad agency behind the campaign denied that false eyelashes had been used, but did say they were enhanced after the photoshoot.

First off, TWO people complained and this gets banned? And who complains about mascara ads? I’m pretty sure most of them are doctored in some way. Hey, loads of ads are! In fact, I saw a cat food ad the other day where a tin was opened, the cat came running, and then wolfed down the whole thing. And that NEVER happens in real life! 

But then I also noticed it was a cartoon.

Oh, Felix!

• Daily Mail: Kate Moss mascara ads banned after complaints her lashes were false

Exciting news! We bring you part 4 of the fantastic series “Magazines Butchering The Beautiful Visions Of Our Beloved Famous Ladies”. Tonight it is Gwen Stefani on the US version of InStyle. Now Gwen’s a very pretty and stylish lady. She seems to be the kind of girl that women admire and men fancy. And she’s got a lot of cool stuff going right for her at the moment – music, fashion, family and, er, some other stuff too I’m sure.

So why InStyle have decided to shoot her from this unflattering angle is beyond me:

Maybe InStyle photographers are like some secretly insanely jealous best friend. “Yeah, just drop your shoulders down a bit more…half close your eyes….point your nose at the camera…and GURN!!  Oh Gwennie you look gorgeous, that’s such a good photo! I’m going to put it up on MySpace so everyone can see how beautiful you look!” *sniggers*

Keira Knightley has slammed those seeking to be famous and given them an alternative career possibility instead: to go and work on the stock market. Err, okay. She also criticises those who concentrate too much on her looks. She says:

“Okay, I’m on the cover of a magazine but somebody else does the hair, and the make-up, and airbrushes me. It’s not me, it’s something other people have created.”

Too true! Look at some of the other examples on this blog – SJP, Christina Aguilera, Gwyneth Paltrow…sometimes these magazines turn their cover stars into someone else entirely!

Unless…is this a secret cry for help from Keira? Is there something underhand going on in the magazine industry? Perhaps all these fashion mags are undergoing some vast cloning experiment…and that’s why those on the cover always look a bit “odd”. Hmmm.

Or maybe Keira Knightley is just stunningly beautiful, and the magazines try and perfect her even more. Yeah, whatever. I like my “experiment” theory better.

• Keira criticises fame-seekers

Continuing in the trend of magazines doing freaky things to our lovely celebrities is the UK edition of ELLE magazine. When photographing the cover of their latest issue, they’ve obviously played a nasty, nasty trick Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker. I can picture the scene – she’s come in, and they’re persuaded her to do some “test” shots. They insist the test shots would be better if she were wearing the dress. And perhaps some make-up. Ohanddidwetellyouthisistheactualcoverphoto:

You can tell it by her facial expression: “Wait, guys, what?? But my hair! It’s greasy! I didn’t get a chance to wash it this morning!! Matthew was recreating his Ferris Bueller-talking-in-the-shower bit!”

Poor love. I’d be miffed, for sure. She should have read the latest edition of UK’s InStyle magazine (with another slightly “different” looking celeb – Christina Aguilera) – it has “16 super easy hair makeovers”.

Magazines do some crazy shit. Yeah, they airbrush to the max and do all sorts of fancy computer wizardry. Most times, the cover stars end up looking pretty hot, if not always entirely natural. Sometimes they go a bit too far in their alterations, like when they shrunk Kate Winslet’s waist and lengthed her legs for a GQ cover a few years back.

And then sometimes they do stuff to make you think – what’s going on here? Like the latest issue of W, featuring Gwyneth* Paltrow:

My initial response was “Wow…I think??”. But looking at it further, I couldn’t help but be reminded of:

Okay, so Gwyneth’s face isn’t exactly melting. But take her as she’s on the cover of W, mix in a few decades, and you’re heading into Donatella territory. 

* You know the saying, “you learn something new everyday”? Well today, I finally figured out how to spell ‘Gwyneth’. Yay for me!

This time baby polar bear Knut is on the cover of the Vanity Fair Green issue with Leonardo Di Caprio:

Wow, how did they get him to pose like that? And Knut looks cute, too! Ha.

German superstar Knut, the three-month old polar bear, is on the cover this month of Vanity Fair Germany. The front cover headline literally reads “I Knut A World Star from Germany”. Who needs all those vacuous celebs whoring out their latest project, when you can have someone as beautiful and innocent as baby Knut?!

 Vanity Fair Germany