Monday, August 31, 2009

Come Out of the Cupboard

Lily Allen irritates me intensely. I don't know why, perhaps it is the old lady in me that reacts so violently against her. Her calculated efforts at anti-celebrity/real-girl-stuck-in-a-crazy-mixed-up-world seem transparent and as cliched as this latest magazine cover featuring the little Lily-pad herself:


London Calling. Seriously? Is this the only thing we can think of when we reference someone or something from the UK? I've got an idea magazine editors: watch the first 40 seconds of This Is England and get back to your unimpressionable reading public.

I'm sorry. I'm terribly jetlagged, and I face a gruelling several hours of uni tonight. I am about to have my first caffeine hit of the day - somehow I'd convinced myself that a GOOP-style detox would make this mix of jetlag/hangover go away. What a ridiculous proposition!

I am also rather fascinated by this magazine cover, and the hype surrounding it:


Apparently it's near impossible to buy a copy of the actual magazine, such is the excitement surrounding the idea of putting a naked, real woman on the cover. Not that the nude, celebrate womanhood cover is particularly groundbreaking - think Demi Moore and Britney Spears' famous magazine covers in all their naked, pregnant glory.


As consumers, what is the difference that makes this latest cover from Glamor magazine so much more enticing than naked, pregnant celebrities? The woman featured has a lovely face, and I'm sure if she was thrown into a nice outfit (Nancy Gantz beneath, natch) she would be good enough looking to be strolling through a field advertising fabric softener or women's multivitamins. Why do we need warts and all all the time? Are we craving the magazine world to tell us that our body is fine enough to sit cover-side? Why do we need that? What is missing in our lives that we need reassurance from a team of anonymous fashion-writers who, if we believe recent pop-culture re the mag world, are more insecure and starved with hunger than the rest of us? Wait. That was the dumbest question I've ever asked. Cue cappucinno.

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