unconventional beauty

i’ve spent some blogging time of late checking out shakesville’s excellent “impossibly beautiful” series, which examines the ridiculous amount of retouching applied to photographs of famous women, especially on magazine covers. it began with the dove “evolution” video and went on to include some of the more well-known examples of excessive retouching, such as the extreme thinning of normally-sized actress america ferrera, the enboobening of stick-skinny keira knightly (”those things certainly weren’t mine . . . i don’t have any tits,” quoth keira), and perhaps the most (in)famous, faith hill’s redbook cover. go look at the whole series at shakesville; you’ll never walk past the magazine shelves at the supermarket in the same way.

so, when i saw the cover of the current issue of “entertainment weekly,” featuring the generally normal-appearing tina fey, i was understandably annoyed:

okay, seriously, her wrist looks like you could snap it in half. seriously.

i then began flipping through the cache of all ew’s covers from previous issues, and started plucking out the worst examples of the “photoshopping the life out of some of the entertainment industry’s most successful women” phenomenon. i was particularly incensed by the unabashedly different treatment give to the women in the photographs as opposed to the men. i ended up going back three full years, to april 15th, 2005. below, i present the worst of the bunch for your consideration.

june 10th, 2005

to start, let’s contrast russell crowe’s undereye bags, “crow’s feet” eye-corner wrinkles, and deep laugh lines (we in medical school call ‘em “nasolabial folds”) to renee zellweger’s perfectly porcelain visage. i guess the five-year age difference between 36-year-old renee and 41-year old russell really makes a difference, looks-wise, huh?

november 25th, 2005

here’s the same situation again: reese witherspoon doesn’t have a line on her, while joaquin phoenix sports a wrinkly forehead, undereye bags, and even some blemishes! except that reese is 29, and joaquin is 31. hmm. (see shakesville for pictures of a beautiful, normal-looking reese.)

march 2nd, 2007

whoa, 41-year-old kiefer sutherland is totally channeling clint eastwood with his craggy visage. clearly he hasn’t been retouched! maybe this means that next week’s cover girl, jennifer hudson, will also get a more realistic treatment . . .

march 9th, 2007

oh, just kidding. instead, we have jennifer looking preternaturally smooth! now, this is not to say that jennifer necessarily has wrinkles, as she’s still quite young at 26, but rather that 1) come on, she has NO PORES and 2) go find a mirror and just TRY pursing your lips like you’re gonna kiss someone WITHOUT creating any lines on your face. it’s not happening. by the way, the thinly veiled blowjob imagery doesn’t help this cover either.

september 17th, 2007:

wow, 40-year-old kate walsh’s face is perfectly wrinkle-free. but that can’t be right, since in person she clearly looks like a normal, beautiful, three-dimensional 40-year-old woman:

so, i think we can all agree that kate’s photo was massively retouched for her e.w. cover. so, surely when kate’s male co-star appears on the cover next month, they’ll retouch him in the same way, right?

october 19th, 2007

huh, that’s weird. kate’s “mcdreamy” co-star patrick dempsey (who, at 41, is essentially the same age) looks totally normal. check out his crow’s feet, and the nasolabial folds that show he’s actually smiling. so clearly he wasn’t photoshopped to the same extent that kate was. how odd!

november 16th, 2007

in this stylized cover, compare the flawless, wide-awake eyes of katherine heigl to the baggy, darkened, wrinkly peepers of conan o’brien and steve carrel. again, i know katherine’s a lot younger (29) than her male counterparts (44 and 45, respectively), but as we’ve seen time and time again, no woman of ANY age is permitted to have bags/wrinkles/etc.; so why are conan and steve allowed to have them???

december 21st, 2007

one final odd couple: porcelain, surreal julia roberts with wrinkly, baggy, scarred tom hanks.

so, i guess the closest thing to a moral for this story would be . . . the next time somebody tries to tell you that men have to deal with just as many unhealthy stereotypes about their appearances as women do . . . just walk them over to the magazine aisle.

the recent lack of blogging from yours truly is due to a particularly wretched time of life i’m having right now. in short, i’m struggling academically, my boyfriend is dumping me, two of my friends are feuding, one friend is dealing with a serious illness, i’m flat broke, i smashed up my car, and my cat died. so, i’ve basically been in a permanently foul mood, punctuated by bouts of uncontrollable sobbing and the consumption of many, many double-stuf oreos.

i’m sure that this too shall pass, and my karmic wheel will be on the upswing soon enough, but that still doesn’t make things hurt any less. if anyone else out there is having a rough time right now (i know heart is, and i’m sure she’s not the only one), please know that you’re not alone; and if anyone out there is having a fabulous time right now (come on, somebody must be!), please channel some positive energy towards the rest of us!

peace, love, & oreos– ladoctorita

what happened to feminist reprise??? for the past few days, every time i try to go to the site, i get an error message.

amy, if you’re out there, is everything ok? anything the collective readership can do to help you out? please give a holler . . .

EDITED TO ADD: it’s back! hooray!

i was going to write a suitably furious post on the abomination that is “miss bimbo,” but the brilliant lauredhel beat me to it. check it out at hoyden about town.

just when i thought we were beginning to come to terms with the horrific story of megan williams . . .

dorothy dixon was a 29-year-old mentally disabled woman living in alton, illinois. she was 6 months pregnant and had a 1-year-old son.

she shared a house with six other people. they forced her to live in the freezing concrete unfinished basement with only a thin rug and a mattress. when dorothy came upstairs to forage food from the refrigerator, her housemates tortured her. they used her for “target practice” with b.b. guns, burned her with a hot glue gun, and scalded her with boiling water until her skin peeled off. they burned her clothing so she had to walk around naked. they beat her with a metal bat.

dorothy died after weeks of abuse while her housemates collected her social security checks.

two adults and four youths have been charged in dorothy’s murder. they include 35-year-old michelle riley, her 15-year-old daughter leshelle mcbride, and her 12-year-old son (charged as a minor), as well as 43-year-old judy woods, 16-year-old benny wilson, and 18-year-old michael elliott. all but michael elliott lived in the house with dorothy. they have been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated and heinous battery, intentional homicide of an unborn child, and unlawful restraint, and all remain in jail on $1 million bond.

dorothy met michelle riley in quincy, missouri, where dorothy was a client at the west central illinois center for independent living, which helps developmentally disabled people find housing and jobs. michelle worked as a coordinator there while struggling to raise her children in impoverished conditions, exacerbated by her use of methamphetamine and cocaine and multiple drug convictions.

last year, with help from the local y.w.c.a., michelle got her life back together, and she, her children, and dorothy moved into a rented 3-bedroom house in alton. but neighbors described michelle as angry and vindictive, stating that she was constantly “barking orders.” michelle also “considered dorothy her slave,” making dorothy rub her feet until michelle fell asleep and punishing dorothy by making her run around the house naked.

the neighbors described dorothy as quiet, but friendly. it’s unclear under what conditions she was permitted to leave the house, and who the father of her fetus was. it seems she withstood the torture just to keep a roof over her and her son’s heads. her son was taken into custody following dorothy’s death at one year old, weighing 15 pounds.

the abuse apparently culminated on january 30th, when judy woods beat dorothy on the head with an unknown object during a “dispute.” judy found dorothy dead the next day.

dorothy’s autopsy results are as follows:
“X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body—her face, her chest, her arms and feet—and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.”

in the basement, police found a bucket of feces, as well as bloodstains in the shower, on the concrete floor, and on the washer and dryer.

link, link, link

my friend miss america sent this video, in which fox news personae discuss the profound “pants vs. skirts on female broadcasters” issue, to me this afternoon. ugh.

the make-my-day moment of this lazy sunday morning: a television ad for the altoids brand of breath mints.

the ad goes like this*:

woman complains that copy machine is not working. man offers her an altoid. woman eats altoid and suddenly gets the idea that “maybe it’s jammed!” man checks, and the copy machine is indeed jammed. problem solved.

the ad’s tagline then declares that altoids are “a kick to the cerebellum!”

now, the implication is that the minty-fresh flavor of altoids will stimulate the brain of the consumer, increasing her powers of perception and ability to solve problems. what makes this commercial hilarious, however, is that the cerebellum is the part of the brain concerned with posture, balance, muscle tone, and movement coordination. it has NOTHING to do with problem solving or analytical thinking.

but, i guess “a kick to the prefrontal cerebral cortex” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. nor does a commercial with the same tagline showing an altoid improving the woman’s posture and coordination.

*the ad also happens to take place during the medieval era, but that’s neither here nor there.

. . . i’m just trying to make it to spring break without denouncing the entire medical institution.

also, apparently they have a lot of these over there. which is totally unacceptable to me.

anyhoo, i’ll be back to tend to my blogging life by this weekend. hopefully.

best wishes– ladoc

as of yesterday, i was preparing to boycott progressive newswire/op-ed site common dreams, previously one of my oft-frequented web locales. despite the fact that i enjoy getting leftward-tilted news ‘n views as an alternative to my usual diet of cnn.com, i’ve had just about enough of c.d.’s whole progressiveness-as-thinly-veiled-misogyny atmosphere.

but then, this morning, the site had a piece up by gail dines, and for a moment i thought c.d. might be redeeming itself. i didn’t have time to read the whole article before class, but it was a feminist piece having to do with a harvard student group naming paris hilton “woman of the year.” i was looking forward to reading the article and the attendant comment thread when i came back from school.

so, i just got home, heated up my cold spaghetti, and sat down to check out the article. i went to the website . . .

no gail dines.

that’s odd, i thought. was it filed under yesterday’s articles?

nope.

after visually searching the entire homepage, i used c.d.’s google search function. i found several past articles by gail dines posted in old archives, as well as several random articles that mention paris hilton . . . but the article BY gail dines, ABOUT paris hilton, THAT WAS POSTED THIS MORNING, is gone.

what gives???

that’s it, no more common dreams for me.

“U.S. Marine based on Okinawa accused of raping 14-year-old Japanese girl.”

 “Woman tries to relocate airline seat when sitting next to one of those icky fat chicks; flight attendant tells woman to ‘find a cute boy and sit on his lap.’”

“Stepfather abuses, kills seven-year-old daughter; blames her for her own death.”