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It's common knowledge that fashion magazines touch up photographs of models. If this is news to you, I'm sorry to have to break this to you; the faces you see on covers of magazines in the check-out counter at the grocery store are no more real than cartoon characters. Jennifer Anniston really isn't that thin. The Kardashian cheekbones don't look like that in real life. Images in fashion magazines are conjured by artists, manipulated and carefully sculpted to deliver a message - mainly that you will never look like this but, you should try as hard you can to. The process a model goes through to be deemed photographable and the subsequent manipulation of the photograph are well documented in this video that Dove did as part of it's Campaign for Real Beauty several years ago.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about trendiness of late (probably because I’m writing a book that deals largely with questions of cool, relevance, and trendiness in the context of Christianity). I’ve also been thinking about transience in general—impermanence, aging, death, things like that (probably because I just watched Synecdoche New York again). The two are related, of course. Nothing lasts in life—whether we’re talking about youth or our favorite TV show.
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Normally, when I check out of the grocery store, I intentionally ignore the gossip magazines. I do scan the headlines sometimes just to smirk at the sheer ridiculousness of our culture's obsession with celebrity and at the claims that Pee Wee Herman's face was just found on Mars. But, I almost never purchase them. Yesterday, though, I snatched up two of them, Vogue and People, because Michelle Obama was on the cover.I'm fascinated by how First Ladies make their mark, maybe because I'm a pastor's wife, dealing with my own version of spotlight and criticism. First I thumbed through Vogue. Scores of sickly looking, too thin models stared back at me. I've always cringed at the way eating disorders are touted as perfectly normal on the runways of the fashion industry. I was struck by the contrast between Michelle Obama and the weak, waify, starving girls in the magazine. Michelle's photo screamed strength. Her famously buff arms and her confident smile were refreshing to see on the cover of a fashion magazine. Unlike the models, she didn't look like she would collapse at any moment from lack of nutrition and there were no dark gray circles under her eyes.
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