Ok. Let's discuss the new VOGUE cover!
I staggered when it arrived. My physical response was so harsh I was compelled to text a snap of it to my sister, a writer, whom keeps me on the feminist straight & narrow. WHAT? How could they DO this to the beautiful, fearless, smart & sassy Kate Winslet? And to Mario Testino, the venerable photographer? I beg the two of them to stand up and speak out about this!What, you ask, is raising my ire so violently? In short - who IS this woman? Is it Kate Winslet, Sharon Stone, Molly Sims, Kate Hudson, who exactly? This Kate has been so wildly Photoshopped as to be nearly unrecognizable, and her beauty certainly does not deserve such maltreatment. And then there's the pregnancy bit.
Apparently I'm not the only one enraged by this. Both CNN and The Guardian ran commentary on it this morning, quoted from below.
Regarding the pregnancy issue - on one hand - YAY! mainstream fashion magazines have begun to show pregnancies. Finally. Thank you eternally to Demi Moore for starting the trend way back when. But.... they only show one version of it which is skinny (except for baby bump), sexed up and airbrushed. What about real pregnancy? Totally ignored. When, when, when is the media going to accept femininity as it really is - human, alive and quite often "imperfect"? People are people and the lucky few whom are extraordinarily beautiful are wonderful to look at, but why aren't we allowed to see them in a more realistic light, see their actual skin? Would it really make us love them less? I think not.
"these magazines set up unrealistic expectations for both pregnancy and motherhood, neither of which is easy, beautiful, or picture-perfect, at least not all the time...People, with the help of the media, seem to forget that pregnant women change shape, and that's a wonderful, natural thing that needn't be covered up or defended or cloaked in haute couture. It needn't always look perfect, because when is it, really?" Quoted from:
Peggy Drexler, the author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is an assistant professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University. Join her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @drpeggydrexler.
Emma Brockes writing in The Guardian says, "The best response to the Vogue cover is to laugh: the magazine is so far out to sea at this point, it has no sense of how transparent its manipulations are...The grotesque can be beautiful, but not here."
Hear, hear. What do you think?
