Glamour Shock

I happened across this nugget last week somewhere but, when I went to the newsroom to pick up my snail mail, once again my copy of Glamour had done AWOL.

Again.

Figures. It's a popular magazine. No wonder it has been my favourite lady mag since I was 12, although I confess to straying a few times. 

Anyway, I haven't been to a newsstand to actually buy another copy. Then just forgot.

Today my friend Cate Kustanczy tweeted me a reminder.

Look Ma! No six-pack! No stick legs!

The reaction has been amazing, and no wonder.

It's a photo that measures all of three by three inches in our September issue, but the letters about it started to flood my inbox literally the day Glamour hit newsstands. (As editor-in-chief, I pay attention to this stuff!) "I am gasping with delight...I love the woman on p 194!" said one...then another, and another, andanotherandanotherandanother. So...who is she? And what on earth is so special about her?

Here's the deal: The picture wasn't of a celebrity. It wasn't of a supermodel. It was of a woman sitting in her underwear with a smile on her face and a belly that looks...wait for it...normal.

What? No plastic fantastic photoshopping of horrors? (Check out the latest scandale in that department.) More. More. More.

Why she looks like the women I saw this afternoon in the gym -- and one of them was doing hand-stand push-ups.

Here's Jezebel on the matter of the matter:

As Leive says, we've gotten to the point where showing a woman with folds in her skin or a belly that sticks out (who isn't in a "before and after" feature) is a radical move for a women's magazine, even though that's what every woman actually sees in the mirror every day.

<SNIP>

Glamour has a better track record than other women's magazines when it comes to showing women of all shapes and sizes. As mentioned earlier, we liked that the magazine's May issue used a plus-size model in their swimsuit fashion spread but didn't mention her size or pat themselves on the back for featuring a "normal-sized" woman.

But still, being the ladymag with the most body diversity isn't that hard when your competition is Vogue.

One or two occasional soft-bodied models do not diversity make.

Incidentally, this fashion show in Australia is some kind of awesome!

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

Looks great to me...
anyone that can smile like that in that situation is pretty comfortable with their image...
[BTW Antonia - your treeware column on Muarice Vellacott's private member's bill on divorce today doesn't seem to be set up for comments - otherwise - I'd comment about an organization called Fathers for Fathers (sic).]

[glenfitz]

Perhaps the realistic picture of a woman---minus the Barbie doll attribute of physical perfection---represents some break-through where magazines have left behind the objectification of women.

But there is another sense one gains from this discussion--and that is a sense of narcissistic self-preoccupation.

We simply have become too decadent as a society and as a civilization to break our gaze away from our physical form---one way or another, that gaze remains locked on either the physical perfection or imperfection that form represents.

In the meantime, real and critical issues of feminism continue to pass by us (as a people). One of those issues can be seen in the way the feminist movement shows signs of melting into the neo-conservative militarism of our age. That is a militarism which promises a suppression of the individual more complete and fundamental than any tyranny in our history.

Yet, here it is. In the exhibited and naked form of the lady in the picture it is possible to that our collective gaze is really locked on our decadent selves.

[anon]

I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I don't question that the picture is relevant to the post.

It's just that, in my workplace, it's perfectly acceptable to be reading the newspaper at work as long as we get our work done. I don't need to alt-tab away if my boss comes walking up. However, it is extremely unacceptable to have a picture of a naked person on your screen. And while this woman isn't actually nude, that isn't apparent unless you look carefully.

I get that it isn't technically NSFW, (and certainly take no offence at the image itself on a personal level) but I had no warning that it was coming and would very much prefer to be able to make an informed decision about whether there should be a picture of what appears at first glance to be a nude body on my screen, rather than unexpectedly stumbling upon it on what I thought was a work-safe site.

[deBeauxOs]

Good grief glenfitz -

Sometimes a woman who is "bien dans sa peau" is just that. An inspiration to us all