Questions, comments or suggested links? Contact me at: rhanson40@gmail.com Chapter-By-Chapter Readings and Links for Mass Communication, Second Edition Now Available

Magazines and Body Image

Is There In Truth No Beauty? Part I

Truth #3 states that Everything from the margin moves to the center, and we've seen yet another example of this take place between the second and third editons of Living in a Media World. You may recall back in 2005, Dove shook up the world of beauty advertising with its Campaign For Real Beauty featuring attractive ladies of a variety of sizes posing in their underwear. Around the same time, Nike ran ads portraying athletic women with "big butts" and "thunder thighs," leading some observes to ask whether the era of the waif and heroin chic was over? Were we going to see more images of "realistic looking" women in magazine features and advertisements?

That, of course, begs the question as to what constitutes real women. Are size 2 women not real? Or is it more that average sized women are ignored by the media. There is also the issue that while the women in the Dove and Nike ads are not small, they are also not average looking.

Then, in 2008, questions surfaced in the form of an article from The New Yorker as to how much the photos of Dove's "lumpy ladies" had been manipulated. Had they been retouched to make them look better? New Yorker said yes, photographer Annie Leibovitz said "no," and eventually the digital artist who did the retouching said that the New Yorker had misrepresented his remarks.

Dove has followed up this campaign with a campaign celebrating how women look as they age in support of a line of "Pro-Age" products. These ads again were controversial for featuring nude (non-explicit) photos of women over the age of 50. And once again, they were shot by Annie Leibovitz.

So while we can have just about any imaginable image of young, thin women published without exciting too much comment, as soon as the models are either larger sized (relatively) or older, the photos start becoming controversial. Now, four years after Dove's launch of the Campaign For Real Beauty in the United States, the question is - have alternative images of beauty made it into the mainstream?

Is There In Truth No Beauty? Part II

Glamour magazine set off somewhat of an Internet phenomenon last year with a small photo it ran on page 194 of its September 2009 issue. It's a nearly nude image of model Lizzi Miller sitting on a bench with a great big smile on her face. As photos go, it's no more than PG. Certainly other photos in the magazine, either editorial or advertising, showed more skin. So why is this photo garnering so much attention? Ms. Miller has a small belly pooch. Glamour Editor-In-Chief Cindi Leive writes on her blog:

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.

The photo goes with a story by Akiba Solomon on women feeling comfortable in their own skin. The photo has no caption, no mention of who the model is, no mention of the fact she wears a size 12/14 and weighs 180 pounds.

The response to this small photo - it's not a cover photo, not promoed anywhere in the magazine - has been big.

There have been at least 770 comments added to Editor Leive's blog post about the photo, not to mention the e-mails. Many of the comments are laudatory. One woman called it "the most amazing photograph I've ever seen in any women's magazine," while another wrote, "Thank you Lizzi, for showing us your beauty and confidence, and giving woman a chance to hopefully recognize a little of their own also."

Miller loves the reaction she's had to the photo:

"When I was young I really struggled with my body and how it looked because I didn't understand why my friends were so effortlessly skinny. As I got older I realized that everyone's body is different and not everyone is skinny naturally--me included! I learned to love my body for how it is, every curve of it. I used to be so self-conscious in a bikini because my stomach wasn't perfectly defined. But everyone has different body shapes! And it's not all about the physical! If you walk on the beach in your bikini with confidence and you feel sexy, people will see you that way too."

Not everyone loved the photo and what it stood for, however. One commenter wrote, "I must say I have to agree that the normalization of obesity is a disturbing trend today."Another commented, "We have enough problems with obesity in the US and don't need your magazine promoting anymore of it. Shame on Glamour for thinking this was sexy!"

More interesting was the criticism of Glamour for using an image like the one of Miller as a publicity stunt:

[W]hile I do give Glamour a big thank you for showing us Lizzi at all, it was to create temporary buzz and to give themselves a pat on the back for "doing the right thing" for America's women and girls, but when it comes down to dollars and cents they aren't going to change a thing. Not being a cynic here...just a realist. Take care. I wish it could be different too.

Student journalist Rebecca Koons, writing in University of Iowa's Daily Iowan, argues a similar position:

The only problem is, this type of positive attitude toward accepting and being oneself is not marketed nearly as much as it should be. We do have publications such as Self that are taking things in a healthier direction — aside from that whole Kelly Clarkson debacle. One can only hope that Glamour and others will begin to follow suit. While a total upheaval of beauty and fashion may never happen, one can only hope that baby steps like these will only help women find solace in embracing what they were born with.

Of course, none of this addresses the issue that Lizzi Miller at size 12/14 is hardly a plus size, though she is considered a plus size model. Even when there were magazines such as Grace and Mode targeted at size 12 women and larger, there were charges that only "skinny" plus-size models need apply.

Is There In Truth No Beauty? Part III

Self magazine has had it's own controversy over the honesty of their portrayal of how women look - specifically singer Kelly Clarkson. The American Idol star was featured on the September 2009 cover of the magazine where her image went through the usual digital retouching for color correction and the like. The photo editor also added in a few digital hair extensions, and while he or she was at it, slimmed Clarkson down considerably. Usually such changes are met with denials or statements that there were only minimal changes made. But Self editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger said that when it comes to magazine cover shoots, editors should do whatever it takes to make the cover model look her best. Even if that means changing her body digitally. Danziger writes in her blog:

Portraits like the one we take each month for the cover of SELF are not supposed to be unedited or a true-to-life snapshot (more on that in a moment). When the cover girl arrives at the shoot, she is usually unmade up and casually dressed, and could be mistaken for a member of the crew or the editorial team in many cases. Once we do her makeup and hair, and dress her in beautifully styled outfits and then light her, we then set the best portrait photographer we can on a road to finding a pose and capturing a moment that shows her at her best...

Did we alter her appearance? Only to make her look her personal best. Did we publish an act of fiction? No. Not unless you think all photos are that. But in the sense that Kelly is the picture of confidence, and she truly is, then I think this photo is the truest we have ever put out there on the newsstand. I love her spirit and her music and her personality that comes through in our interview in SELF. She is happy in her own skin, and she is confident in her music, her writing, her singing, her performing.

Usually when we talk about the ethics of digital photo editing, we're getting at the honesty and authenticity of the image. But in the case of the Clarkson cover, the question is more what kind of message is the magazine sending to its readers. The Clarkson story was about "Total Body Confidence," but the cover image seems to say that how you really look isn't good enough. Note that Self magazine was not willing to sell us permission to reprint the Clarkson cover in your book.