Want to be happier, more spiritually fulfilled, truer to yourself? Then forget about reality. Embrace consumer-driven fantasy as a way of life.
That’s the real message behind an extraordinary blog entry from Self magazine editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger justifying her decision to reduce American Idol legend Kelly Clarkson’s body by about a half dozen sizes on the mag’s September cover.
For the record, Danziger told ABC News yesterday, “We didn’t make her look thinner. I added a little height because I wanted the impact of that cover.” ‘Course, Kelly would have to be upward of 8 feet tall to look that svelte.
Clarkson is the latest in a long line of celebs cruelly mocked by gossip rags for her weight – celebs who have gone through the indignity of having to apologize for their bodies include Oprah, Kim Kardashian, Kirstie Alley and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Although she has yet to comment on Danziger’s blog, Clarkson did say in January that she was embarrassed that her record company had similarly retouched her CD cover. (One wonders why she didn’t insist they change it back?)
Danziger seems oblivious to the irony that Clarkson’s faked body appears on the cover of Self’s “Total Body Confidence Issue,” in which Clarkson attacks the image bullies.”When people talk about my weight, I’m like, ‘You seem to have a problem with it; I don’t, I’m fine!’ ” she says.
Titled “Pictures that please us” (apparently Self’s editorial policy), Danziger’s essay on Self.com reads more like a Dadaist manifesto than an editorial defense. It’s filled with all manner of self-contradiction, equivocation, and mystification.
“Of course we do retouching,” Danziger concedes. “We correct color and other aspects of the digital pictures.” She says nothing about correcting a person’s entire body. The altered pic better represents Clarkson’s “strong and confident” spirit – especially when it comes to her body-acceptance, according to the Self editor.
“Kelly says she doesn’t care what people think of her weight,” Danziger says. (Um, so why give her a fake bod?) “So we say: That is the role model for the rest of us.”
Channeling Plato, who believed actual beings were secondhand copies of their idea, Danziger claims that the photographic lie makes Clarkson “look her personal best.” And she claims “this photo is the truest” the mag has published. So, I’m totally justified in thinking that at my personal best, I’m the image of Robert Pattinson? Shame it doesn’t seem so when I look in the mirror.
“The truest beauty is the kind that comes from within,” Danziger concludes. Some Self readers are up in arms about Danziger’s peculiar reasoning.
“This is the definition of hypocritical,” reads one of the 256 reader comments that had been posted by yesterday afternoon. Only a handful are remotely positive. Danziger does have a point when she insists that unlike real news outlets, Self never claims to give us “a true-to-life snapshot” of the world.
Its real mission? Ads. Ads. Ads. And more ads.
Many of the mag’s stories are little more than thinly disguised advertorials.
So when Danziger asserts that the ideal, untrue, manipulated, fictional images in Self are meant to “inspire women to want to be their best,” she’s talking about the fantastical, mythic best pushed on us by corporate marketing.
Danziger preaches the Gospel of Consumerism. Danziger not only spreads the Gospel, she seems to be a true convert. In a creepy section of the blog, she admits that she used to regularly retouch her personal photos.
She writes that after completing a marathon five years ago, she was upset that her “hips looked big in some of the photos.” So, she asked her “art department to shave off a little.”
Unwittingly, Danziger has pulled back the curtain on the darker aspects of marketing, including its power to manipulate otherwise intelligent, confident individuals and its druglike power to transport us to an illusionary world where we are in control of our lives, our jobs, our families, our health.
Anything that doesn’t fit into that bubble can just be retouched.
Source: Philly.com
