Here’s Our Winner! ‘Redbook’ Shatters Our ‘Faith’ In Well, Not Publishing, But Maybe God

It’s time for the big reveal for our unretouched cover-image contest, and, well, our winner is the July cover of Redbook, on which country singer Faith Hill (and, on a separate cover, her hubby Tim McGraw) appeared as beautiful and accessible-seeming as usual. What’s uncanny about this cover is that when the image was passed our way, we had just been flipping through Redbook, reminding ourselves that we’d stop hating women’s magazines as soon as our lives became shitty enough to warrant reading Redbook and our husbands and immune systems suddenly replaced celebrities and consumerism on our personal Most Toxic lists, when we paused to think, “Wow, Faith Hill is really hot.” We’d had this thought before about Faith Hill, probably in the context of a Revlon display at the CVS or something, but reading this spread in the July Redbook we had one of those moments we often have with Katie Holmes wherein we were like, “Wow. She is just really really really pretty. Although we don’t much like her taste in men.” Anyway, after the jump, we present the before and after of Faith Hill, Redbook magazine, July 2007. We’ll be posting more on this throughout the day, including a point-by-point annotation (read: close-ups!) of just what Redbook editors/art directors found so abhorrent about an already-above-average 39-year-old country music star and mom to three that they had to retouch her into something more befitting the cover of Cosmopolitan.

Update: Annotated Airbrushing List

Some of you are complaining about the animation above, animation we worked long and hard to bring you. So ungrateful! But we anticipated that. That’s why we’ve just put up this, uh, numerically-annotated version of the unretouched photo without animation. Compare, contrast, cackle, cry… whatever it is you guys do.

Update: Why we hate the fact that Redbook did this.

Imagine a scenario in which a powerful, self-made, self-possessed woman deigns to follow the orders of a much-less powerful, egomaniacal foreigner and crash-diets herself to aesthetic “acceptability” so she can appear on the cover of an American magazine available to the public for, at most, 4 weeks. That scenario is exactly what happened when Oprah Winfrey was asked — and agreed — to appear on the cover of Vogue‘s October 1998 issue. As the story goes, Winfrey spent months whittling herself to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour’s exacting standards so that she would look acceptable in a Steven Meisel-photograph for the cover. “If you want to be on the cover of Vogue and Anna Wintour says you have to be down to 150lbs – that’s what you gotta do,” Winfrey told the BBC, adding, tellingly, “I didn’t think for one moment ‘Now I am going to be a Vogue model’ nor even did I think I could hold that weight.”

The Vogue cover turned out well, as many remember: Oprah looked hot. But there was something spooky beneath the Vogue image’s Meisel-perfect, glossy veneer; namely, the idea that even a woman who had made her fortune validating women’s strengths, hopes and dreams — and becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet in the process — would so eagerly and willingly help to perpetuate the “cover lie” of a medium that has made its mark by invalidating women’s strengths, hopes and dreams with an endless parade of stories on how to be thinner, sexier, trendier, and — ugh — better in bed.

The post we put up yesterday of an unretouched Redbook cover image caused a bit of a stir. It was meant to. But more than courting publicity and traffic, the image we obtained and displayed was meant to show just how far the Cover Lie extends; that even in and on a women’s magazine meant for a more mature female audience (working moms, etc.) and featuring a more mature female celebrity (career-woman and mother-of-three Faith Hill) the lies and half-truths continue to be perpetuated. Honestly, it sort of broke our hearts that it was Redbook; the magazine has been criticized before for some questionable covers (see Aniston, Jennifer; Roberts, Julia) and, after all, readers of magazines like Redbook worry that they can’t have it all as it is (the great career, the loving husband, the healthy kids, the perfect body). Plus, at this point in the evolution of the celebrity-sartorial complex, who or what exactly is Redbook — or any number of other women’s magazines — fucking kidding with such a female forgery? Go to any name-brand, pop culture website and you can see galleries upon galleries of images of celebrities (female and male alike) in their normal, un-retouched, unlit and still-sickeningly-hot states. These pictures are perhaps the new cultural currency, as Virginia Heffernan of NY Times wrote the other day (they certainly increase our traffic!) So why do women’s magazines continue to insist on providing readers just the opposite? Is it stubbornness? The selling of fantasy? Or the selling of other things, i.e. advertising revenue? And if so, is it really necessary to shave 10-15 pounds off a woman and erase exactly what it is (the freckles, the moles, the laugh lines) about her that makes her human and accessible and interesting in order to sell a bit of fucking soap? Look at the picture above, and tell us that Faith Hill is not fucking gorgeous and vibrant just the way God — not Photoshop — made her.

Some would say yes, the half-truths of women’s magazine covers and cover-lines are necessary (these people usually work on the business sides of such magazines). Others would say yes because they know no other way, or are too afraid to say no (these people often toil on the editorial sides of such magazines). But as necessary as retouching may seem in order to fill the coffers of corporate behemoths like Procter & Gamble, Revlon or Warner Brothers Records it is not okay for the rest of us — the readers, that is — that this goes on. In a world where lying, deception, and the fudging of facts has become endemic in everything, all the way up to the highest levels of government, this is yet another example of a fraud being perpetrated on the public… and the public, for the most part, is not yet in on the joke. Magazine-retouching may not be a lie on par with, you know, “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” but in a world where girls as young as eight are going on the South Beach Diet, teenagers are getting breast implants as graduation gifts, professional women are almost required to fetishize handbags, and everyone is spending way too much goddamn time figuring out how to pose in a way that will look as good as that friend with the really popular MySpace profile, it’s fucking wrong. And we’re glad you agreed.

Update: What the blogosphere/mainstream media had to say about the photograph.

We never expected the outcry that ensued after Monday’s post regarding, uh, a certain Photoshopped, country-singing, women’s magazine cover-subject. Maybe it’s because many of us have worked for women’s magazines, where the daily parade of malnourished Estonian fourteen-year-olds and full-color glossy page-proofs of airbrushed actresses sort of inured us to the bad business that is selling ‘femininity’. Sort of, that is, because if you’re the kind of woman who cares about other women — or, you know, we guess you could be a man caring about women, that’s allowed here — it’s hard to escape the fact that women, if you believe the media, are increasingly expected to look like female avatars. (Unless they are young girls, in which case, they are supposed to look like hookers). Anyway, apparently there are a lot more people out there who care about women than we realized; the response to our unretouched Redbook cover image started off slow, built to a crescendo that peaked on Wednesday, and is still humming along nicely. (11,500 Google hits and counting.) After the jump, and without further ado, what some in the blogosphere/mainstream media had to say about the dirty business that is the mass-marketing of the female forgery.

ABC News:
Jezebel.com takes a look at a Redbook cover shoot of Faith Hill — before and after the photoshopping. It will make you gasp.

Feministing:
Thanks to Jezebel, we have yet another example of how fucked up magazine airbrushing is. Perhaps at her next concert Faith Hill will dedicate this song to the crack photoshopping team at Redbook.

VH1:
Check out that picture of Faith Hill and she’s lookin’ pretty darn fine for a millionaire mom of three who’s about to turn the big 4-0. She’s even on the cover of Redbook this month! Anddddd that’s where her trouble begins. Jezebel got their hands on the original version of Faith’s cover photo prior to it being touched up with the magical tools that only magazines and wizards possess, and holy Hollywood standards are the results horrifying. The more you look at the touched up cover picture, the more you’ll wonder why we as a society like our celebs to look like straight-up aliens. If the difference in her arm’s shape and size isn’t enough to freak you out, check out her eyes, her back, her posture and, oh, her disappearing hand. Faith was way better looking before she went under the digital knife, crow’s feet and all.

Worcester Telegram:
This happened on the cover of Redbook. Not Playboy or Vogue or even Cosmopolitan, but Redbook, which is supposedly geared to more mature female readers. The fact that this same July cover includes lead stories such as “The new skinny pills — yes, they work!” and “Look and feel your hottest” only underlies the utterly depressing and spooky state of the American medium…. I’m appalled at what Redbook has done to Faith Hill, and everyone else should be, too, and this includes men, because most of you have wives or moms or girlfriends or sisters, or especially young daughters, the latter of whom are increasingly doomed to be swept away by our culture’s perfection-obsessed tsunami.

Women’s Voices for Change:
Because there’s no way a woman almost 40 years old can have wrinkles and be on the cover of a magazine … And be sure to also read this great analysis of why it matters.

TMZ:
The cover of this month’s Redbook has a stunning photo of country megastar Faith Hill. Well, someone resembling Faith Hill! Thanks to our friends at jezebel.com, who dug up the original photo, TMZ readers can have a look at Faith in all her real glory, and see how she was “cleaned up” for her cover. Through the miracle of Photoshop, they gave 39-year-old Faith a body like 24-year-old Carrie Underwood! For a mother of three just a few months shy of 40 with a non-stop schedule, the real Faith looks amazing!

Back In Skinny Jeans:
If someone like Faith Hill is not good enough as is to be on the cover of a woman’s magazine, than doesn’t it make you question why some of us are killing ourselves trying to look celebrities who don’t even look like themselves. It also sends the message that no matter how beautiful you are, you’re still not perfect enough. Hmmmm?

CNet News:
As individual women, it can be easy to wonder why we fall into the trap of trying to live up to an unattainable standard. It’s something we absorb on an almost subconscious level. Deconstructing this month’s Redbook magazine cover shows us just how manufactured the images of beauty we see really are. I didn’t think twice about the cover image of country singer and actress Faith Hill when I first saw it. But an untouched original photo obtained by Jezebel shows just how much “digital magic” even a certified star needs to be ready for her close-up….am at a loss for ways to combat the media’s standards of beauty. But seeing the curtains of digital magic pulled back to reveal reality can remind each of us to give ourselves a break when we look in the mirror.

After Ellen:
To say that magazines contribute to an unattainable ideal is to undersell the point: The art directors and retouchers of the world get paid to create women who literally do not exist and never could. It’s worse than the old Women’s Studies 101 complaints about Barbie’s proportions; everyone already knows Barbie isn’t real. The more insidious — and therefore more dangerous — manipulation occurs when they take away the natural crook of a woman’s arm or tighten up her droopy earlobe. Really: They digitally adjusted her earlobe!…And to add verbal insult to visual injury, the cover line next to Faith Hill’s head screams, “The New Skinny Pills: Yes, They Work!” To my knowledge, science has not yet yielded a pill that can create a 1-inch elbow.

Diet Blog:
Have Redbook gone a bit too far with this one? Jezebel have a wizzy animated picture so you can see all the details. So what’s with the arms? Seriously? Is this what Redbook readers must aspire to? Bone replacement anyone?

Blog Fabulous:
Why Don’t Women Feel Beautiful? Jezebel.com has uncovered the Photoshopping of Faith Hill committed by Redbook Magazine. It should make every woman mad….No wonder regular women feel bad about themselves – none of us walks around with a photoshop editor fixing our acne and wrinkles or making our actual back disappear – yet, we are told we can expect to look like this picture. NO ONE LOOKS LIKE THIS PICTURE – not even Faith Hill and it’s a picture of Faith Hill!

AOL Journals:
Basically, Redbook has taken a majorly attractive 39-year-old woman and digitally airbrushed her back into some indetermine 20-something age, erasing eye wrinkles, thinning out arms and straightening out her back. The end result looks great; it’s just doesn’t look like what Faith Hill actually looks like. What should be done about stuff like this? Not much, I suppose; I don’t see how, say, outlawing the Photoshopping of celebrity covers on women’s magazines would much of anything useful, even if it were constitutionally possible, which it isn’t. But what I think that such extensive Photoshopping indicates is a tacit admission by women’s magazines that the image they’re trying to promote — that they’re trying to get their readers to buy and live — is absolutely unobtainable.

Mama Vision:
Faith Hill is a beautiful, tall, elegant woman, but even she needed to have her imperfections airbrushed out in order to be beautiful enough to grace the cover of Redbook….Why the facade? Why do we accept this? Why do continue you believe this to be true?…It’s all part of the game, and they gotcha. I guarantee you will walk past a newstand in the next 24 hours, compare yourself to the covermodel, and think about what you can do to measure up. The fashion industry is demented. From today forward, they can kiss my ass.
Yeah, ours too!