Cover Girl Culture: Who Wants to Be a Supermodel?

“I didn't eat yesterday

And I'm not going to eat today

And I'm not going to eat tomorrow

'Cuz I'm going to be a supermodel!”

Think back. Chances are pretty good that if you are a woman you desperately wanted to be a model or an actress at one point in your life, be it fifteen years ago or fifteen minutes ago. If you’re a man, there’s certainly an excellent chance that you aspired to date a supermodel at some juncture. Though I wince while doing it, I can remember high school pretty well. My self-esteem was somewhere in the subterranean level and it raised or lowered based on my perceived social status, looks, and current boyfriend.

Unfortunately, things aren’t getting much better for today’s girls. The issues I struggled with in college are popping up in high schools and the problems of my high school days are now considered middle school shenanigans. Back in April I wrote about the sexualization of girls, a disturbing situation I call ‘sexy babies.’ This issue must be on a lot of mom’s minds, because it was the most traffic I’ve ever had on my site. As a result of the piece, I was sent a copy of Cover Girl Culture, a documentary addressing the world of fashion, modeling, advertising, and their impact on tween and teen girls.

I have watched this film twice and taken four furiously typed pages of notes. They are barely legible, even typed, and contain dozens of punctuations such as, “HA!” and “WTF?” I consider myself media literate, but this documentary still made my jaw drop. The director, Nicole Clark, wove together interviews with young girls, fashion magazine execs, psychologists, motivational speakers, models, and teachers, which she then layered with images from Teen Vogue and ELLE magazines in an incredibly powerful way. I promise you, if you have a daughter, you will begin seriously considering home schooling within the first fifteen minutes of this film.  

A Teen Vogue featured celebrity fashionista.

The most difficult part of this review is deciding which fashion editor’s quotes to use, as they were all so horrifying. The Teen Vogue and ELLE editors interviewed maintain earnest faces while insisting their magazines feature healthy body images, relevant lifestyle articles, and a needed escape into fashion fantasy. They help girls “reinvent themselves and decide who they are going to be.” How generous. Anne Slowey, a Feature Editor at ELLE and currently my new imagined face of Satan, referred to the fashion layouts as personally rewarding for readers. “We are realistic that this [fashion spread] is a dream. The ‘dream pages.’ Women project themselves into the fantasy of what they want to see for themselves. The magic of that exercise is joyful, it’s really rewarding.” Oh, definitely. Clearly drugs are still a huge problem in the fashion world. 

The notes I scribbled to myself while watching all these images were less than joyful: “More fashion pages that make me want to gag. And starve. And weep … Ugh. Too skinny. …That’s just gross … Why are we selling this shit to our kids?” The sad news is that our kids are buying it in spades. The film is filled with interviews with girls from ages 6 to 18. It's the hardest part to watch, as the girls all want to change their faces, bodies, and looks. They want to be supermodels, because they think it's the most effective way to be respected and admired. 

One particular comment by an interviewee struck a nerve with me. In reference to some advertising, she said, “I resent that you are showing these things to my young child.” Correction: You are showing these things to your young child. I control my child’s media consumption closely, particularly advertising. I have made a commitment to my daughter, and that is to be aware of what is happening in her world, educate her on what is happening in her world, and protect her from what is happening until she can handle it for herself.

 

From recent ELLE cover shoots. Et Tu, Gwen Stefani? 

Marketers and advertisers are smarter than you. (If not smarter, definitely wilier. Don’t take offense – it’s their job.) If you let them, they will find your fears, and they will play to them. They will figure out who you are, and how to get in, and will then tell you who you should strive to be. The best way to win against these attacks? Don’t read/watch/listen. Once you’ve thrown out your juicy celebrity gossip rags and glossy fashion mags and canceled your cable, stay vigilant. Become media literate, assess and treat your own self-image issues, and make sure you and your partner share the same values in raising your children.

Cover Girl Culture features a startling statistic about a year’s subscription to Teen Vogue: It contains 1,730 pages of advertisements and 590 pages of articles. That means the few articles featuring real girls and covering real issues are sandwiched between hundreds of images of skinny, sexualized advertising. I spent some time online at both ELLE and Teen Vogue. The sites were hard to navigate, featuring hundreds of pages and tons of advertising. To get through the ELLE content, I had to click out of a full page Stoli Vodka ad no less than 12 times – with every link the ad reappeared. Teen Vogue was dense with celebrity pictures, fashion tips, and beauty advice. The message was clear – this is how you need to look; this is who you should be. The ELLE homepage is financed by Macy’s and their “Impulse” campaign. A link to Macy’s and the tagline “Love it; Want it; Get it now” is plastered all over the website.

One of Teen Vogue's featured 'real girls' fashion inspiration.

 

 Images from Teen Vogue's current Prom inspiration webpages. 

I don't know many high schoolers who look this stylized. 

If you have a child, watching Cover Girl Culture is a great way to up your own media literacy. It is powerful, educational, and happily, accessible. While I love Jean Kilbourne and everything she does, her films are difficult to find for personal use. You can’t take her films out of the reference section of our library, they are not on Netflix, and at roughly $250 a pop, they’re not in my budget. For $29, you can get a copy of Cover Girl Culture for personal use, which I really appreciate as an individual consumer.

I was able to convince my husband to watch the film with me, and his response was just as interesting as the documentary itself. When I wasn’t swearing at the screen or keeping up a running side commentary, I was watching him sideways to see how he was reacting. When it was over, he said, “You are L’s best role model. I can be a role model, but only to a point. You are it.” The film must have left a lasting mark on him, as he randomly shouted out over the next few days, “YOU ARE HER ROLE MODEL!”

In the end, this is the real message. Children are incredibly impressionable and are mimicking what they see before they can even talk.  A psychologist featured in the film names a positive maternal self-image as the first line of defense against the media attack on our children. My heart broke when I first saw my daughter checking out her own butt in the mirror – a behavior I have not been able to break her of, and one she learned from me. Recently I realized the danger in letting her sit on the sink with me while I do my makeup. Running out of the house last week she yelled, “Wait! I have to put my pretty face on!” Ouch. A tender mother-daughter morning ritual is put aside and I now sneak my makeup on while she’s doing something else. On a good day, I skip the make up altogether and show her that our faces are ‘pretty faces’ all on their own. It looks like we’re both growing.

You can see more of Nicole Clark's work at www.covergirlculture.com. 

Judge Not Lest... Aww, Go Ahead. Ye Be Judged Either Way

After a recent mouthy comment on a friend's website, she graciously offered to have me write a guest post for her blog. How fabulous! How bloggy! Check it out...

The Bebe Diaries

If you are a follower of Bebe Diaries (and who isn't?), you might have seen the sassy-pants comment I made following Katie's latest blog about a teen parent she made friends with at a local playground. Having a little piece of web heaven myself, I would have responded to this type of feedback on my blog by unfriending you on Facebook. Katie, being the even-tempered angle that she is, called me and asked me to write a guest blog. So I can talk even more trash. I know, right? I so lucked out by being friends with her. Anyway, enough sucking up. Here's my guest blog...

A Postpartum Mother's Day: Ah, the Memories

On this, my fourth Mother’s Day, I can’t help but reflect back on my first Mother’s Day with a snort. To be fair, I was a mere seven weeks postpartum and still dealing with a raging case of postpartum crazies, so there was no way it was going to end well. (Remind me to tell you about the postpartum crazies some other time.)

I was adamant. This was my first major holiday with baby, and it was Mother’s Day, damnit. We were going to have a big formal gathering and go out to dinner as a family to celebrate all the women in the family (and by all the women, I meant me). Technically speaking, the baby had been with us for Easter, but it was the day after her birth, we were in the hospital in a state of abject terror, and we’re not even quasi-religious.  

For the blessed event, my mother’s parents came up from Florida to see their first great-grandchild. While I love my mom and I love my Granny, it is not unfair to suggest that the two of them together can be a tense combination. With the women inside and two older generations of men outside giving my husband pointers on staining the deck, the house was vibrating with anxiety.

At the appointed time, we all got dolled up and headed to my parents house for a photo shoot. I had a sweet little dress and sweater for the baby, and imagined a beautiful and touching series of photos showcasing three generations of women tenderly gazing on their newest female member.

I just found the resulting photo and was planning on posting along with this piece, but I’m pretty sure my mom reads my blog, and if she sees it on the web, she’ll stop babysitting for me. It’s worse than I remembered. I’m in my stretchy dress with the forgiving stomach area, boobs straining the lycra to the max. I appear to be wearing nylon stockings, probably the only time in the past five or ten years I’ve done so. I imagine this was in an effort to contain my gelatinous gut. 

My mother is wearing her black ‘slacks’ and white button down, her go-to ‘dressy’ outfit at the time. I remember her being only slightly irritated with me that I requested we dress for dinner. We are standing behind an old-fashioned wing back chair in which my grandmother sits, holding the baby. You cannot see the baby’s face. We are not touching. Our smiles are strained, eyes glazed. I was probably crying or yelling at someone minutes before. Or both. There is one really sweet photo of my parents with the baby, caught in a candid moment when I was probably safely out of the room.

How I chose to dress the poor babe on that holiest of days.

Onward to dinner. The whole motley crew meets my brother and his wacked out girlfriend at the restaurant. The relationship was short lived, and to say she was uncomfortable at this particular gathering is an understatement. I was proud as can be, taking in all the cooing from passing customers and staff. We fretted over the placement of her car seat – was it safe on this upside down highchair? Will someone knock it over? Should I put it on the floor? Will someone step on her? Can we effing order already order before she wakes up and starts crying and I panic because I don’t know what to do when she wakes up in public??

Once we’ve ordered and are settled in, the Mother's Day cards come out. I’ve got one for my grandmother and my mother, my dad has one for my mom, etc. And of course, everyone has one for me. Everyone that is, except my husband. His response? A very honest, “I didn’t know. You’re not my mother.” Yeah, well I know your mother, buddy, and she would not approve. I think I cried at the table over it, and then bitched about it to him for days. Or I’m sure what felt like days to him.

To write this piece, I got up and dug through my card box. I had a total of nine cards from that first Mother’s Day. Including ones from my husband’s sister, brother, and parents. So someone got the memo. Anyway, I digress. As we’re opening cards at the restaurant, I start getting a little emotional. Sweep away a few tears here and there. I’m doing okay until I open a card that has a picture of the baby and I glued on the front. It says, “Daughter, you’re a mother now, and you know what it’s like to hold a little someone in your arms and realize you would give up your own life to protect this precious being.”

I start with a fresh round of tears, and say “Oh, Mom.” My mother says, “It’s not from me, it’s from your father.” SOB. I. Lose. My. Shit. I actually have to put the card away and come back to it later. The whole time my brother’s girlfriend is looking at me as though to say, “I will never, ever get old and fat and married and conduct myself in this totally disgusting manner.”

Later, I finally open the card and read the rest of the sappy Hallmark prose, along with another picture of baby and a note from my dad: “Twice blessed. A perfect daughter and a perfect granddaughter. Love, Pops.” I may have been on the floor at this point, I don’t recall. I do remember that we took dessert to go because I was at Def Con 1 due to baby’s pending consciousness.

Of course, I now know that a sleeping newborn is manna from the gods. This Mother’s Day, like most days, I awoke to the sound of thumping feet on the hardwood floor and the scrambling of a tiny person climbing up our bed. She allows a few minutes of laziness before demanding we go downstairs, and the day is full tilt from there. It’s all on the table: eating dog food, playing in the toilet, writing on the walls, screaming in the grocery store, pushing and biting other kids.

This Mother’s Day we continued a tradition of sorts. Yard work, playing outside, homemade presents and a clean house and dinner courtesy of the best daddy around. (He learned pretty quickly after I went all Carrie on him that first year. And in his defense, we regularly both forget our own wedding anniversary and other such events.) I don’t need a fancy dinner, or a carnation at the local pancake house for being a mom, or a big parade. The way I choose to spend Mother’s Day is pretty much how we spend most summer days. So that either means I have really low expectations, or my family treats me like Mother’s Day is every day. I’m sure you know which one of these I choose to believe.