In Vogue, and Out

Vogue Magazine Cover from the 1950s
They don't make them like this anymore

I got the latest Vogue for "free" because of my accumulated Chapters/Indigo points. I do like going through the magazine's glossy pages, although I'm always disappointed at the non-fashionable fashion that makes the cut these days. We have come a long way from the heyday of Vogue, when glamorous models and women fronted the magazine (and its interior, too).

The front cover of the September 2013 issue has a pouty actress, one of the new breed that's taking over the media scene (television, magazines, movies, gossip columns). For what it's worth, it is Jennifer Lawrence (I doubt that she'll stick around long enough to be a memorable cultural icon).



Besides her pouty presence, the magazine has crowded the front cover which so many headlines that it looks exactly like the gossip/fashion magazine Cosmopolitan, which I haven't bought in years.


Salacious and crowded cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine
for September 2013


Farah Fawcette on the Vogue cover of July 1978.
Much less crowded.

I suspect I will continue to avoid buying Vogue in the future (except to redeem my card points).

In this September's issue of Vogue, I skipped through a mannequin-like pose of what I thought was a model. "Another emaciated, dead-looking fashion shot for an uninteresting dress," I thought, as I turned the page.

I found out, as correspondent David J., at Laura Wood's The Thinking Housewife writes:

Good day! While perusing the CNN website recently, I came upon a nearly cheesecake photograph of Marissa Mayer, the current CEO of Yahoo! The picture, intended for this spread in Vogue magazine, immediately reminded me of the following maxim by the late Lawrence Auster.

David J. quotes Lawrence Auster's maxim:

When men occupy a high office, it is for the purpose of doing a job. The job comes first. When women occupy a high office, it is for their self and their vanity. Public boasting about their “power” comes first, along with displays of themselves.

And he continues:

what amazes me about Ms. Mayer is that, despite her reputable academic accomplishments and immense merits in Silicon Valley, she still apparently places her sexual beauty at center stage.

Laura relies:

Well, what would you expect her to do? Of course, she’s using her attractiveness and the novelty of her position to seek attention. She is doing her job. I am sure that’s partly why she was hired though, of course, it would never be openly stated. She would be remiss in not fulfilling these expectations. She is doing her job.

The rest of the interaction is here, with other comments added.

Women may still want to look feminine and men may still want feminine (and pretty) women around, but the image of the pretty woman has changed.

We now have skinny, sculptural women who look like the manequins that pose in store windows. They have dead, expressionless eyes, and stiff wooden bodies. I suppose men are going for this since it shows some kind of prestige. After all, in this feminist world, a working woman, who can also pose for glamour magazines like Vogue, is a big catch. And her skinniness and quasi-inhumanness is a small price to pay for the prestige.

Still, I wonder how long it will be before men outright refuse to be around women like Mayer, who can probably be charming and feminine in her interactions, but who at some point will have to behave like the business woman she has to be in order not to run her company to the ground.

Or, she might assume a subsidiary, but superficially glossy position, and give the real meat of the running of a company to a ruthless male. They can call him all the names, while she gets all the praise.

Again, this is temporary. There is no guarantee that the "ruthless" male won't run her down, or out, while she's busy arranging child-care schedules and fashion shoots with ladies' magazines. Actually, I think that there is ample guarantee that a male colleague will do just that.


Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, posing in a rubber-like dress for the prestigious fashion magazine Vogue,
in the September 2013 issue.

She is wearing a Michael Kors Sheath (that's how the magazine describes the dress) for $1,896

Wikipedia describes a sheath dress as:

...a type of dress designed to fit close to the body, relatively unadorned [which] typically falls around the knees or lower thighs.

The dress looks like its made out of rubber (and that is probably the intended effect), but a closer look in the magazine photo shows that it is wool. Strange, on many counts. Mayer looks like she's lounging on some kind of pool-side chair. And wearing wool? The dress is short-sleeved. Wool dresses are meant for keeping one warm, but Kors and Mayer are not after practicality, but glamour. And finally, this rubber effect gives an S&M quality to the image. Is that how a CEO wants to portray herself? Apparently so.

Here are some hilarious Vogue 2009 shots titled "Pregnant in Prada" of Mayer in maternity wear, and the various Vogue selections to enhance her pregnancy wardrobe:


"Pregnant in Prada"
Mayer in 2009 Vogue

Here is the 2009 Vogue "Tuesday" ensemble, for the pregnant CEO, from a select group of designers:


Clockwise from left:
Boy. by Band of Outsiders leather-trim blazer, $1,395
lagarconne.com

J Brand 340 leggings-style maternity jeans, $195
net-a-porter.com

Proenza Schouler PS1 iPad case, $685
barneys.com

Reed Krakoff oxford leather loafers, $625
net-a-porter.com

Stylish, they are not. But practical and comfortable, for the busy pregnant lady, with the huge pocket book.

Women have come a long way. Actually, not so long. Look at Jennifer Lawrence's Vogue pose from above, a twenty-three-year-old woman who is pouting like Nabokov's pre-adolescent Lolita.


Left: Sue Lyon as Lolita, in Stanley Kubrik's 1962 film Lolita (after Nabokov's 1955 book, Lolita)
Right: Jennifer Lawrence on Vogue's 2013 cover

Women will be women, and girls will be girls. If left to their own devices, they will simply start to pout, or arrange day-care schedules from their top-floor, glass offices.

And back to CEO Mayer.

Paul, at the Thinking Housewife, writes, referring to a 2013 photograph of Mayer:

And she is not even beautiful. She might have been at one time, but no more. She needs to cut her hair.

This may be a harsh, but Mayer asked for it. She is so busy scheduling executive meetings and nanny pick-ups, that her glamour shots of previous years have gone down the tube.

Hers is the look of the veteran do-it-all female of our era.

Here is the 2013 photograph:



The caption to the photograph reads:

Pictured in 2013, Mayer has often been named one of the most powerful women in business. "I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies," she told Vogue magazine. "I'm just geeky and shy and I like to code. ... It's not like I had a grand plan where I weighed all the pros and cons of what I wanted to do—it just sort of happened."

Good excuse: she's just geeky and shy, with a million-dollar wardrobe budget.

Here is Mayer, a few years ago, in 2008 (left), pretty and smiling, and the toll on her "it just sort of happened" face in 2013:



As Paul said: "And she is not even beautiful. She might have been at one time, but no more. She needs to cut her hair."

Of course, she had to upgrade (re-upgrade, I wonder how long it took to make her look that good) her look for the September 2013 Vogue article, but its back to business when she gets back to business.

Back to the Vogue issue. The eccentric photographer Annie Leibovitz has done a great job of portraying the Irish landscape, with her series of photographs. The clothes, as is usual in the 21st century depiction of style and beauty, are atrocious, but the scenery is stunningly beautiful. Here's one:



But this is its only redeeming quality.

More dead mannequins in the September 2013 Vogue:


The caption reads:

Tripping The Light Fantastic

Built for women who seem to be really, really going places: practical, everyday chic—no fidgety patterns or trims to muck up travel, intergalactic or otherwise.

The models have names:

Raquel (standing on the right) is wearing:
- Narciso Rodriguez tangerine shift, $1,895
neimanmarcus.com. Céline necklace. Michael Kors heels.

Toni:
- Balenciaga wool-mohair sweater with plaster effect ($1,545)
- Balenciaga Crepe pants ($1,235)
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Nasty Gals Do It Better, But In a Pretty Way

Nasty Gal in Awesome Shredded Jeans

My yahoo email page spouts out ads which at the moment I can't be bother to block. The most recent said this:

"Nasty Gal," with a subheading "Awesome shredded jeans."

When I returned to the main page to click on the ad, it had changed to something else. I googled "Nasty Gal" (nothing else, and with no quotes) and the first link I found said:

Nasty Gal.com - Nasty Gals Do It Better

Under the website's "About" page, this is who the nasty gal is:

Who is a Nasty Gal? We like to think of her as the coolest girl in the room‚ pulling off whatever wildly unique piece that suits the mood. At Nasty Gal, we are our customer. Because of this, our job is an easy one: inspire and be inspired by cool girls the world over.

And who is the inspiration?

The name was inspired by the song and album “Nasty Gal.” Betty Davis [NOT Bette Davis, who another kind of gal who could run circles around this crude and crass one], the patron saint of badass women, was known for her unapologetically sexy funk music which comprises our vision of femininity - complete with lamé platform thigh-high boots.

And of course, the perennial disclaimer:

“Nasty Gal is inclusive, but also cool. A lot of companies make the mistake of being one or the other.” - Brett, Producer

Nasty Gal makes insipidly pretty clothes (my theory has always been that all girls want to look pretty, and all women want to look beautiful, except the rabidly angry ones like the singer). A name like "nasty" gets turned around to mean "cool" which is the quintessential claim to fitting in with the crowd these days. Nasty means cool, cool means fitting in, fitting in means looking pretty, since, as I wrote here in Camera Lucida, even sluts at Slut Walks want to look pretty.


Nasty Gals Trio: Betty Davis, Girl in the Ad, and the Real Bette Davis

Here is the quintessential pretty gal (via Mark Richardson's Oz Conservative blog), who has a website to showcase her pretty items. Well, it actually is all about her. Almost every post has a photo of her, in various poses of happiness at discovering all the pretty things around her which make her look so pretty. This is where it ends, the narcissistic desire of girl-women. The Aussie Pretty Gal is not really a gal. She looks like she is in her mid-thirties. Can't she find something serious to do, like start a charity, or better yet, have children?

Her poor husband pops up in some of her photos, but he's probably quite content to have a prancing girl-woman around without the responsibilities of raising a family. I bet she works too, and the reason why she acquires these relatively, cumulatively, expensive items for herself. (My intuition was right about this. Here's an interview where she talks about having a day job.) I tried to find the meaning of her blog's name Esme and the Laneway. Laneway is a British variation on Lane.

But Esme is more obscure (it's not her real name, which is Marianne). Wikipedia lists Esme Cullen as one of the vampires from the latest series of vampire books The Twilight Series. I've written before that young women these days have a fascination for vampires. This youth-worshiping Esme surely is into that as well. Her literary activity is limited, though. Her list of books are either beauty instructional ones (what else) or she uses books as accessories for her photos. So I doubt she's read the vampire books, but the culture now is so infused with vampirism, she must be aware of them.

Below are photos of Esme (Marianne). It looks like she has someone taking some of the photos  (the outdoor ones, for example), but she can make clever adjustments by shooting her reflection in a mirror.


Ecstasy


Pretty frock for a pretty gal, posing under a sunlight spotlight


The Mirror of Naracissus


Exhibitionism, that's what it all amounts to


Thirty-something year-old pretty gal who is almost middle-aged

The fact that her hsuband allows his wife to parade herself says a lot about modern men. He could rein her in, tell her to get a hobby like cooking, or decorating their house. Or, he could insist that they start a family.

But, perhaps it is for the best that children don't have a mother such as this. She would turn up to be one of those "artist" moms who photograph their children naked for all to see.