the ugly side of glossies

It’s probably no surprise that we didn’t retouch the photo of Dr. Bonnie Straka on our summer cover. Charlottesville Woman isn’t subject to pressure from national advertisers or celebrity publicists, unlike our favorite magazines - from Lucky to GQ - which have relied on digital technology to alter every minute detail of the human body since the 90s.

Thanks to Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and a few retouching scandals, over the past few years readers are more aware than ever of the artifice of glossy pages. But perhaps it’s time to pick up the debate again, as the corseted waists of the Victorian era and traditional Chinese footbinding with a shudder. But the way we’ve set our standard of beauty over the last decade, with camera and computer work to not only slim away pounds but reshape the human skeleton, is damaging too. It’s damaging to every little girl who thinks of her mother’s Marie Claire as another picture book, to every teen who reads Cosmo as a guidebook to maturity, and to every mother faced with the absurd “Desperate Housewives” midlife bodytype in print as well as TV.

As an editor, even of a small regional magazine, I completely understand the tough decisions that face the art directors and senior editors at national publications. More than ever, sales are everything. But here’s the great thing about the industry - the readers have an incredibly powerful voice. If this is an issue that matters to you, let your favorite magazines know. Tell them what you want to see - celebrities that don’t resemble plastic aliens, real curves, less airbrushing - and let them know when they get it right (or totally wrong). This goes for other issues too - lack of diversity, smoking and drinking, too-thin models, too-tan models, all the ugly issues of the beauty industry. Readers have a voice and magazines listen, we just have to remember to use it.