Taylor Swift’s much-ballyhooed illusion-of-nudity Elle cover came out right around the time Alicia Vikander (from Anna Karenina) wore the white version of the Louis Vuitton dress to the magazine’s UK Style awards. We should discuss.
[Photos: Getty, Elle]
I’m starting to wonder if Emma Stone’s people have a nefarious plan. Specifically, if they are worried that she is so universally adored and adorable, that backlash is inevitable and potentially harsh. So they’re arranging for her to look less than her best on magazine covers as a way of engendering sympathy and reminding people that, hey, even Emma Stone is just like us: imperfect.
I mean, she’s still Emma Stone, so she’s starting out ahead in the “plus” ledger. But she seems sort of… tired, and unenthralled, and maybe a little bit like even though somebody told the photographer she adored this idea, she doesn’t really understand why the hell she’s in bed with two grown-ass celebrity men in animal costumes. Bradley Cooper is smiling dazedly as if he just woke up (or achieved chemical bliss) and thinks he’s wearing a Snuggie, and Affleck barely even looks like he IS wearing a costume; it’s like he and an amiable grizzly poked their heads into the shot for a cuddle, and the grizzly didn’t care for the length of the lens.
The cover lines also feel strangely like Vanity Fair is auditioning a teen version. I can’t wait to read the Leslie Bennetts profile on iCarly, and a searing social and photographic essay on the history of lunchroom etiquette in Hollywood.
Well. If ever there were two people about whom we have all said, “They should REALLY hang out more,” it’s obviously Lil’ Kim and Miley Cyrus.
[Photos: WENN and Cosmopolitan]
Who had Mara in the 2013 Vogue cover pool? Everyone, check your ballots! (Next year, I’m going to figure out how to make handicapping Vogue covers a contest; it looks like, so far, Fug National Emma is the only one who called Rooney.)
Leaving aside the fact that she is wearing a fishing net — it’s Vogue, and sometimes nets are worn! Even I realize that these are things that happen — can we just talk about how apparently the Powers That Be had a whole conversation about how consumption is totally hot for spring? Everyone, throw out your smoky eye palate and get out your feverish one!
[Cover: Vogue.com]
“HOLA, LOVERS.”
“It is true, lovers. No tengo regrets. Ay, si, you could put this cover in a pipe and smoke it and get a crack high (do not, lovers; drugs are like Marc: sinister and they smell weird and posiblemente out to get in your veins and kill you). But es BUENO that my hair looks like refried Betsey Johnson! Es excelente that I look like I got stuck trying to do the splits! Es fabuloso that I look like I am screaming in pain because have YOU ever tried to do a split, lovers, and then HELD IT THERE while your Lopez felt like it was cracking? And I am tan alegre, lovers, that they put a picture of Adele kissing a trophy I have never won while I am crawling around on the floor maybe planning to pounce on you like a jungle cat, and Britney is there saying, “Oh heyyyy, you all, I am not nutso anymore, love me Justin.” Por que? Two reasons, lovers. Uno: I have to make it FAIR. For reasons that are maybe a little bit full of lies but whatever, People cannot pick the same Most Beautiful Person every year. Nobody in el mundo will believe that I am not still and forever the most beautiful person who ever straddled the floor, so I have to help out the people at People by looking less beautiful all the time, and then also when they pick me again in two years people will be like, “Ay, yes, and she has put those weird fangs away!” And second, lovers, I won American Idol week. Mariah who? Nicki Minwhat? ME. So do not feel sad for me, lovers, and do not feel sad for the person on my team who got fired for this or for the people at People who I tried to get fired before I understood that this was my destiny. I sent a ham.”
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Fug the Cover: SI’s 2013 Swimsuit Edition
Last year, Kate Upton rose to fame by wearing red labia floss on the cover of the SI swimsuit issue. I thought I’d written about it on this site but I can’t find it. In a nutshell, she has creepy drunkface and looks so retouched that she’s like one of those movie posters where from afar you can’t tell if it’s a photograph or a drawing. I hated it. And not even for the nudity issue, although that was weird too, just practically speaking. I can’t think of many things that look as uncomfortable as that bikini bottom. So much hot wax was harmed in the making of that cover.
And now Upton — who looked LOVELY on Today yesterday morning — is on the SI cover again, the first time that’s happened since Tyra Banks did it in the ’90s. And it’s… still not great.
It’s definitely better, to me, but it’s also awkward. She’s gone from drunkface to dead eyes. Her face is saying to me, “HOLY CRAP IT’S COLD… ten more seconds… try not to die…” I am going to guess that they picked it because they went with this ALL SEVEN CONTINENTS theme, and really, of all seven continents, Antarctica is the only one about which you’d be even remotely curious about the art direction. It’s probably the only one that would make people intrigued enough to buy the issue, or pick it up, if they weren’t otherwise going to bother. We can all imagine what a lady looks like frolicking in a bikini in Australia, or Africa, or Europe, or North America. But Antarctica is all kinds of drama, so Kate Upton gets the cover, even if maybe Kate Upton’s photos were not that tremendous, because Kate Upton is who they brought. I read an article about this and basically the guy said they needed someone with curves that wouldn’t get lost under a parka, or — GASP — a one-piece. Which is actually really smart of him, because he’s probably right, and I LOVE that they put someone on the cover who is not Gisele-sized — she’s still beautiful without being exactly the same as every other model out there. But the picture itself is totally mediocre, and while I know that’s beside the point in the swimsuit issue (I am not dumb; I know I am not the subscriber they are targeting here) I do feel like the magazine is actually known, deservedly, for great photography, and some of their swimsuit pictures are fabulous. This one isn’t, particularly, to me. It’s checked-out and pained. Not that I blame her. In her place, I would be checked-out and ragey. And flabby. Which is why I’m not in her place.
Also: Brent Musberger is the best thing that’s ever happened to Katherine Webb. She should give him a ten percent cut.
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