Fug the Cover: The Ladies of Nine

I feel like, for the last several years (about thirty-five, by my best guess), Vogue has been featuring cover models in who I truly could not be less interested: Sienna Miller (SNORE), Renee Zellweger (BLAH), Nicole Kidman (YAWN).  The magazine arrives at my house every month and I read it because it’s sitting on my coffee table and I like to read and there’s always SOMETHING entertaining in it — if only a two page spread in which a $150 bikini is presented as a tremendous and life-changing steal — but if I were standing at the newsstand every month, I suspect I would have no problem passing over yet another Vogue featuring whichever of the seven Wintour-approved actresses was taking her turn on the cover. So the first of my issues with this current issue is: OMG THESE FOOLS AGAIN? (No offense to Marion Cotillard, who I love, and whose cover issue I would actually buy. Sadly, this particular cover has somehow transformed Marion into a Kate Hudson clone, to the point that I actually felt confused when my eyeballs reached the REAL Kate Hudson over there on the right, looking deeply bizarre, slightly confused, and as though she just randomly materialized from out of nowhere.)

My second issue with this cover is that everyone appears to have randomly materialized from out of nowhere — Planet Botox for at least three-fourths of them, I suspect — and been Photoshopped together in front of a backdrop painted by a marginally-talented studio artist with a Pre-Raphaelite fetish, despite the fact that allegedly Annie Leibowitz snapped this in Malibu.

My third issue with this cover is….well, you should sit down for this. So, they did a huge feature about the cast of Nine, right? And the ladies in the cast who aren’t featured on the cover are Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, and Fergie Ferg. Check it:

(It looks like Nicole is attempting to talk Kate Hudson out of a life on the pole.)

Now, despite the fact that I don’t care for Judi’s bob here, I think it would have been awesome to see Judi Dench and Sophia Loren on the cover of Vogue,
and I suspect both actresses might attract the kind of reader who can
easily drop $150 on a bathing suit (aka, older women, who Vogue consistently
ignores despite the fact they are more likely to actually be able to
afford the kind of $5000 armpit-fat-sucking procedures the magazine is always
squawking about). But, okay: Vogue doesn’t put women of a
Certain Age on their covers, so that’s why they’re out. WHAT ABOUT POOR FERGIE? Seriously. She’s
young, she’s in the movie, and she’s featured in this photo spread
inside the magazine (also looking moderately like the hooker she plays in
the film). WHY NOT THE COVER? I would argue that she’s easily as famous
as Kate Hudson…and I might even argue that she’s more talented. (I
know, but for real, did you see Alex & Emma?) WHY THE SNUB, A DUBS? Is it that peeing thing? Can’t we all just let that go? Throw the girl a bone, okay?

And now, I’d like to officially take a moment to point out that apparently I feel defensive about, and fond of, Fergie now. And they say people can’t change.