GLOSSY FACT
Women’s magazines that don’t use celebrities on the cover: Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Real Simple, and Southern Living.
Never ask anyone what kind of tree they want to be.
—Barbara Walters
From Vogue to Vanity Fair, and Redbook to Self, a celebrity on the cover of a women’s glossy sells copies. Plain and simple. This wasn’t always the case. Far from it, in fact. To understand how this ubiquitous practice came into being, we first have to go back several decades to understand where said celebrity coverage even came from.
It was likely birthed back in 1974 when People, the brainchild of Time, Inc., arrived on the newsstands. The first issue with Mia Farrow, the star of the movie The Great Gatsby, graced the cover. It sold more than a million copies—unheard of for a startup publication. During its glory days in the 1970s and 80s, it inspired a new niche of magazines that focused on celebrities, from best-selling authors and top models, actors, and actresses, to sports figures who had risen to fame. It was the birth of a reporting phenomenon: personality journalism. Readers wanted to see, learn, and know about famous people—and they still do today.
In 1991, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, perhaps playing off People’s widespread success, put Kim Basinger on the cover and presented her in a fashion layout fit for royalty, followed in short succession by the likes of Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone. Suddenly, actresses were modeling clothing and magazine sales soared.
GLOSSY FACT
Women’s magazines that don’t use celebrities on the cover: Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Real Simple, and Southern Living.
In 1992, InStyle got smart to the idea of celebrity covers rather than the models they normally splashed on the front of their magazine. Surprise, surprise! Actresses could popularize, glamorize, and sell us fashion—and hence, fashion magazines—even more effectively than the supermodels assigned to this task. This small, slow step of evolution not only helped make InStyle a leading fashion magazine, but it also spilled onto the glossy fronts of other women’s magazines so that by the midnineties, women’s magazines had transitioned from covers with supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, and Claudia Schiffer to the actresses of the day: Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, and Meryl Streep.
While the occasional fashion magazine like Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar still runs a rare model on the cover, today the only models able to land said cover are those who’ve crossed over to celebrityville: Gisele Bundchen, Tyra Banks, and Heidi Klum, to name a few—models who’ve become renowned for more than just modeling, who design clothing, act, or host television shows, for instance, and who have morphed beyond modeling into recognizable celebrities themselves.
By the late 1990s, the tide had totally turned against supermodels as glossy cover girls. One catalyst is said to be changes in the fashion trends, which moved away from glam and toward grunge, hip-hop, and post-punk street style, which was largely dictated by popular music of the time. These larger-than-life supermodels, who were pivotal parts of both runway shows and magazine covers, had a level of glitz, polish, and personality that didn’t gel with the dark, drab, dressed-down styles of the era. Plus, designers wanted their clothing to be the star of the show, whether that was the runway or the magazine photo spread, and supermodels who had developed celebrity personalities redirected the focus away from the clothes. Another theory—one shared in private circles, offices, and cubicles of glossy mags and design houses—was that the demanding behavior of some of the top-earning supermodels exhausted both magazine editors and designers. Colleagues in the know talked in hushed tones among themselves about the change and jumped on the numerous opportunities to now interview the replacements: celebrities. The Diva was falling out of fashion, literally.
GLOSSY FACT
Linda Evangelista reportedly was quoted saying, “We (supermodels) don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day,” and Naomi Campbell had several run-ins with authorities after hurling cell phones at an assistant and a housekeeper in separate incidents, and causing a ruckus on an airplane when one of her bags went missing.1
As the careers of the big six supermodels of the time (Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, and Kate Moss) ran their course naturally, no other models were primed as replacements. Today, the current crop of models are a thin, young, bunch of beautiful but anonymous faces, said to be kept that way by the design of the most powerful fashion houses and magazine editors in the business.2
Insider Input
“The supermodel is dead,” Claudia Schiffer told the Mail in 2007. “These days, singers and actresses are as likely to grace the covers of glossy magazines, preventing models from reaching star status. . . . Supermodels like we once were don’t exist anymore.”3
Of course, the bottom line is always profit—to find the sweet spot that drives sales and avoid the moves that turn sales sluggish. When magazines discovered that putting the next hot celeb on the cover can crank newsstand sales when subscription and ad pages are falling, it was a no-brainer. Seems subscription sales are often staid throughout the year, but the presence of a hot celeb on a magazine’s cover inspires readers to buy the magazine off the rack. In fact, compared to subscription deals, off-the-rack sales are an ever-shifting trend for magazines. A woman who wouldn’t think of subscribing to Vogue, but who adores Adele, for instance, may pick it up off the stands if she’s on the cover, or a woman who is ga-ga for Gwyneth Paltrow but wouldn’t necessarily subscribe to Ladies’ Home Journal may buy that month’s issue just to get their Gwynny fix.
Magazines even track their sales in terms of celeb covers. For instance, according to Adweek, the top-selling celebs for 2010 mag sales included the number one Sandra Bullock, with stories of her romantic betrayal and newly adopted baby; Angelina Jolie, a perennial favorite for her Brangelina family saga; Lady GaGa, who epitomized musical and personal success that year; the Kardashian sisters, whose reality brand had begun to go viral; and Jennifer Aniston, another recurrent favorite as the beautiful but jilted girl next door, living in the shadow of Brangelina.4
For 2011, Jennifer Aniston, Heidi Klum, and Sarah Jessica Parker were the top newsstand-sellers. According to New York Fashion, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Elle, Vogue, and Marie Claire covers were the second or third bestsellers for each magazine, and Heidi Klum’s Lucky and Glamour covers were both magazines’ second best performers that year, while Aniston gave Marie Claire its top selling issue in July and brought boosted sales for the November Elle.5 These sale stats are tracked judiciously by magazine marketers, and unfortunately, it’s inferred that big sales, or lack thereof, come down to the celebrity. A dud celeb with low magazine sales will not likely be asked back by the magazine anytime soon.
So how did women’s magazines come to put celebrities on their covers anyway? It’s anybody’s guess why it took so long for the likes of Vogue or InStyle to replicate the success of People back in 1974. But after those first few celeb covers sent sales of women’s magazines soaring, the celebrity cover zeitgeist was born. And the interview and/or fashion spread accompanying that celebrity became the centerpiece of the magazine. Now, whether or not that celebrity will send us readers to the magazine racks in droves is the trickier question, with plenty of margin for error.
GLOSSY FACT
It’s all about the glamour shot! Women’s Wear Daily reported that in 2011 Lady Gaga was not the darling of the newsstands that she was in 2010.6 Gaga, who was photographed makeup-free and almost au naturel on the October 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, brought in the mag’s third lowest sales of the year. Yet when Gaga was glammed up on her March 2011 Vogue cover, it was the magazine’s second best seller of the year.
Obviously, we often pick up magazines to read about a celebrity who graces the cover, not just ogle their beauty shots. But the two go hand in hand. We’re drawn by the promise of “revelations” and the fantasy factor of stylized photo spreads, which allow us to indulge in the idea that celebs are royalty—gifted and glorious in a way we aren’t. The photos and content offer a snapshot into a privileged world that fascinates us, and the more intimate details we know about a celeb, the more we’re drawn to them and can envision ourselves as their best gal-pal. And apparently, even celebs do this with people they admire. On a February 2012 episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, for instance, actress Reese Wither-spoon admitted to being smitten with the princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, upon meeting her. Reese poked fun at her own doe-eyed, wide smile expressions in photos with the princess and told Ellen she was hoping Kate would call her and they could become besties. And so it is with readers of the celebrity profile. So much so, that it’s an actual “syndrome.” In 2003, The New Scientist reported that one-third of Americans suffered from CWS (Celebrity Worship Syndrome). Yet why do we care about the personal lives of people we’ve never met? Social psychologists think the reasons are complex, including boredom, and living vicariously through movie stars as a way of alleviating that boredom. Another reason involves a search for identity, since teenagers score highest on celebrity worship scales. What’s more, celebrities conjure fantasy, and fantasy relationships are easier to form than real ones, making celeb reading ripe for the masses.7
The hook that reels us in is the expectation of the “revelation,” the small inside disclosure or buzz you hope to glean reading the celeb interview. When a magazine interview gives the juice on a celebrity, getting them to admit some little-known truth, some detail about their life that would fascinate readers, some admission of a quirk or a habit or, hell, anything at all that we haven’t been privy to prior (won’t Jennifer Aniston finally confirm she’s in love again or having a baby?), it fosters kinship for the reader, and that translates to associated loyalty to the magazine. But don’t be fooled. The “disclosures” that hook a reader are usually quite calculated. Celebrities, their publicist, the interviewer, and the magazine editors generally work in unison to come up with the juicy details that will help sell the interview to the public.
If a magazine dares print something unbecoming, it could piss off the celeb and the publicist, undermining their chances of being granted future interviews. No women’s glossies can afford to alienate their bread and butter that way. As a result, most celeb profiles tow a fine line between true disclosure of anything juicy, and the canned fluff about what the celeb does for fun, their eating habits, and a nod to their current romantic entanglement. Of course, this can often translate as mind-numbingly boring. To avoid this, the best profiles dare to disclose some unexpected tidbit, infuse it with humor or pathos, or provide a point by which we identify with the celebrity, like how she walks her dog every morning just the way we do. Perhaps that’s where the problems lie with celebrity interviews in the women’s glossies.
Insider Input
“I’ve had subjects out themselves—as in come out of the closet. I’ve had celebrities tell me they’re divorcing their spouse before they tell the spouse. I don’t generally stop the interview but I like to go back and say, ‘That thing you said, it was pretty explosive.’ Quite often they cringe and say, ‘Oh my God, I forgot you were a journalist or the tape was running.’ But I don’t write for tabloids. My editors or producers are looking for material that hasn’t appeared on TV or in print, but I can give them that without burning the bridge and revealing a bombshell.”
—Betsy Model, journalist and celebrity interviewer
If you think spotting Kate Hudson on the cover of your favorite women’s glossy at the grocery when you’re about to head to her new movie opening this weekend is pure coincidence, don’t be naive. Kate or any A-lister’s appearance on the cover of a woman’s magazine is a carefully orchestrated plan that took place six to eight months prior. Editors compete with each other month after month to score the celeb du jour for their cover. Having the right celebrity at the right month (say, Ms. Hudson when her movie is about to open) is a coup that can up newsstand sales by thousands of copies. Entertainment or booking editors spend large portions of their day schmoozing and wooing celebrity publicists in pursuit of landing the celeb interview, and negotiation is the key to winning.
GLOSSY FACT
In the February 2012 issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found when women feel a personal connection to a thin celebrity, they’re more likely to associate with their similarities than to find differences. Despite many previous findings about women being negatively influenced by thin images in the glossies, seeing a favorite slim star in a magazine may actually give women’s self-image a boost.8 Seems if magazines strive to choose slim celebs that are highly admired, they can minimize the jolt to self-esteem often associated with viewing thin, young models or starlets.
Back when women’s magazines simply used models for the covers, whether a celebrity was an A, B, C, or D-list star was of little consequence, but now that virtually every women’s magazine uses actresses as cover girls, the caliber of celebrity is crucial. Face recognition equals sales. And it seems every magazine with twelve issues to put out wants the same twelve women on their covers. Think Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow. Occasionally, a B-list celeb can make the grade if they’re having an uptick in popularity, a well-received movie, or some personal drama that usurps their star status, but even this is a risk-taking proposition for the magazine. Editors rarely take calculated risks on bringing in sales with a less bankable celebrity. However, the move scores big points with publicists because if a magazine ran Maggie Gyllenhaal, say, instead of Sandra Bullock, the publicist is said to be so happy to have the publicity for the quirkier, less-moneyed star that they’re likely to return the favor by offering up an A-list celebrity from the clientele list at the next interview opportunity.
Yet putting a celeb’s face on the cover of a women’s mag is a purely money-driven decision. In fact, it may not have much to do with the magazine’s readership at all. If the female A-list celeb is in the magazine’s demographic and in a new movie or other project during the month’s issue, it’s a no-brainer. Women’s mags only want A-listers, especially for cover stories, since they’re proven bestsellers on the stands.
Celebs are all but guaranteed their coverage will be positive and they will come up smelling like daisies. Yes, that means softball questions. The star’s PR person then approves everything, from the shoot location to the photographer, makeup artist, hairstylist, and clothes. Even the interviewer may be negotiated in advance. Most writers enjoy working with celebrities. It’s their gatekeepers and representatives that play hardball. Yet, publicists work hard for every dollar they earn by often having to manage erratic, egotistical, or difficult celebrity personalities.
Insider Input
“I am very fortunate to be the manager/publicist for one of the greatest pianists in the world, Jan Mulder. He conducts orchestras while playing the piano, which is unusual. Dealing with Jan is in stark contrast to another artist I helped for several years. He not once, not ever, picked up the phone to say thank you, and never in all those years did he ever send me even a thank you or Christmas card.”
—Maire Peters, entertainment publicist
Once the glossy’s booking or entertainment editor and the celebrity’s publicist touch base about an interview, the negotiations begin. Betsy Model, a prominent journalist and celebrity interviewer, says that her long-standing relationship with both editors and publicists and her ability to land big-name interviewees gives her much more leeway when it comes to interview restrictions. Her reputation precedes her, and instead of getting twenty minutes with a celeb where a publicist sits in, she has the opposite experience. She often scores hours, if not days, with the likes of Antonio Banderas or Wynonna Judd sans chaperone, without relinquishing a preview of her questions. Though she clearly admits she is the exception to the rule, with four hundred celebrity profiles to her credit.
Yet because women’s magazines are utterly dependent on the celebrity interview, editors agree to a large portion of a publicist’s requests and requirements. One editor was quoted in the Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, saying, “The problem is . . . because so many deals are made these days and we are all competing for the same celebrities, it’s like what are you willing to trade? Photo approval? Copy approval? Writer approval? Because everybody does trade on that, you’re seeing stories on celebrities that are not necessarily the real story, just the negotiated story.”9
Insider Input
“I had a client who owned a security company who has developed an exciting new security product, and I could not let the press have his photo, as he is a private investigator. But editors met that request. One even suggested she might have her art department draw a Sherlock Holmes sketch with cap and pipe!”
—Maire Peters, entertainment publicist
When points can’t be negotiated, however, it’s not unusual for the entire arrangement to break down and be scrapped. One Tom Cruise/Rolling Stone interview referenced in the Journal of Magazine and New Media Research study reported that the interview came with one stipulation: the writer could not ask Cruise a single personal question. If a women’s magazine editor rejects such a condition, and the publicist won’t budge, negotiation breaks down. When this happens, magazines can either go back to the drawing board and find another celeb, or simply employ the “write around.” A write-around is where a celeb story is written without an interview or photo shoot. Previously published quotes and secondary sources are used to compile the article, and photos are supplied by paparazzi or a photo agency. This practice, widely used at tabloid publications, is not often approved in the glossies since it damages a magazine editor’s relationship with the celebrity publicists, making it unlikely the publicist will accommodate that magazine in the future, essentially blackballing the publication.
One celebrity interviewer shared that in an Esquire feature on Kevin Spacey at least ten years back, the writer was very “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” about Spacey’s sexual orientation, trying to go for the big buzz. And while the interviewer never came out point-blank and said, “Here’s a fact, readers: Kevin Spacey is gay,” he did everything but.10 It was widely talked about within writer and publicist circles at the time. And no doubt Spacey and his own publicist were likely furious. The writer was probably blackballed among celeb publicists for burning a bridge and revealing such a bombshell. And sadly, Spacey didn’t do another interview for several years.
But in the women’s glossies, celebrities pretty much understand they’ll only have to proffer up enough personal information and dish only about “safe” topics (mostly their latest projects). This isn’t the kind of Esquire or Playboy interview where the celebrity opens their closet of skeletons and bleeds out their most personal private struggles on the page, discussing alcoholism battles or eating disorders, sexual abuse or scandal. No, that’s not for women’s magazines, which generally dish up Pollyanna pieces month after month.
Why don’t our glossy magazines run more revealing, intimate, edgy, even intense interviews? If Esquire can open these celebs up, why don’t our lady-mags do the same? Well, that’s a complex issue that has a lot to do with the fluffier style of our glossies, plus the trade-off to promote whatever the celebrity is hawking, whether that’s a new TV show, album, movie, clothing line, perfume, philanthropic cause, or anything else. The magazine is often simply the vehicle to promote the celebrity’s fill-in-the-blank project, rather than provide any real journalistic look into the makings or mind of the star.
It’s a paint-by-numbers formula that is so standard in women’s glossies, the interviews seem oddly familiar each month. The hoped-for takeaway? That we trusting readers will then run out to see their movie, read their new memoir, download their music, tune into their hit television show. Of course, after we’ve bought the issue of the magazine they appeared in. It’s a win-win, for all involved.
“I suspect one of the reasons I have never gone after women’s magazines, per se, and maybe they haven’t gone after me,” says celebrity writer Betsy Model, is that A, they edit the crap out of stuff, and B, women’s magazines are far more worried about the gloss factor, trying to pigeonhole or get their angle in, whether it’s about weight, beauty routine, or plastic surgery. There is a formulaic feeling to the pieces, whether it’s Valerie Bertinelli, Jennifer Aniston, or Angelica Houston; it’s very surface.”
The formula is pretty straightforward, and always includes details about her diet and exercise routine. If the celeb interview has a health or fitness slant, or appears in a health or fitness mag, we learn what the star does or doesn’t do to keep her fabulous figure intact. If she’s rail thin, she’s generally referred to as fit, and if she happens to be buxom and tushy, they call her curvy. On the off-chance her body isn’t up for discussion (hello Melissa McCarthy or Oprah in a heavier stage), her body is simply ignored.
Next up, we usually learn how humble and unassuming the actress or singer is. They’ll be a great quote or two about how she’s just a regular down-to-earth person like we are. Occasionally, to show how edgy or unpretentious the celeb is, the interview will include the requisite F-bombs. You’ll find celebs swearing a blue streak more often in Allure, Cosmo, or Vogue than in Ladies’ Home Journal, to be sure.
Then there’s the personal relationship: the marriage, the boyfriend, or—unlike with most male actors—the trendy admission that she is bisexual. That’s a provocative reveal, one for which you can almost imagine the editor pulling a fist pump in her office. In the December 2011 issue of Women’s Health, for instance, the interview with Amber Heard makes a big deal of the actresses’ sexuality, quoting her looking for relationships with the right person, regardless of their gender, and claiming she doesn’t really have a sexual orientation. If Heard herself isn’t hot enough a celebrity to inspire a big uptake in newsstand sales for that issue, her sexuality disclosure certainly is.
But regardless of a celebrity's sexual orientation, her relationship status is still part of the formula: who’s her latest beau? Just how bad was the split with her ex? And how blissful is life with her current romantic interest? The piece will often touch on their cohabiting status or their new home, and how they schedule downtime together.
We learn about any beauty routines the celeb touts, such as her favorite spa for a facial or her most-loved lip balm. We learn what her guilty pleasure is, like reading trashy romance novels or watching raunchy horror flicks. The more banal personality tidbits, the better.
If the celeb’s project is working with a hot leading man, an up-and-coming B-list celebrity, or a seasoned older actress, the piece usually delves into how erotic the love scenes were with the actor, how down-to-earth and likeable the young actress like Miley Cyrus or Dakota Fanning is, or how incredibly warm and gracious the seasoned veteran like Meryl or Helen were on set.
By the time we’re done reading the interview, we’ve learned whether the celeb has a reputation for being a diva or a nice girl, and where that rep comes from. We’re also likely to hear her take on cosmetic surgery. This falls into the same must-ask question milieu as what she eats and how she stays trim. Whatever her answer, there’s often the gracious caveat that it should always be “whatever makes you happy.” If she’s single, she’s asked if she’s itching to be married and if she is childless, she is asked the perennial question about whether she wants to be a mommy someday. We usually meet her dogs, or at the very least, hear about how many she has acquired to date, though for some reason, not many celebs mention cat ownership. Apparently, dogs are cooler when it comes to the celebrity interview. Either that or many celebs keep cat ownership on the QT.
The piece will then generally wrap on an upnote, with the celebrity offering up some bit of her personal wisdom on life or happiness, family, success, or relationships, leaving us feeling inspired.
“I think there is a formula, and I think that’s a shame. Women are smarter readers than some women’s magazines give them credit for,” says Model.
Do you feel like you’ve read every celebrity interview ever written in a woman’s magazine? That’s because you probably have.
While most women’s magazines have a few defining characteristics that distinguish them from each other (think Cosmo and sex versus MORE and aging), they all tend to follow the standard celebrity interview formula laid out above. Let’s take a look.
In the December 2011 issue of Elle, a magazine that often includes lofty writing and stellar articles among the typical beauty must-haves, the writer interviews Jessica Biel in a piece dubbed “The Real Biel.” The six-page spread showcases Biel as the star of an upcoming new movie, New Year’s Eve, out that month. The article takes the reader through the typical paint-by-numbers formula.
Biel has had a lot of rejection. When asked about the part that got away, she mentions many, including the movie The Notebook and the role of Catwoman in the next Batman sequel, a part she particularly wanted. She also says that for any female part, there are thirty talented actresses vying for the role. The interviewer touches on her on-again, off-again relationship with Justin Timberlake, in which she claims she really can’t elaborate, since some things need to be kept private (as of this writing, they are engaged). She’s then asked if she liked wearing the pregnancy belly pad in the movie and if she’d like to be pregnant some day. Sure, she says. But there is no pressure. So far, so good, as far as meeting the formula goes.
Then we switch over to how she’s dated a lot of actors. Is that a conscious choice? And—here it comes—we slip into her health, weight, and stamina by mentioning her climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro, a fitness and spiritual adventure Biel took that year. And of course, we conclude with a bit of woo-woo wisdom, where Biel tells readers she lost her cell phone on the mountain, saying the mountain “ate it” because she is supposed to be disconnected while climbing. Touchdown! The interview is a color-within-the-lines success.
In the same vein, Vogue, another mag with ingenious writers and lengthier, less fluffy content, captures Charlize Theron at a Japanese restaurant in its December 2011 issue. Regardless of the higher-quality wordsmithing than what’s found in other lady-mags, it’s nonetheless the same formula; just another restaurant, different celebrity.
Here, the writer begins with the warnings about Theron being a prankster who doesn’t take herself too seriously, who can outdrink you, and has an affinity for, wait for it, F-bombs. She is so unpretentious and easygoing it’s hard to remember she is a star. Sound familiar? Her latest project, Young Adults, is about to hit theaters, hence the reason she is this month’s cover girl. Plus, she rocks whatever she wears, and her sultry elegance is a natural fit for Vogue. Total coup for all concerned, including her fans. But still, the interview follows a predictable pattern.
After gushing about her career to date and long-lost high school loves, the piece segues into the demise of her ten-year relationship.
Since Vogue’s more in-depth interviews tend to cover more ground, the writer meets with Theron over several days, at an ice cream parlor, on a hike with her two dogs, and then with a visit to her home, a Spanish colonial hidden behind an unpretentious gate. During the hike, we hear about her current dog addiction and former smoking addiction. She has quit smoking, but won’t disclose the method used since it could jinx the process. In an upcoming project (Snow White and the Huntsman), she works with Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame and naturally waxes on about her younger, more naive costar.
We briefly hit on her warm relationship with her mom and dish up the decades-old scandal in which her mother killed her alcoholic father in self-defense. If you’re a celeb, you unfortunately can never get away from a scandal. Call it the Hugh Grant effect.
Shirley MacLaine provides a few comments (the older generation continually must comment on the up-and-comers) just like Theron remarked on Stewart. We learn Theron can cook and throw great dinner parties. In this homey setting, it is a must-ask about whether she wants children.
Of course she does, but no rush.
While the writing is a bit edgier and wider-ranging than some of our other glossies, it nonetheless breaks little from the formula, including the great publicity it generates for her upcoming project.
Likewise, in the December 2011 issue of Allure, we meet Lea Michele, the girl behind the honeyed voice of the hit show Glee. Naturally, we begin at a cozy table for two in a New York City restaurant. After comparing Michele to Streisand in both talent and vulnerability, we learn Michele has been reported to be a diva from several sources, but only in the true Italian sense of the word—an extraordinary vocal talent.
Aside from playing Rachel Berry in the third season of Glee, Michele is starring in the aforementioned movie New Year’s Eve with Jessica Biel (out at the time of this writing), making this celeb interview and cover girl a particularly hot B-lister. We also learn Michele is Ashton Kutcher’s love interest in the film. Kutcher, who is at the height of his popularity for having both the balls to try to breathe life into the fledging hit Two and a Half Men after Charlie Sheen’s jump-the-shark year, and the Twitter-heavy demise of his relationship with Demi Moore, is the sixth degree of separation the Glee star needs to be transformed into a bankable B-lister for the magazine cover.
Michele is the perfect celeb for the plastic surgery debate, because when she was fifteen, a talent manager told her to get a nose job. But her mother put the kibosh on that idea by pointing out that Streisand never got a nose job, and look at her. The interview then touches on reports that Michele got scarily thin the year before and was rumored to have an eating disorder, and then it seamlessly ends with news about Michele’s break-up from her two-year relationship with her Broadway actor boyfriend, with whom she’s pleased to say she is still friends. She also waxes poetic about Gwyneth Paltrow, a recurring guest star on Glee.
Since Allure is a beauty mag, the accompanying sidebar includes Michele’s beauty secrets with the star’s faves and raves about skin, makeup, hair, body, and fragrance products. The interview wraps with the usual look at the actresses’ future, mentioning Michele’s seven-year contract on Glee. She then orders a second dirty martini. Fade to black.
GLOSSY FACT
A 2009 study by MEDIAEDGE: CIA found that 30 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 would try a product promoted by an admired celebrity compared to 14 percent of those in the 35–54 age group. Additionally, 5 percent of respondents believe celebrity endorsements improve a brand’s awareness, help define its personality, and generate interest.11
See the formula? There’s nothing journalistically wrong with these interviews, except that it’s fluff incarnate. The writer hits the assignment nail on the proverbial head by offering everything the magazine editor requested. But wouldn’t someone like to know what Michele thinks about her nose and how she felt when a talent manager recommended a nose job? Might readers wonder why Theron isn’t ever asked her opinion on how to empower women involved in domestic violence, given what she witnessed with her mom? And Biel, mentioning more collective rejection than any actor usually admits to, is not once asked how she truly handles that, if it ever gets her down, or if she thought it might be easier to nab roles at this stage of her career? Nope. Hell, wouldn’t we love to hear about something outside the formula, like her deeper spiritual beliefs, world affairs, art, or politics? Something of substance . . . anything at all? Instead, the women’s magazines choose what to dish up and what to keep mum, as though anything heavy, deep, or analytical would be too cumbersome or lofty for their readership. What do they take us for? Anyone find it a little insulting that when profiling a celebrity, magazines believe we’d rather hear about her favorite lip gloss than something touching or meaningful? Model, who writes mainly for men’s and general interest magazines, says she never has an agenda when she does a celebrity interview, nor does she even formulate questions in advance. Her editors and producers expect she’ll get great tidbits and unparalleled disclosure not seen before, and she does, without a glossy formula to go by. “Chances are, I didn’t get asked to do the interview to ask about the boyfriend or the breakup or their bedtime routine for cleansing their face.” Do other magazines do it differently?
That brings us to men’s magazines, which take a different approach to the celebrity profile. While lad mags are notoriously misogynistic, filled with bawdy humor and sexualizing far too many half-clad women in their pages to be held up as an example of a great magazine, the celebrity interview is, in contrast, handled with a varied approach of depth, wit, respect, and intelligence that’s largely missing from most chick slicks. GQ and Esquire, perhaps even Playboy, deliver profiles of a higher caliber, working from the assumption that their readers are educated, savvy, and worldly in a way that women’s journals simply don’t.
Readers Respond
“I love Esquire. The writing is on par with literary mags like Vanity Fair or The Atlantic, and I find the reporting to be top-notch as well. There are no women’s mags that can compare. Esquire seems to be designed for a thinking man, while the women’s magazines don’t seem to have a clue that women have brains.”
—Hilda, writer
Some years back, probably as reading articles online became a more popular activity, women’s magazines decided that women had short attention spans, and there was a movement to shorten content. Feature articles that ran five to six pages were slashed in half, and featurettes (two- to three-page stories) were slashed with it, making virtually no article longer than the requisite one or two pages in most women’s magazines. Dick slicks did not follow this formula. They’re still running the eight-page personality profile. But this sad state of affairs continues today. The shallow reasoning behind these changes is that women are time crunched, women read in sound bites, women only glance through an article, so it better be shorter or they won’t even consider using their limited time and multitasking brainpower to endure such a reading task. How insulting! Worse, when women’s magazines do tackle an important or serious interview, the writing is often humorless or sanctimonious.
“I have women friends who routinely read Esquire and Details; frankly the writing is a little smarter, hipper, or cheekier. Not that Cosmo wouldn’t consider themselves cheeky because they talk about orgasms, but I am far more intrigued as a general rule by profiles done in business or men’s magazines, or of course, Vanity Fair, than I am by what’s in the women’s magazines. Women’s magazine interviews are often dumbed down and boring,” says Model.
In the December 2011 issue of GQ, for instance, we find a heart-breaking vignette about Amy Winehouse, in which the stoned singer riffs to a reporter in one of her last interviews about how she is written off by friends and family, even the public, because she is a drug addict. At the same time, she laments a quasihope that she can emerge from her drug-induced psychosis in time to create more great music. Its poignancy is nothing we could find in a chick slick. The cover girl, Mila Kunis, warrants a one-page quirky spread in the issue, in which the writer spends the whole page telling us how he had a cold and Kunis makes it her duty to make him better (no sick joke intended). They head to a Japanese restaurant for miso soup, a drug store for some kick-ass cough syrup she swears by, and then to her apartment to brew up a homemade concoction consisting of a pricey cab, half a bottle of vodka, a few gel caps of fish oil, and green tea powder for good measure. Again, this type of eccentric interview isn’t what we find in the women’s magazines. In our glossy neighborhood, Kunis would be asked about her love life, her desire to be a mom, and her favorite beauty must-haves. Next up is the “25 Least Influential People Alive,” a hysterical glance into a list of this year’s wannabe’s, has-beens, derelicts, and been-there’s that leaves the reader busting a gut in laughter while feeling mildly uncomfortable for a couple of the people named, even if they do include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hank Williams Jr., and it’s clearly tongue-in-cheek.
An excellent interview with Jay-Z, in which he openly speaks about the loss of his father at age eleven and the anger and loneliness he suffered as a result of his dad’s disappearance, almost candidly wishing his father had died before he was born so he could have been spared the deprivation of the loss, is heart wrenching. Although part of the interview takes place at a restaurant, it is merely a meeting ground, and Jay-Z isn’t once asked about his eating habits. Missing also is what he ordered off the menu. Likewise, there is no love-life talk or favorite product mentions, though the man is married to one of the most famous women in the music industry and surely uses soap and sunscreen.
While GQ is far from perfect and more like a locker room full of adolescent boys when it comes to how they approach women in general, the cover shot of Kunis, in particular, looks like her boobs might have gotten a job. Her normal A-cups appear to be airbrushed into formidable Cs. And while this dick slick deserves a tsk-tsk for her digitized breast enhancement, GQ nonetheless deserves kudos for fleshing out her interview with more substance, freshness, and quirky intimacy.
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If only women’s magazines would tackle celeb interviews with more zest and grit, readers might not only get more substance but appreciate the celebrity more, as well as the magazine that carries it. Women’s magazines insist on keeping these pieces based in fluff, rooted in softball questions, and formulaically set up and laid out in the exact same manner month after month. Further, the pieces are degraded with sexist questions such as the “Do you want to be married,” “Be a mother,” “Eat only vegetables”—crap that cements the profiles in mediocrity bordering on mindlessness.
But can’t women’s magazines find a way to showcase beautiful fashions, the latest accessories, and offer up beautifully written, humorous takes, or in-depth analyses on celebs that actually mean something? Women crave stories that touch their hearts or invade their souls rather than pieces that take each celeb at such shallow face value. Women are begging for their magazines to dig a little deeper beneath the surface and come up with something new or original when it comes to a celebrity. These types of changes can only make women’s magazines shine, endearing reader loyalty. Yet they choose to continue taking the low road. Would one of our chick slicks even consider basing a profile on hanging out with Kunis and making a cold remedy? How about asking the rich and famous, the talented and artistic, the creative and the inventive, something other than their favorite moisturizer, lady mags? Women the world over will thank you!