Relationship Rubbish: Adele gives the fashion industry the finger (On the cover of American Vogue)
American Vogue March 2012 cover
Last night when she won 6 Grammy Awards, Adele announced that she would like to concentrate on a different kind of music than the songs of heartbreak she called “relationship rubbish.”
It struck me as a brave thing to say, considering we’ve become so accustomed to hearing “relationship rubbish” from female artists, especially those who win Grammy Awards.
We’ve also become accustomed to being force fed another kind of relationship rubbish: That a female singer and songwriter can only become a superstar if she is reed thin, writhes and dances with the subtlety of a lap dancer caught up in a conceptual tableau brought to us by Industrial Light and Magic, wears clothes so outrageous as to have been designed by P.T. Barnum and otherwise invests the disproportionate amount of her time and energy on the aforementioned activities, which taken together make up her marketable image.
That basically has meant that until Adele showed up with the ability to silence a stadium full of listeners with only her voice, a microphone stand and an accompanying piano, we had to accept this conspiratorial rubbish relationship concocted by the media, the music industry, the fashion and beauty industries–and most importantly, our very own gullibility to be willing victims– as the relationship between us and popular music.
You know what I’m saying. No fat chicks.
I will continue writing about this abusive relationship this month but I wanted to post for you the pictures of Adele who is making history at Vogue magazine, the Warren Commission of omission, packaged as the authoritative book depository of all things fashionable and beautiful while wearing even thinner and thinner its own credulity with every new issue. (Meryl Streep had never been on the cover until this January! The oldest woman ever!! GASP.) Adele did appear on the cover of British Vogue last year and Cosmopolitan in the US but not without being patronized, as I wrote in Big girls don’t cry: (Adele’s December Cosmopolitan magazine Kardashian Makeover).
The photos in the forthcoming issue of Vogue, which were released today online, are as an unapologetic celebration of the diversity of beauty and talent as they should be an unfathomably belated nail in the coffin of editorial rubbish.
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She better be careful as all life is (is) a series of relationships: rubbish and all. Incidentally, they really doctored up those pictures as she did not look close that thin last night.
Are you suggesting heavy photoshopping is not the norm in the magazine industry? NO ONE looks like what they “look like” in heavy stylized photoshoots. NO ONE.
I love love love Adele, but c’mon let’s face it. This is pretty HEAVY PHOTOSHOPPING! Every pun intended.
Look at every beauty ad using anyone famous. HEAVY PHOTOSHOPPING, so much so, that in England ads have been banned for false advertising hen it comes to anti wrinkle claims….
Adele and many other plus size women are beautiful as they are and can be photographed without heavy Photoshopping.
I completely agree. But that;s just not industry practice.
EVERYONE FAMOUS is heavily photoshopped most of the time!
Remember Marky Mark Whalbelg and his 3rd nipple for the Calvin Klein underwear ads? OF COURSE YOU DON’T–photoshop!
Viola Davis said on CBS This Morning that choosing to let herself be photographed without her wigs for the LA Times was just playing another character–”myself” I thought you might find that very poignant as it relates to image and Hollywood and the “problem” of Adele.
http://www.blackfilm.com/read/2012/02/viola-davis-pics-from-the-la-times/
Thank you. Viola Davis deserves an Oscar one of these days. She broke my face in DOUBT (LOL). As far as personal imagery and perception goes, she is fit (lean muscular toned) and her skin always looks flawless. Hopefully, most people realize there is not only one type of beauty. The twiggy Caucasian women with shoulder length full hair and perfect skin is one one ( and not a real one in most cases.
I couldn’t resist retitling this post after the BRIT Awards.