Cover girl
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Cover girl (disambiguation).
A cover girl is a woman whose photograph features on the front cover of a magazine. She may be a model, celebrity or entertainer.
The term first appeared in English in 1915. A less commonly used antonym is cover boy.
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[edit] Types of Cover Girl
Women feature on the cover of the majority of general interest magazines in the west for both men and women, although there are notable exceptions discussed below.
Celebrities feature on the cover of magazines such as Redbook, for women or Gentlemen's Quarterly, Maxim or Esquire for men.
Some magazines for women feature an unknown model that represents the style of the magazine, such as Seventeen. A parallel to this trend is reflected in men’s magazines like Men’s Fitness or Sports Illustrated.
[edit] Editorial Approaches and the Marketplace
Editorial decisions concerning the positioning of the magazine in the marketplace are a key influence on the portrayal of women on the cover. New men’s style magazines founded in the 1980’s, like Arena and Gentlemen's Quarterly rarely featured women on the cover, and where they did they were intended not to be sexually provocative, deliberately distancing the magazine from ‘top shelf’ soft core pornographic magazines. Notably Esquire’s first edition featured a photograph of Brigitte Bardot that was over thirty years old. However, this trend changed during the 1990’s.
Later Peter Howarth, UK editor of Esquire magazine famously removed semi-naked women from the covers in a move to once again differentiate the magazine from the competition. The result was a drop in sales but an increase in advertising revenue, as the magazine was able to attract advertisers for more high end products than before.
[edit] Image Editing
Image editing is common practice for photographs used in advertising and publicity, and cover images are no exception. Image editing is an ongoing process of styling and selection, which invites debate on issues related to the representation of women. Arguably, advertising and cover images can help perpetuate an unattainable ideal of beauty, sometimes aided through methods of retouching to remove skin blemishes and shadows under the eyes, smooth out skin texture, widen pupils, or suggest an hourglass figure.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- CBS News story regarding cover girl images, including the retouching of the Kate Winslet GQ cover
- More coverage of retouching stories
- Web page showing differences between actual photos retouched images such as ones used as cover girl images (mouse over images to see original image)
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- [2] Esquire magazine's Cover Gallery
- [3] Evening Standard article
- [4] Evening Standard article
