The Reeler

Well, 2014 is right around the corner, I guess. Any way, an interesting murmur did creep out of Boston yesterday, where Beth Teitell invoked Ford's cover shoot and Isaac Mizrahi's grope-tacular performance at the Golden Globes to ask, "Do you have to be gay to get some? Is gay the new cute puppy?" Great question, if totally fucking unanswerable. Some other feedback out there, however, implies that straight male outrage is possibly the same cute puppy its practitioners have always thought it to be.

Take indieWIRE blogger Anthony Kaufman, for example:

In an age when female bodies are plastered everywhere, from magazines to billboards to TV commercials, these idealized nudes -- gazing seductively at the viewer -- display nothing particularly unique or new, just art-porn for the masses.

Betty Friedan, who died last week, once said, "When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman."

You'd think in the year 2006, this conventional picture would start to fall by the way side. What did Friedan spend all those years working for?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. "Art-porn" is a fairly subjective approximation I can take or leave, but Betty Friedan said a little more than that. To wit, from Chapter 11 of The Feminine Mystique:

(T)he feminine mystique has glorified and perpetuated in the name of femininity a passive, childlike immaturity which is passed on from mothers to sons, as well as to daughters. Male homosexuals--and the male Don Juans, whose compulsion to test their potency is often caused by unconscious homosexuality--are, no less than the female sex seekers, Peter Pans, forever childlike, afraid of age, grasping at youth in their continual search for reassurance in some sexual magic. ...

The shallow unreality, immaturity, promiscuity, lack of lasting human satisfaction that characterize the homosexual's sex life usually characterize all his life and interests. This lack of personal commitment in work, in education, in life outside of sex, is hauntingly "feminine."

So when Kaufman (and later, Cinematical's Kim Voynar) asks, "What would Betty Friedan think of Vanity Fair's 'Hollywood Issue' March cover?", does he mean before or after she learned a fag is responsible for it?

Moving on across the pond, the British are frothing and gossiping in their own unmistakable fashion, from Sky's short-bus-quality dispatch ("Looking as pale as a pint of semi-skimmed, Scarlett Johansson is lounging on the ground as if watching the telly--only starkers.") to Xan Brooks's miffed bitchslappery in The Guardian:

We can debate the semiotics of soft-core titillation until the cows come home. That doesn't alter the immediate, unedifying spectacle of a pair of chalky, corpse-like creatures being mauled by their "artistic director." Apparently there is still more of this necrophilia-chic inside the magazine, with one photo showing Angelina Jolie in a bath-tub. Perhaps she will be depicted as bloated, bedraggled and as white as a fish's belly, like that ghost-woman in The Shining.

Righty-o, I do say, I do say, just like that ghost-woman, yes, yes. Even more stunning are some of the 8,000 or so reader comments that follow (and as usual, heavy on the sic):

whatever: Does Scarlett bear a marked, and disapointing, resemblence to Chelsea Clinton in the photo?

JohnnyM: How disappointing. That picture can't go in the tug bank. Better stick to Loaded.

MadameL: I don't think the dipple/fold in Ms Johansson's right buttock is flattering. I give an "A" for artistic endeavor, and a "B-" for composition.

Over Shoulder Boulder Holder: Top quality picture! Wish you could see a bit of the ladies' meat curtains though! Angela in the bath you say!?!

Mary Sue: Should be captioned: Middle-aged fishmonger sniffs pile of albino eels to check for freshness.

rust: kiera knightley used to go out with my friend. apparently she's quite nice, but a bit thick. and apparently she eats like a horse. i don't mean like large quantities, more like chewing everything with a sideways motion.

So. Is there anything I missed? Personally, I think it is a great cover: Well-shot, memorable and printed on glossy stock that should be easy enough to wipe down for easy reuse. Which I am more than a little grateful for, especially since this month's Lindsay Lohan cover is starting to look a little... well, shabby. Thank you, Graydon Carter!