Monday, May 10, 2010

No Mystery


Gwyneth Paltrow graces the cover of this month’s Harper’s Bazaar.

I open it, and discover Julia Robert’s toothy grin as she represents Lancome.
A few pages over, Amanda Seyfried endorses a Movado watch. Turning the page, I find Scarlet Johansson wearing the new Roses Collection from Dolce and Gabbana. Next up, it’s Audrey Tatou for Chanel. Turn another page, and there’s Julianne Moore staring at me winsomely through a pair of Bvlgari sunglasses. She’s followed by Ellen DeGeneres, who’s representing Cover Girl. There’s Drew Barrymore, also making a show for Cover Girl. I continue, and discover Madonna kissing some young man for Dolce and Gabbana. Just when I think I’ve trudged through every celebrity endorsing just about every product, I find Halle Berry for Revlon.

I miss models.

As an out-and-proud magazine junkie for the last twenty-five years, I must be completely honest and tell you that I’m bored with celebrity endorsements. I prefer some mysterious young woman looking lifelessly at me from the pages as she tempts me with the latest-this-or-latest-that.

As a kid, I always loved looking at the models almost as much as I loved looking at the clothes and dreaming about the products I hoped to use one day. Christy Brinkley just seemed super nice, Cheryl Tiegs, I convinced myself, was super-cool, Janice Dickinson epitomized super-exotic, and Beverly Johnson seemed super-super in every way. They were beautiful and mysterious, and that’s something we’re in short supply of these days: mystique.

I suppose the mystery started to unravel with Brooke Shields’ proclamation that nothing came between her and her Calvin Klein’s. The early 90’s brought us the age of the super-model. Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelist, and Naomi Campbell lived like rock stars, and we saw much of it thanks to increased publicity surrounding them and famous folk in general. It wasn’t enough for the super-models, or for us, I suppose. Cindy made a pretty forgetable movie, then married and divorced Richard Gere. Linda outraged many when she claimed she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. And Naomi….well, you know the story.

We know too much about other people these days. Thanks to the Internet, I know far more than I ever wanted to know about the famous, the infamous, and the regular folks. Mystique, it appears, is a thing of the past, and that makes me a little sad. Too much information has caused me to become a bit jaded, I fear, and the use of celebrities to peddle everything from perfume to pork rinds doesn’t help. I won’t buy Lancôme because I’ve never understood the hoopla surrounding Julia Roberts. Movado missed the mark with me – I’ve no idea who Amanda Seyfried is. I don’t think lipstick when I see Halle Berry; I think, didn’t she just split from her baby daddy?

And if magazines in general continue to bombast me with covers of Gwyneth or Sarah Jessica, I will seriously consider cancelling my subscriptions. I want girls who know how to model beautiful clothes. I want girls whom I know nothing about, thus allowing me an unbiased take on what it is they’re trying to sell. I want a little mystery in my magazines and in ‘real life’ – I’d love to be able to wonder what someone is up to, rather than reading about it, in great detail, on social networking sites. Instead of talking about our lives, let’s turn off the computer, turn off ‘reality’ TV, and go out there a live them. Mystique is such an attractive trait, I think, and I’d love to see more of it. Wouldn’t you?

Beth Newman
Image consultant/Life coach
Newman Image
www.newmanimage.info
Look, feel, and LIVE your absolute best!
online consultations available!

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