Vogue, The September Issue...

...and my issue with it.

I have to preface by saying I'd been watching the documentary, The September Issue, when I felt the overwhelming urge to have the most recent September issue.

Of course, that was September 29th or something like that, so I went to trusty eBay and ordered a packaged copy.

While waiting for it to arrive, I indulged in generally repressed fantasies of being a fashionista. I used to care about this stuff way more when I was in college (and at my fattest) then I do now.

Oh, and whenever I'm in New York I tend to buy at least one thing I think is too silly to wear when I get home, but KNEW 'I'd use it everyday' because I was inhaling the shopping opiate which is Manhattan.

Once the magazine arrived, I quickly tore out all the perfume pages (hate those things) and got to reading.

Well, looking is more like it.

Five bizillion pages of ads leading up to some rather interesting written pieces (non-fashion and fashion related).

I started forming a top ten list in my head of the things I took issue with with this issue but I only got to 7. So here goes:

1) Fashion photography hasn't changed much in my lifetime. All the women either look like hangers or vixens or expressionless dolls. Here's a clue, you could pay mannequins much less, especially the half dozen folks who used...

2) Kate Moss. She so doesn't add anything to the products appeal especially when she's the featured model for so many different brands in one magazine. Overkill.

3) Most of what I see in this magazine that I could ever conceivably wear is either purse or jewelry or shoe, and I'm left to feel bad about myself for that fact.

4) Speaking of shoes, it is NOT necessary nor a good idea to put heels on every kind of shoe ever made.

This shoe wasn't meant to have a 4 inch heel!

5) Opened-toed boots...boots that cover my whole foot and leg up to my thigh don't need open toes. It's misleading as far as wearability goes AND it's clearly a conspiracy with pedicurists and toenail polish manufacturers.

6) Encouraging pregnant women to be so fashionable that they should wear skin-tight jeans and stiletto, platform heels? Come on...don't pregnant woman go through enough that they don't need this ADDED pressure to look slutty hot while 9mos pregnant. What fetish organization is running maternity fashion?

7) Are you really saying wearing a live lion cub is in fashion?

8) (this is where I ran out of steam)...

Bottom line, I still like looking at the pretty stuff. I do like the creativity of many of the spreads and not all things fashion make me recoil.

However, knowing that the vast majority of women:
A) Don't in ANY way look or have the ability to look like the women in this magazine

and

B) Don't have nor have the legal opportunity to acquire the funds for the cool stuff (ads for Payless, Kmart and Target don't make me feel better about my fashion self in this mag)

I still pretty much turn my nose up to high fashion.

Yeah, yeah I know some designer's choice of Cerulean three years ago made its way to my bargain bin sweater, but you say that as if I'm actually supposed to care.

Peace
A Pink American