Go Bronze, Young Woman

In my last column I commented on some of the frustration I experience when trying to shop for make-up products because cosmetics lines rarely, if ever, cater to my skin tone. Though I haven’t got the willpower to make most cosmetic trends a reality even if they did include my hue in their palate, I’ve come to expect that ads and how-to’s will feature great products and tips for everyone who is lighter than, say, a paper bag. After just about a year of mindless investigation into the highs and lows of Glamour magazine, I felt justified in calling this particular omission to the attention of my readers and received positive feedback both from those who are similarly slighted by the cosmetics industry and from those who were made newly aware of my annoying little plight after reading the column.

And now with the brazen declaration of summer—from the bikini wax horror stories and get-thin-for-summer diets to beach bargains and lifeguard love stories—comes what I think is the oddest parallel to my own skin-tone woes: the self-tan. There I was pooh-poohing the cosmetics industry for not caring enough about making or marketing the products I need to attain flawless, cover-girl appeal and the next thing I know, every model in every ad is rubbing her way to darker, warmer skin.

Of course, in keeping with the acceptable color palate, self-tanners, much like the cosmetics that one applies after the tanner has set, stop at caramel. Rather they take that caramel color and shine it up a bit, give it a one-part-sun-kissed-sweat-mixed-with-two-parts-South-of-France-glow for a metallic, odd-looking color aptly named bronze. As I read the June issue of Glamour, it seemed that a race of she-bots stared back at me, their bronze metallic skin glowing in the studio-filtered sun, their blonde hair only slightly lighter than their newly tanned skin. All of the winter pale models with their milky white skin had been dipped in vats of gold paint and transformed into Brazilian versions of themselves. I flipped hurriedly to the magazine’s end, looking for some sign that at least a few ‘normal models’ remained, but found none; everyone in the pages of Glamour, regardless of what ethnicity they pretended to represent, was some version of the metallic she-bot clan. The color palate that had been too small to include the likes of me had now shrunk even farther: for summer it’s bronze or it’s stay at home.

What a strange, strange world this magazine attempts to create.

With its prescriptive fashion tips and underhanded exclusion of anyone who isn’t picture-perfect, mags like Glamour are something of a guilty pleasure. I tell myself that reading them does nothing to my self-esteem; I’m a confident, healthy young woman who has better things to do than measure her waistline or weekend planner by the monthly dos and don’ts page. I find the advice absurd and the trends contradictory from one issue to another. Writing this column has allowed me to scrutinize this harmless habit of mine until it has come to seem a bit harmful. Each column has been my attempt to wrestle the hysteria of beauty and fashion into some logical space, laughing and shaking my head in disbelief along the way.

And so the feeling that had been growing for some time now solidified into an undeniable truth: I’m done with this magazine (at least for a time) and (for better or worse) with this column. When it began, I promised to rant and rave about the littlest details in my favorite not-so-good-for-you fashion mag. And for the last nine-or-so months, I’ve done just that. I started with their appeal; shiny gloss in unwavering, their buy-it-now! glimmer is intoxicating. But time and again, I’ve returned to their failings. Treatment of plus-sized models or the fix-it-quick life solutions come to mind. What a long and strange trip it’s been: from breasts to prairie dresses, the horoscope to stick-thin models, I’ve probably spent more time than one should thinking of ways to make light of my minor obsession with girly magazines. And now the seemingly contradictory yet actually quite similar problem of excluding one skin tone and trying to change another has me as fed up as I’d like to be.

Parting’s sweet sorrow will be a bit less sour, however, because the June issue’s cover seems a gross mockery of itself. It’s almost like the Lampoon suddenly got funny and did a parody of Glamour just in time for summer. To begin with, the cover is a dizzying mix of colors that should not be paired, even if it is the triumphant return of everyone’s favorite season. Calista Flockhart (who is dating Harrison Ford…yes, this is a strange world) is adorning the cover. Her tan-in-a-bottle is, of course, flawless. Her two-page interview mentions her weight (“89 pounds dripping wet”) about fifty times as though it were some kind of heroic feat.

Enough! I say it again: ENOOOOOOOUUUUUGH!

As I stood at the magazine rack for the last time, preparing to buy the Glamour that would give rise to my last column, the covers of less popsicle-bright mags called out to me, or better yet the distant memory of a good book that I’ve put of reading.

Antoinette C. Nwandu ’02 is an English concentrator in Cabot House. This is her final column.