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Vanity Fair
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hannah montana
vanity fair
Graydon Carter On Miley Cyrus
Graydon Carter, the rotund Vanity Fair editor and undersecretary of the celebrity-industrial complex, weighs in on the magazine's controversial Miley Cyrus photos in a video message: "She seems like a girl with a head on her shoulders," he says. Right-o! "But parents, rest easy. We think Cyrus is going to make it through adolescence. And this issue." [VF]
Not Portfolio?
"Bethany McLean, co-author of a best-selling book about the Enron debacle, is leaving Fortune after a 13-year run to jump to Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair... It marks at least the third time that Condé Nast, which is headed by billionaire chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr., has come calling on McLean, one of the higher-profile journalists at the Time Inc.-owned business magazine. Portfolio had tried to get her to jump ship a year ago when Condé Nast was launching its business magazine, but Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey intervened to help Fortune win that tug of war." [Post]
celebrity science
Girls, 15, Call Miley Cyrus A Slut
It seems America's teenaged girls, their normative instincts honed to razor sharpness in high school hallways, have distilled the Miley Cyrus scandal to this: the Hannah Montana star acted like a "whore" and is probably a "slut." The Times interviewed several 15-year-old girls outside the Beacon School on the Upper West Side, and their comments neatly capture the essence of the judgements levied at large against Cyrus and Vanity Fair, fueled as they were by a conflicted Puritan hysteria about sex and self-interested image control masquerading as morality: More »
miley cyrus
The Walt Disney Corporation was nothing short of outraged when its billion-dollar-a-year child star Miley Cyrus appeared in Vanity Fair wearing only a bedsheet, as shown in the rightmost image above. Said a spokeswoman at the time: "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." But check out the Disney billboard pictured on the left, snapped by Slate's Daniel Brook in Beijing, China. The model, who looks barely pubescent, is being used to sell a matching bra-and-panties set. Brook said the billboard made "the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison." And it's not the work of Chinese intellectual property pirates; it comes from a legitimate Disney licensee pledged to clear all ads with Disney corporate. What does Disney say? Controlling child exploitation is hard! Also, Chinese people have certain... tastes:
More »
Disney's Kiddie Lingerie Billboard Advertises Hypocrisy
The Walt Disney Corporation was nothing short of outraged when its billion-dollar-a-year child star Miley Cyrus appeared in Vanity Fair wearing only a bedsheet, as shown in the rightmost image above. Said a spokeswoman at the time: "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." But check out the Disney billboard pictured on the left, snapped by Slate's Daniel Brook in Beijing, China. The model, who looks barely pubescent, is being used to sell a matching bra-and-panties set. Brook said the billboard made "the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison." And it's not the work of Chinese intellectual property pirates; it comes from a legitimate Disney licensee pledged to clear all ads with Disney corporate. What does Disney say? Controlling child exploitation is hard! Also, Chinese people have certain... tastes:
More »
michael roberts
Vanity Fair Fashion Director Can Add Self To "Stylish Casualties" List
Michael Roberts, the Vanity Fair fashion and style director who attributed the uproar over the sexy Miley Cyrus photos to unsophisticated Americans who don't handle "chic pictures" as well as his fellow Europeans, is not just dispensing cultural criticism through the media: he has a book coming out! And in a fun coincidence, the 112-page tome is going to be called Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties, from A to Z. Perhaps he'll add a section addressing the fact that "The whole kiddie porn prurient angle seems to be worryingly sour grapes from other magazines that didn't get a picture like this." After all, at Vanity Fair "We don't do cheesy teen pictures. We do chic pictures and pictures that are beautiful portraits." Alrighty then. Just for kicks, another now-ironic quote from last October's Telegraph profile of Roberts: More »
scandals
The Miley Cyrus Reaction Roundup
This whole Miley Cyrus incident, a young pop star being immodestly scandalized by Vanity Fair photos: it's so complicated! How should you feel? Who should you blame? Who is the biggest jerk in this whole sordid incident? Where should America direct its momentary outrage so that it can return to playing video games, eating snack foods, and conducting imperial conquest? Allow us to help. After the jump, a roundup of all the reaction from our most important opinion leaders to the Biggest Media Celebrity Scandal Of The Final Quarter Of April 2008. Was Rosie O'Donnell right, that we all need to lay off the heroic and intimidating Annie Leibovitz? Or is Germaine Greer, a Guardian critic, correct in predicting the beginning of Miley's existential decline? It's quite the heated argument: More »
hyperbole
Yucky Miley Pictures Are Just Like Teen Cult Impregnation, Says Bonnie Fuller
Bonnie Fuller, who oversees Star magazine and is therefore the arbiter of American media standards, has a question about this whole Miley Cyrus thing, and its connection to the current Texas polygamy scandal: "Is it OK to sexualize a fifteen-year-old if it is in the pages of a high falutin' magazine and her parents seem OK with it? Or is this really not much different from parents in a cult acquiescing to having their teen daughters wedded and bedded?" Ummm... can we say 'No' to all of the above? More »
magazines
Snotty European Prolongs Vanity Fair's Miley Debacle
Michael Roberts (pictured, probably pointing to something refined and beautiful) was the fashion and style director on Vanity Fair's creepy Miley Cyrus shoot. And instead of letting the fiasco die out quietly, he spoke out to WWD to reveal the real reason behind the outcry: sour grapes, and a bunch of American clods with an insufficient sense of sophistication! Europeans aren't like that, he'll have you know:More »
celebrity science
Stephen Colbert's Advice To Miley Cyrus
Today's absurd scandal about Miley Cyrus' topless photo shoot for Vanity Fair apparently broke too late to make it into Jon Stewart's Daily Show (as with the Eliot Spitzer hooker scandal last month), but Stephen Colbert's later broadcast of sibling satire show Colbert Report did manage to have some fun with the 15-year-old pop star's predicament. Colbert's jokey jabs at VF photographer Annie Leibovitz don't cut too deeply into the heart of the scandal, but the late-night comedian gets points for fast turnaround. Video after the jump. More »
rants
Why It's Annie Leibovitz's Fault
Annie Leibovitz: come off it. Really now. As dirty as the media business is—and particularly the celebrity media business, which Vanity Fair revels in under a sheen of high class pretension—there are some bare, bottom-level standards to which we all must adhere. One of those is, "Do not sexually exploit minors." You want to economically exploit a minor? Fine. That's a grand American tradition. But trotting out 15 year-old Miley Cyrus with pouty lips, tousled hair, and only a bedsheet is just bad. Bad! Of course Vanity Fair bears the responsibility for publishing it. But the idea for the shoot can be traced to the tired celeb photographer Leibovitz (who is sorry it's been "misinterpreted"). And her narrow, robotically transgressive act has now played itself out. This incident, and Leibovitz's entire style, is less shocking than it is boring—but with a 15-year-old involved, it's boring and creepy. More »
vanity fair
Well that was quick. It looks like you can no longer access Vanity Fair's behind-the-scenes slideshow of Miley Cyrus pictures. We have a selection of the vaguely creepy shots in our earlier post. Now the link on the magazine's website goes to a landing page for the feature story on the young star, but when you attempt to click through to the slideshow, an error message appears. A tacit admission of guilt, or just, ahem, a technical issue? We've emailed VF for comment, and we'll let you know what we hear. [UPDATE: The slideshow is back!]
Did Vanity Fair Already Pull The Miley Cyrus Slideshow?
Well that was quick. It looks like you can no longer access Vanity Fair's behind-the-scenes slideshow of Miley Cyrus pictures. We have a selection of the vaguely creepy shots in our earlier post. Now the link on the magazine's website goes to a landing page for the feature story on the young star, but when you attempt to click through to the slideshow, an error message appears. A tacit admission of guilt, or just, ahem, a technical issue? We've emailed VF for comment, and we'll let you know what we hear. [UPDATE: The slideshow is back!]
vanity fair
How Vanity Fair "Groomed" Miley Cyrus
There's a technique called "grooming" that pedophiles use on their victims (yes, we just learned about it today, thank you). One definition says "Grooming behavior is intended to make the victim or potential victim or victim's guardians feel comfortable with the molester and even interested in interacting with him." And here's a characteristic of a regressed child molester: "They place pseudo-adult status on their victims and then view them as they would their peers." Now take a look at the following behind-the-scenes pictures from Vanity Fair's controversial new Miley Cyrus photo shoot by 58-year-old lesbian photographer Annie Leibovitz and ask yourself if any of that rings a bell. We're not accusing these stylists of being pedophiles, we're just saying... ugh: More »
celebrity science
Vanity Fair Steals 15-Year-Old's Topless Virginity
Miley Cyrus apologized to America yesterday for appearing in a Vanity Fair photo spread, her torso wrapped only in what appeared to be a bedsheet, her hair tousled, her lips painted bright red. Viewers of her Hannah Montana are mostly aged 6-14, and their parents worry this is just another attempt to sexualize their young kids. It's true there was something unseemly about the whole thing, in particular Vanity Fair gloating in its Cyrus profile that "the topless but demure portrait accompanying this article could be seen as another baby step, as it were, toward a more mature profile" and asking, in a caption, "Um, was Cyrus—or Disney—at all anxious about this shot?" But there's also something absurd about the outraged reaction to the whole thing, including allegations of exploitation by Disney and a parenting website suggesting readers burn Hannah Montana products in a bonfire. More »
environmentalists
Cindy Crawford Will Be The First To Admit That She's No Al Gore
Just in time for its annual "Green Issue" (which, once again, is not printed on recycled paper), Vanity Fair gets supermodel—and super mom—Cindy Crawford to take some time out of her busy schedule and write a stilted and comically self-absorbed article to fill you, the reader, in on what Cindy Crawford is doing about "green" things. It's a word which is "on everybody's tongues these days." She's being harassed by her kids about this stuff! "I guess it's part of living in Malibu," she says. Yes, we'll take your word for it. More »
anthony pellicano
Condé Nast's Lying Tech Guy Questioned About Leaking, Spying
The guy who runs tech security for Condé Nast has admitted lying to the FBI and lending his services to private detective Anthony Pellicano even though he knew Pellicano was tapping people's phones. He's also been accused, in the course of Pellicano's racketeering and wiretap trial, of leaking a pre-publication copy of Vanity Fair that Pellicano mysteriously obtained, and of bragging about bugging the office of his Condé Nast supervisor. So why does he still have a job? More »
Noooo!
This Cannot Happen
A report is floating around that former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief, former New Yorker EIC, and Princess Diana biographer Tina Brown will be turning her book on the monarch into a BROADWAY MUSICAL! Maybe it's not so far-fetched. After all, Diana—who did some charity work, was pritty, and died—is beloved by foreigners, Elton John fans, and other show-toony types. But, then again... More »
rumormonger
