WHO Do You Think You Are?

Ergh... I am so sick of all these body-image-self-love-anti-flagellation messages that seem to awash every magazine cover I come across.

It's not the idea of loving one's body that jerks my chain. It's the ironically backwards way these magazines go about trying to make women feel more comfortable in their skin. When really, they're saying one thing and doing the complete opposite.

I know it sounds like I'm flogging a dead horse. I've touched on these topic plenty of times before. But it just goes to show that as boistrous as some (okay...most) magazines are in the messages they promote about body image, they aren't getting the message themselves.

This week's guilty party is Who - usually one of my more favourite glossips for their superb balance of celebrity garbage and fashion front-runners - but this week, the trash talk and fashion faux pas fall short. Because gracing the cover is Rikki Lee Coulter, Lisa McCune and Johanna Griggs beneath a bright pink banner CELEBRITIES WITHOUT MAKEUP.

I know what you're thinking, because I thought the exact same thing. Sweet - celebrities baring their blemishes, puss-filled pimples for all to see, pores the size of Peru , blackheads, bags under the eyes - all those ugly traits which us normal people hide beneath layers upon layers of Revlon Ultra-Conceal.
What better way to perk myself up than to see 'the beautiful people' looking like every day, normal hags.

Well not in this magazine they don't.

I'm sorry to dissapoint, but there was nothing oozing, nothing red and nothing inflamed from excessive squeezing. In fact, normal was far from what I saw. These women looked like they'd walked out of a three-day spa fix in the Maldives where they'd been scrubbed, soothed and spray-tanned within an inch of their relaxed lives.

In other words, they looked beautiful, and therefore, completely unrealistic.

Staring at these flawless complexions, I became confused. What was I supposed to learn from this? What message was Who trying to sell me? Here are three women who look even more beautiful without make-up, tanned and natural, yet completely unnatural at the same time. Maybe one in every million women look that good without a link of paint, leaving the other 999,999 to feel even more self-aware of their 'beauty'.

It seems now, not only do we have to cope with hoping to look beautiful with makeup, but we have to cope with hoping to look beautiful without makeup too. Awesome - another message about body-image which has further scrambled my insecurities.

So I don't know what to think anymore - about Who or about body image. It's all smoke and mirrors, if you ask me.

But if it's reassurance they were going for, had they feature Rikki Lee with a dirty big Z-I-T on her nose, I'm pretty certain I would be feeling a whole lot better about the face that greets me in the mirror each morning.

Ciao for now. xo