Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 )

New York (AP) — Facing rising costs for glossy magazine paper and other pressures hitting the magazine industry, editors at Vanity Fair, the iconic magazine of culture, fashion and politics owned by Condé Nast publications, said Monday that for cost-cutting reasons, they must in the future combine their annual Hollywood, Kennedy clan, and nymphette-themed editorial spreads into one large “Movies, Kennedys and Sexy Little Girls Issue.” The editors refer to it as an annual tableau vivant — “a regatta of taste, vision, desire, splendor and sumptuous taboo,” claims editor E. Graydon Carter.

Known for its access and insight into the deepest chambers of political power and for lots of pictures of teenage girls without their clothes on, Vanity Fair says, in its characteristic bluster, that its new issue will capture the new zeitgeist of all of the great fetishes of the literati–the Kennedy clan and its power and tragedy; the lavish and sinful Dionysian decadence of Hollywood; and the achingly short-stemmed beauty of a number of barely pubescent 13-year-old sub-debs, captured with barely swelling knolls of breasts in evocative red swimwear, or in no wear at all.

“People want the moral clarity, the strength, the vision and the Apollonian beauty of the Kennedy clan,” said Carter. “At the same time, we seek in our Hollywood establishment the depths of fin de siècle perversity, the human hubris, and the possibilities of touching the ends of our moral universe in ways that even the gods of Olympus dared not. And meanwhile, we must all acknowledge our collective fervor to ravish the presexual female and suckle on the fruit of her lost innocence–which becomes beauty.”

Glossy paper costs just keep rising in the magazine industry, which has forced many a magazine to cut corners. Even Vanity Fair, which has often enjoyed rising circulation in tough times, is not immune to the base coin of economic necessity now and has been losing advertising revenue, and thus profitability, even as circulation rises. But the magazine says that its editorial mission is the same and that its readership (mostly women in their 40s with an average income in the $79,000 area) should continue to expect journalism of refinement, savvy and integrity that is privy to the thinking of some of the most powerful men in the world, as well as expect a prurient housewife’s interest in the sex lives of effete monarchs and aristocrats and also expect lots of luscious male-gaze-impotent-voyeur fetish snapshots of sexually charged tweens such as Dakota Fanning and Francis Bean Cobain.

“Whether they are mourning the tragedy of Camelot, or enjoying the tumescent tabula rasa that is the sight of Miley Cyrus’s soft, milky white topless back, Americans continue to revive the themes of Greek drama,” said Carter. “They yearn to see in their role models the classical virtues and aesthetics. When we see the multiple tragedies of the Kennedys, do we not think of the Gods angered at Achilles or Actaeon? When we see the rare, supple form of a burgeoning Abigail Breslin, do we not admire the universal elements of beauty, which Aristotle identified in his Metaphysics–order, symmetry and definiteness?”

Vanity Fair has recently stoked controversy with its racy photos of Miley Cyrus and exposes of Roman Polanski and Lindsay Lohan. Though these have caused momentary setbacks, the magazine blazes forward with its mission, it says, of bringing “any and all details of the Kennedy clan, including forensic evidence such as lipstick, pubic hair, and spittle into public view at all times, if only so the public may touch the DNA of greatness. And also, the moment we see any new film featuring any girl under the age of 8, we promise the Vanity Fair reader that we will be working diligently on a new nymphette issue five years in advance–thus bringing you the emerging sexuality of Hollywood’s next Christina Ricci. Or Natalie Portman. Or Jamie Lynn Spears. Or Lindsay Lohan. Whoever is the woman inside the child, we at Vanity Fair promise that we will be the first to jump, pounce on and tackle that woman and wrest her from her innocence forever with typical journalistic élan.”

Vanity Fair‘s circulation is 1.2 million.