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          Front Page  shock

Sunday, February 9, 2003

Carnie Needs To Shed Self-Esteem Bid

By Leanne Potts
Of the Journal
    Apparently Playboy magazine has nixed Carnie Wilson's naked appearance in its April issue because she is still too fat.
    Wilson, if you remember, had gastric bypass surgery four years ago and lost 150 pounds.
    Apparently believing that any attention is good, Wilson had the surgery broadcast live over the Internet. The next logical step in this philosophy of exhibitionism is to display the post-operative results in a skin magazine, right?
    Her daddy, former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, must be so proud.
    Why on earth is Carnie Wilson posing for Playboy? Does she believe this will erase the painful memory of being known as the Fat Girl in Wilson Phillips?
    There's got to be a better way to heal an ego wounded by a bad body image than taking off one's clothes for millions of Playboy readers. (Mainly by not basing said body image on the photographic fictions you see in magazines. More on that in a minute.)
    If you do the math based on news reports of Carnie Wilson's highest weight minus her reported weight loss from the surgery (and minus the eight to 10 pounds of stretched-out, saggy skin she says she had surgically removed), the 5-foot 3-inch, 34-year-old Wilson must weigh around 140 pounds now. That's gives her a BMI of 24.8, the upper end of the normal weight range.
    "Since when has a woman's normal weight had any place in the world of fashion or men's magazines?" you ask. A good question.
    But the one I want answered is this: How can anyone be too chubby in the age of Photoshop?
    Playboy and most fashion magazines have been retouching photos for decades. In the old days, precomputer, airbrushes whisked away blemishes, made thighs smaller, breasts perkier, teeth whiter. The digital age has made photo retouching even more prevalent — and more sophisticated.
    Kate Winslet recently griped to a British newspaper that her body had been slimmed in a photo that ran on the cover of February's British GQ. "I don't look like that, and more importantly, I don't desire to look like that," the zaftig-and-proud-of-it actress told The Daily Mail.
    Stories of past digital makeovers abound: TV Guide once put Oprah Winfrey's head on Ann-Margret's slimmer body; Entertainment Weekly closed the gap in Madonna's front teeth and Revlon slenderized Cindy Crawford's arms.
    Put simply, cameras lie. The bodies in Playboy (and most fashion and entertainment magazines and advertisements) have never existed in real life.
    What could possibly be wrong with Carnie Wilson's body that computer manipulation can't make perfect?
   

    While we're on the topic of the tall tales photos tell, The New York Times had a fab piece in its Feb. 2 Styles section about the foremost photo-retoucher in the business, Pascal Dangin (pronounced dawnh-GANH).
    The French-born Dangin earns up to $20,000 a pop for retouching cover photos for magazines. He worked on the covers of this month's Harper's Bazaar, W and Allure.
    Dangin won't reveal what he did to those cover models, though. "I never want to talk about my work, because it's kind of taboo," he told The New York Times. "The people who benefit from my work do not benefit from me talking about it."
    Dangin, a former hairdresser, said that for the benefit of his clients, he tries to remain anonymous. Which is why he agreed to be interviewed and photographed for a newspaper with a national circulation of 1.7 million?
    Dangin had little sympathy for those irked by the age-old and widespread practice of retouching photos. His philosophy: If you don't like it, you're naive.
    "Hey, everybody wants to look good. Basically we're selling a product — we're selling an image," Dangin told the Times. "To those who say too much retouching, I say you are bogus. This is the world that we're living in. Everything is glorified. I say live in your time."
    Carnie Wilson, if you're set on being in Playboy, have your agent call Pascal.
   

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    Leanne Potts can be reached at lpotts@abqjournal.com. For more musings on popular culture, go to www.abqjournal.com/weblogs/shock.htm#.