Because I am a beauty product junkie, I have a subscription to Allure. Let's just get that out of the way. Month after month, I am treated to the same boring excessively airbrushed covers. This month's issue features Mariah Carey wearing someone else's nose and an accompanying article that was as full of air as marshmallow fluff.*
If you are just emerging from a coma and find this issue next to the call button you will learn that Mariah a)is mixed race, b) was married unhappily to the head of her old record label, c) suffered a very public meltdown, d) and is very chaste in spite of her tramp on acid presence.
I wonder if an actual person wrote this dreck or if it was just spit out of some random rainbow word generator. I also wonder if the editor of Allure secretly hates Mariah because the accompanying red carpet pictures of the singer taken over the years are truly hideous.
Source: designer<3er/lsa>
The rest of the issue, on the other hand is surprisingly okay. It contains, not one but two multi-page spreads featuring black models, Ubah and Chanel Iman. Actually there are three if you count the photo of model Israela in a makeup editorial. There's also a brief piece on Rashida Jones and her mother Peggy Lipton that really has nothing to do with the beauty treatment article that follows it.You know what bugs me about sample inserts? Unless it is lotion or perfume, the insert is completely useless. I have only ever seen one shade of foundation on those sample cards and it is always in "ivory." That shade doesn't even match most of the white women I know. Of course, this hardly matters because I can never resist trying the sample anyway which winds up making me look like I have some kind of skin pigment disorder.
The rest of the magazine is typical Allure: anti-aging articles, the "body makeover" section, a rundown of skin treatments like serums, overpriced creams and micro-dermabrasion (this one used an black woman as the tester.)
All in all, I'd say the April issue is one of the better ones to come out in recent months and worth a look the next time you're in line at the grocer.
*Does anyone else remember that stuff? I don't even want to think about what it was made of. When I was a kid I remember spreading it and peanut butter on sandwiches. If I caught my husband feeding that crap to my kid I might just strangle him.
3 comments:
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I must say that I completely agree with you. The last tiem I bought allure ws back in december when the january issue was out and had rihanna on it.
Now even though I'm only 17, I am starving for a magazine that represents ME. A chic, urban, black female. I'm sooo tired of seventeen magazine and cosmo girl. Every issue is "how to tell if he likes you", "12 new ways of kissing" or "get your best body in just 5 days". It's almost sickning.
My subscription for Instyle just ended and I'm trying to find another magazine that I want to subscribe to but it's getting hard. Essence is okay but the material is for older women and they ALWAYS have the same articles. Cosmopolitian and Glamour is catered towards white women. And Harpers Bazzar just gets on my nevers b/c it seems like the put renee zellweger ont here at least 5 times a year(maybe its just me).
So i guess I'll just stay with my subcription to Elle.
I totally thing there needs to be a change. And fast!!!! People like Bethann Hardison, Amy Barnett, Tia Williams, and the other many women of color in the fashionindustry need to release a magazine exclusively for women of color who are urban fashionistas.
Sry, I just had to vent...
I agree about allure. I used to get the subscriptions free with some gift card someone gave me and they've recently stopped, but I kind of miss it, to be honest.
I don't remember what the stuff was called, I want to say it starts with a j, but my mom just told me while we were in the supermarket yesterday that she loves it and could eat a whole jar in one go.
I used to have an Allure subscription, but I let it lapse, and I can't say that I miss it, because really, it was the same articles each month, just with a different cover(ALL women's mags are like that, I think).
The only time I liked "Pariah Scary" was when she was having her breakdown and making pointed jabs at Jennifer Lopez about how she, too, would "sleep eight hours every night if [she] didn't have to sing [her] own songs". I liked her episode of Cribs and wished that I, too, were a poor little rich singer who had people to "help" me put on my heels and freakin' boutique-sized closets with hundreds of pairs of jeans and Hello Kitty swag. **sigh**
Oh, and I learned a long time ago that those foundation samples were a waste of time for someone with my complexion. Even the so-called "darkest" shade was too light for me.
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