May 8, 2008
Neutrogena has partnered with Self magazine and Jennifer Garner to unveil what the company calls The Roadmap to Healthy Skin, a viral campaign discussing sun safety and skin cancer awareness.
The Roadmap appears in the May 2008 issue of Self, stressing the importance of self-examination to prevent skin cancer and promote early detection. Self encourages women to download a mole map, located at www.self.com, to track skin changes that could signal cancer.
An e-card campaign enables women to send e-cards to friends and family to encourage them to perform self-examinations and to visit the dermatologist for an annual full body check. For every five e-cards sent, Neutrogena will make a donation to help support skin cancer research.
Self.com also has an exclusive video about sun safety featuring Jennifer Garner, and an interactive map highlighting important facts about sun safety across the US.
May 6, 2008
 More details are emerging about the Naomi Watts advertisements for Thierry Mugler Angel, from the New York, rather than French, end of the business:
Naomi Watts was the inspired choice for Thierry Mugler, over and above her beauty and her star image. Displaying a modern touch, the actress projects a personality that blends sensuality, voluptuousness and evanescence to evoke the many facets of Angel. A blond fragility, a natural tenderness, an emotional seductiveness …
Rather appropriately, it was in Los Angeles, city of the angels, and in the Hollywood Center studios, that the commercial was shot, following a scenario by Thierry Mugler and directed by director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls). A Hollywood fairy-tale surrounded by a profusion of Angel stars.
To immortalize this mythical moment, Thierry Mugler called on photographer Ali Mahdavi to produce the advertising visuals of his Hollywood dream. A worldwide campaign, glamorous and magical, will begin in October 2008.
Chanel has chosen Jean-Pierre Jeunet to direct the next No. 5 advertising film, starring actress Audrey Tautou starring in the lead role.
Jeunet had directed Tautou already in the César- and BAFTA-winning Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie in English) and Un long dimanche de fiançailles (The Long Engagement). The Chanel advertisement will be the third collaboration between Jeunet and Tautou.
Tautou, born in the Auvergne region, is best known for Amélie and the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, with Tom Hanks.
The advertisement will be shown in 2009.
Chanel is no stranger to artistic commercials. Its 2007 film for its Rouge Allure lipstick was directed by Bettina Rheims and starred Swiss model Julie Ordon.
May 5, 2008
Actress Naomi Watts is the new face of the Thierry Mugler Angel fragrance, it was announced ahead of her début at the Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The company says that Watts is ‘A true embodiment of the fragrance itself and all it represents’. The campaign breaks in October in the US and features Watts.
On May 5, Watts, dressed in vintage Thierry Mugler, makes her début at the gala, representing ‘a selection of the unique works of art created by Mugler himself.’
May 2, 2008
 Gisèle Bündchen, whose face promotes products from Disney to Nivea and Aquascutum, is the world’s top-earning model, according to Forbes.
The magazine’s latest table of what it calls the top 15—there are actually 16 models—puts Bündchen’s earnings over the last 12 months at US$35 million, more than double that of Heidi Klum, in second place at US$14 million.
It said that Bündchen’s US$5 million Victoria’s Secret contract, which ended in December 2007, was included in the totals. But even without it, she still comes up top, thanks to the value of some 20 contracts.
Klum was helped by her television ventures and campaigns for Diet Coke, Jordache, Mouawad, Volkswagen and Schwarzkopf.
In third place was Kate Moss (US$7·5 million), followed by Adriana Lima (US$7 million) and Doutzen Krœs ($6 million).
Krœs managed to get into the top five after scoring a Victoria’s Secret contract on top of her Calvin Klein and L’Oréal deals.
In sixth place was Karolina Kurkova (US$5 million), with Natalia Vodianova (US$4·8 million), Carolyn Murphy (US$4·5 million), Daria Werbowy (US$3·8 million) and Miranda Kerr (US$3·5 million) rounding out the top 10.
Isabeli Fontana (US$3 million) appears on the list for the first time at number 11; Gemma Ward (US$3 million), the second Australian on the list, ties for 11th; and Selita Ebanks (US$2·7 million) is 13th.
Valentina Zelyaeva (US$2·3 million), Estée Lauder face Hilary Rhoda (US$2 million) and Liya Kebede (US$1·5 million) take positions 14 to 16.
 I finally came across the full text of the press release attacking Massey University over its story on its alum Rhonda Grant, Miss Universe New Zealand’s second runner-up.
You can read the statement from the Association of University Staff’s president, Assoc Prof Maureen Montgomery, via Scoop. I think she was pretty persistent, sending it out to the NZPA as well as other news sources—she really disliked the story.
It’s a shame Dr Montgomery has received anonymous hate mail over this today, when her release is filled with good targets for debate.
I respect her right to hold an opinion and I think she was right to circulate it, but I wonder just how it might benefit the Association of University Staff, or any institution promoting tertiary issues.
A lot of the arguments are addressed in our own release, which pageant director Val Lott asked me to write. I was more than happy to put the record straight, something that Dr Montgomery gave me a good opportunity to do.
You can tell Dr Montgomery failed to do what I thought academics should do first and foremost: get sufficient evidence and maintain an open mind.
The story on Rhonda Grant was no better and no worse in quality terms than the puff pieces about alumni on the Massey University website, so we know she has been singled out.
Dr Montgomery writes, ‘Massey’s story reads like the formulaic sort of thing that aspiring beauty queens are expected to say when interviewed on the catwalk.’
As I said in our release, the reality is the interviews are tough—and there are no expectations of formulaic answers at Miss New Zealand.
I defend the pageant because I know how tough the judging got: Rhonda was allowed to talk about nutrition, and other contestants were quizzed about everything from the moral repugnancy of bank charges to genetics versus socialization, depending on their university specialization.
‘One might expect a university public relations office to do more than piggy-back off what comes across as a publicity statement produced by the Miss Universe organisation,’ she said.
Publicity statements from the Miss Universe Organization seldom focus on second runners-up but, whether we like it or not, Massey has engaged in journalism. We might argue over the quality.
I share some of her concerns over objectification but I believe that was sufficiently addressed when Rhonda’s bikini-clad photograph was removed from the Massey University website in favour of something more conservative.
Once that was done, then the complaint really is a case of the lady protesting too much, unless all alum puff pieces are equally, to use Dr Montgomery’s word, ‘banal’.
And as deep journalism, maybe that’s not unfair—but it should apply fairly to all puff pieces, not just Rhonda’s.
If it were couched in such terms, I would gladly stand by her.
Dr Montgomery’s complaint on Rhonda’s piece specifically might be better directed at government educational policy that has supposedly bred a generation of sex-obsessed high school graduates who might find Rhonda Grant’s figure the reason to join Massey University.
Actually, on the sexualization of youth, I would also gladly stand by her.
But for now, as a colleague here at Lucire said to me today, ‘You have to ask yourself: what does Maureen Montgomery get out of it? It’s none of her business. Why has she been allowed to be involved?’
I suppose the answer comes, rightly or wrongly, from the anti-American stances of liberal universities around the world, and Dr Montgomery’s own informs them. It helps the profile of the University of Canterbury, where she works, and cements its liberal position.
My own father equated Dr Montgomery’s release to Rosie O’Donnell’s outburst on The View against Miss Nevada 2006 and Donald Trump: ill-considered, narrow-minded, poorly investigated and founded on opinion.
Where Dr Montgomery and I do share some basic views is how images can shape agenda. I know this. I publish fashion magazines. Let’s not kid ourselves.
She wrote, ‘Massey University has provided an excellent example of how the desperation to market universities as “attractive” places to gain knowledge and transferable skills intersects with the use of the sexualized female body as a site of desire.’
There is an element of truth to such statements, but I question if university choices are made based on attractive alumni—even with my rant yesterday on sexualization.
When I went to university, I had far more pressing concerns such as degree programmes and career prospects.
Vitally, we are talking about a story that is hard to find on the Massey University site—a site that had proxy errors in the small hours of this morning that rendered it inaccessible. If it were not for her own strong and widely disseminated disapproval, it would have been seen probably by a few dozen people—perhaps one prospective student.
I’d personally have saved the energy for when universities started putting out alumni swimsuit calendars.
By all means, speak out—I do on even lesser issues. But consider the effect of the publicity: right now, it seems Rhonda Grant is going to be promoted to national stardom on Close-up and Campbell Live, and the pageant will get prime-time coverage on the same day Miss New Zealand Samantha Powell did her Good Morning interview on TV One. Earlier today, Paul Holmes promoted this as a major item on his radio show in Auckland.
We couldn’t have dreamed of this profile.
This has played into the hands of the pageant exceptionally well and, as a judge, I thank Dr Montgomery, even if I do so somewhat selfishly.
May 1, 2008
Pageant judge and Lucire publisher Jack Yan has defended Miss Universe New Zealand second runner-up Rhonda Grant after criticisms about a Massey University story from the Association of University Staff.
‘It’s the usual story of pulling down someone because of her looks or her success,’ he says. ‘I believe she’s been singled out.
‘Journalistically, Miss Grant’s interview was no different in quality to others that have appeared on the Massey site.’
Miss Grant gave an interview to her Alma Mater, Massey University. The Association’s national president Assoc Prof Maureen Montgomery called the article ‘one of the most banal news features emanating from a university this year’, and that it read ‘like the formulaic sort of thing that beauty queens are expected to say when interviewed on the catwalk’, according to a New Zealand Press Association article.
Mr Yan says pageantry is far removed from Dr Montgomery’s suggestion.
‘I laugh when people assume that pageant contestants answer easy questions, showing that they are so very ignorant of the interview process.
‘Formulaic answers are rejected,’ he claims, ‘and they are certainly not expected.’
Mr Yan recalls that questions in the 2008 pageant, held two weeks ago in Auckland, concerned everything from immigration policy and globalization to the debate on genetics versus socialization.
‘They are not bimbos and they are not judged by morons. We don’t prejudge these young women as harshly as the Association has. I expected that someone of Dr Montgomery’s qualifications would make a simple academic inquiry into the process before attacking it.’
Mr Yan says that he has guest-lectured at various universities and contributed to academic journals in Great Britain, and that his fellow judges are well qualified in their areas of expertise.
‘We can’t afford to send someone to Miss Universe who cannot think on her feet or produces insubstantial answers.
‘For anyone to suggest that unintelligent women enter pageants is an affront to the contestants.’
He admits that he has only read the criticisms as reported in the NZPA piece as run in The New Zealand Herald and that he does not have the full text.
‘Based on the Herald article, the message that the Association is sending is that young men and women who have good looks should not be fêted for their accomplishments, which they worked hard for.’
He says he does not deny evidence that suggests looks can contribute to one’s career but points out that on the flip side, people like Miss Grant have to contend with being stereotyped as vacuous.
‘Miss Grant is an able, bilingual young woman with a science degree, running a nutrition business with a growing number of contracts,’ he says.
Mr Yan believes that Massey University should be proud to have such talent and entrepreneurship among its alumni.
He acknowledges that beauty pageant entrants run the risk of objectification but he did not think this was an example.
A photo of Miss Grant in a bikini was removed by Massey University in favour of a more conservative shot.
‘I can understand complaints about the earlier photograph, but after it was changed, it still seems that the Association can’t let the matter go,’ says Mr Yan.
‘While I cannot speak for Massey University, I know earlier versions of web pages can go live, and I imagine what we see now is the final one.
‘To me, this was a non-issue sparked by a single image, and the Association is now grasping at whatever is left of the article to cement its self-importance and to belittle Miss Grant’s academic endeavours. That, to me, devalues the degree of any New Zealand university graduate.’
April 30, 2008
It’s not that we haven’t kept up with the row over the Miley Cyrus photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair, which sexualize the teenage star, but I have to draw the line somewhere when it comes to news coverage.
There are quarters in fashion publishing which would deem these photographs appropriate and artistic, just as Leibovitz claimed, and we ourselves have featured teens in and even on the cover of Lucire, looking probably older than they really are.
But if a subject comes to me and tells me that she is embarrassed by a series of photographs, and for a cover decision she may well be in the know, then that’s good enough reason for me to have a meeting or a big office poll about it.
And that’s just what Cyrus, star of the beloved Hannah Montana series, has said of her half-naked bedroom shot.
In normal circumstances, this matter would be worked out privately between the Cyrus family and Vanity Fair’s publishers.
Which makes this all rather odd: has the crisis surrounding these images been manufactured? One commenter on a Murdoch Press website seems to think so and, knowing how cover decisions are made, especially those that are potentially controversial, I am seriously tempted to agree.
Reports suggest that Cyrus’s father, singer Billy Ray Cyrus, was present through most of the shoot.
What I do know is that the modelling agencies we would work with are protective of their talent and we agree on many aspects of the shoot prior to starting when it involves a young girl—and that means overt sexualization is out.
For once many of the press have taken a moral high ground and that is, at least, pleasing to see, even if I have questions on their consistency. The Fairfax Press noted:
Interestingly, the op-ed in the Fairfax Press touches on similar subjects to a blog comment that I wrote in discussion with William Shepherd, a marketing expert based in California—one of those smart netizens who reminds me of the days in the 1990s when most people on the ’net were of a certain intellectual level.
He wrote, on the topic of pornography in Brazil:
When I think about these words today, it’s not just the online media, as Vanity Fair and others have shown us.
I do, after all, see the irony of citing the Murdoch Press when it popularized the page-three girl and sensationalist stories founded in sex.
At the risk of offending fans of certain TV shows, I responded:
While sex is as woven in to Desperate Housewives as it was into Benny Hill, and those watching it at its late hour (past the watershed?) know what to expect, it gets an awful lot of publicity in TV promos with their share of suggestive imagery at other times. OK, it wasn’t the best example of a TV show (which I watched at one point), but the old Friends certainly was. I think it’s difficult to disagree that we have become too obsessed with sex in our society and those early seasons of Friends depended less on characterization and more on innuendo, not often that subtle.
At the idealistic level there is nothing wrong with this when it comes to showing behaviour between consenting adults—it’s less objectionable than seeing the extreme violence that has now made it on to prime-time television—but we now face the danger of it going further and further into promoting promiscuity among the young. Expand sex’s reach, and you arouse greater curiosity in our youngest citizens at an earlier age. It’s like lowering the drinking age to 18, as had happened in New Zealand: now it’s not 17-year-olds sneaking in three years before they are legal, but 14-year-olds with fake IDs.
That curiosity around sex has always been there with those who are 11 or 12, as any of you reading this will know, but the signals are telling us that as adults we need to give more guidance, and we need to take a stand against marketing that encourages sex at a time when mentally, young people are not prepared for the consequences.
And it was interesting to read that I am not alone in my assessment; in fact mine seems ill-educated alongside that of an author who has devoted a book to the subject. Fairfax again:
As long as we sit back, tut-tut when the items make the news but fall back on not caring at other times, then we have lost yet another value. Add that to a huge list in the west—and the east—since the end of World War II.
If certain institutions are being so aggressive as Liebau writes, then adults need to be as aggressive. ‘Benign dictatorship’, in the words of Carr-Gregg, probably describes the families many of us had—and we turned out all right.
It was a sort-of democracy in my household because my parents involved me in every family-affecting major decision and I earned their trust so I never had a curfew. But that was earned—and I was probably lucky I had a good conscience or spirit guide, or something directing me.
Not everyone is so fortunate, and in this day and age, it’s not a bad idea to be strongly involved in our children’s lives because that moral compass no longer comes from those cohesive, homogeneous communities of old, nor does it come from the media, at least not regularly or consistently. We, the regular people, are the last and possibly only resort in our respective families.
 Our editor-at-large Summer Rayne Oakes has been named the fourth best dressed person by the Sustainable Style Foundation, up from fifth last year. Congratulations! Number one by ’09!
UK model of the moment, Agyness Deyn, will release a single, according to British media today.
It will be her first foray into music, in collaboration with New York-based band Five O’Clock Heroes.
Deyn contributed some vocals to the song, ‘Who’, and will appear in the video.
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