Eye of the Beholder

There are some words that are just fun to say (or write), whether you know their precise meaning or not. Kerfuffle does it for me these days. As in, have you heard about the big kerfuffle over that Lady GaGa footage?

(It's ok if you haven't. To be honest, it's not worth the brain cell you'd waste remembering it anyway.)

But there is another kerfuffle I do find interesting. It concerns Kelly Clarkson. If you don't know, Kelly Clarkson is the pop singer with the distinction of having won the very first season of American Idol. She's done quite well for herself, too, having recorded several hit songs, won a number of awards, and become a household name.

Clarkson’s weight has always been something of an issue for the media. Sometimes she's up, sometimes she's not. For her, though, it’s an issue she could care less about. In a recent interview, she said, “Sometimes I eat more; sometimes I play more. I’ll be different sizes all the time. When people talk about my weight, I’m like, ‘You seem to have a problem with it; I don’t. I’m fine!’ I’ve never felt uncomfortable on the red carpet or anything.”

Good for her. And that, as the saying goes, is that. Or at least that should be the end of it.

Self magazine recently did something that drew heavy criticism, however: they digitally altered their cover photo of Ms. Clarkson. This should come as no surprise because it’s certainly no industry secret that magazines perform liberal amounts of airbrushing with the images that appear on their covers. The technology has been around so long that it’s cheap, affordable and comes bundled on just about every computer purchased these days. Everyone can change the way they look and since a bad magazine cover can kill that month’s sales, cover pictures are important. So, of course, alterations were performed on the September cover of Kelly Clarkson.

It wasn't the act of airbrushing that raised eyebrows. As I said, we know that the images we see in magazines are not truthful. More often than not, they don’t reflect the audience purchasing them. And why should they? We buy the magazines not because they show us as we are, but as we might look like one day.

However, there are a number of bloggers who believe that the alterations to Clarkson’s face, overall appearance, body type and even bone structure crossed the line for a magazine whose philosophy is to help women be true to themselves while cultivating a sense of inner beauty and personal fitness.

The editor of the magazine, Lucy Danziger, feels otherwise. She likened the act to choosing the best picture for the family Christmas card or deleting vacation pictures because an individual has a scowl instead of a smile on their face. Airbrushing did occur, Danziger says, but it was all done in an effort to make Ms. Clarkson look her personal best.

If Lucy Danziger and Self magazine seem to be struggling with the concept of truthfulness, they have a lot of company.

As news, commentary, and entertainment merge, I can’t help but think that truth is being overshadowed by opinion, flash, poll numbers, and Q scores. The Daily Show, as wonderful as it can be, is not specifically a news show. It is comedy. And yet it seems to be more accurate, truthful, and insightful in presenting the news than most commentary shows today on either television or radio.

A little over a month ago, we lost an endearing public figure: Walter Cronkite. It’s no surprise that Americans of a certain age considered him to be the most trusted man in the news; it was a reputation he worked a lifetime to earn through painstaking attention to fact and detail. He sought to present the news in an unvarnished a manner to let the people decide for themselves what to do with it.

I think that somewhere in the quest for higher ratings and subscriptions, something important has been overlooked. When we have to wait for the tell-all book from Dick Cheney, a former John Edwards aide, or a former child beauty queen to get the truth about what really happened or what a person really meant when they said x or did y, it makes me question whether I’m ever hearing the truth about anything at any time from anyone. I have a hard time believing that the truth should have a price tag attached because- when it does- it’s really no different than a digitally altered fitness magazine cover photo of a pop star. Isn’t it?