As we suspected they might,Bazaar has gone the first-lady route with Boyle, posing her, at a mansion just outside London, in what an editor calls "the most classic beautiful pieces of the season," which run the gamut from Tadashi Shoiji to J. Crew: an accessible (for the most part) wardrobe for a woman-of-a-certain age. So how does she look? Good. By which I mean, she looks like a more polished version of herself.

In the video the mag posted online, Boyle is a game subject, clearly enjoying the process and going along easily with the magazine's suggestions. But reading the accompanying interview, it seems pretty clear Boyle's not an easy nut to crack - and not just because of the author's careful admission that Boyle "isn't expansive when she talks." Basically, we know it all: she had a quiet life, cared for her elderly mother, chased her dream, and found the press a lot to take. And, again, the description of Boyle falls into the somewhat pitying incredulity that journalists so often can't help adopting:

Despite her newfound fame, there are a lot of things Susan Boyle doesn't do. She doesn't go on holiday or go out much. She isn't into fashion or gourmet food. She isn't married, doesn't have children, and hasn't seen the world. When I ask her if she's been shopping, for example, she shakes her head. Not even to Selfridges? "Where?" she asks, half joking. But feeling financially secure must surely be a bonus. "Hey, you don't just do it for the money. I don't do it for the money, babe! Who do you think I am?"

(First of all what does shopping (for example) have to do with marriage and children? She's supposed to have suddenly taken them all up in the past two months? And love how they all, in sum, are supposed to say "empty life" to a fashion mag reader!) If people are looking for sudden outpourings of emotion and a dramatic shift in personality - in short, drama equal to that which brought her to us - it looks like they'll be disappointed. But for those of us who genuinely wish to see the singer with a sustainable life and a career commensurate with her talents, well, this spread should prove reassuring. And one hopes her joke, "as long as I don't break the camera, I'll be fine," is in fun.


Love the peacock blue with Susan's fair complexion - even if this doesn't look like something she'd ever wear in real life. And how pretty is her makeup?


The What Not to Wear outfit! Knee-length skirt: check. Classic heel: check. Tailored coat: check. Hint of color: check, check. They'd probably suggest this was appropriate for picking up the kids or something; seems like a good getup for Susan to wear to the studio, no?


Okay, this is officially my least-favorite, because I can't help thinking "Grimace" and because, sassy as it looks here, you just know that shape could get Helen E. Hokinson-frumpy with very little work.


The perfect concert gown! Nice work, Bazaar.


Hm. The obligatory "woman of a certain age" sequins. I get that a touch of sparkle works on stage, but this feels a little Barbara Bush.


This gown, at $490, is among the shoot's most expensive. On the one hand, I like that they're keeping the prices somewhat realistic. But on the other, perversely, I'd love to see Susan in the priciest gown they've got! Or at least a nice Carolina Herrera. That said, love this one.


Susan Boyle, Unsung Hero [Harper's Bazaar]
Earlier: How Should Harper's Bazaar Style Susan Boyle?

Boomp3.com

Eva Mendes’ weekly trip to her nearby magazine kiosk was quickly halted by the discovery of a familiar face on the back of a glossy fashion magazine. Mendes brought the magazine over to the kiosk employee and asked if the person on the back of the magazine looked familiar. The distracted employee barely looked up from the sports section, but nevertheless managed to say, “That’s a real pretty lady.” Mendes smiled and agreed with the man before snatching up the rest of the fashion magazines with her ad on the back cover. Mendes intends to show all of the magazines to her friends and family.

[Photo Credit: Flynet]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Many women are transformed by Dangin's computer stylus, which sits in a basement laboratory at "Box", his four-story, Manhattan Photoshop fortress: In addition to Drew, there is the trophy wife with the "flat" face and "short" legs; the shoulder blade found "in a recent project at W"; the cast of the Sopranos; Prada models; "a famous actress in her late twenties"; a "crunchy"-faced model; "another well known actress"; "an actress with a movie coming out this spring"; Kate Moss; models Liya Kebede and Raquel Zimmerman; Madonna. And then there is model Christy Turlington, who, Collins explains, "needs the least help".

Collins, interestingly (purposefully?) glosses over Dangin's flaws as adeptly as he reshapes a model's nasiolabial folds. Her interview subjects, she explains, liken him to "a translator, an interpreter, a conductor, a ballet dancer articulating choreographed steps". (She compares his work to that of painters Jasper Johns and John Currin; he is, she later explains solemnly, "savantlike".) Collins also seems almost resolutely disinterested in exploring Dangin's role in perpetuating unrealistic standards of beauty and when a photograph ceases to be a photograph and becomes, what Redbook editor Stacy Morrison once said, "an image": most of the critics and/or experts of photo manipulation Collins quotes are all long-dead; the only living people she does quote are all fans of Dangin; and she all but skips over the news that Dangin retouched Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" advertisements. And when she finally gets around to asking Dangin about the work he does and how it affects and defines those aforementioned standards of beauty, she follows his explanation — "I'm just giving the supply to the demand" — with a cynical parenthetical announcing, "fashion advertisements are not public-service announcements." (Yeah, tell that to Newsweek's Jessica Bennett, who put up this story on Friday, quoting a NYC stylist as saying "those young kids looking at the magazines, they're dreaming of something that doesn't exist.")

The work Dangin does, has, not surprisingly, made him very rich. (He owns homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and St. Bart's; in addition to the cover portrait of Barrymore, Dangin, with the help of favorite Photoshop tools as the smudge brush, the warping tool, and the clone stamp, retouched — or "tweaked" — 107 advertisements and 36 fashion photographs in the March 2008 issue of Vogue alone.) It has also, interestingly, made him somewhat of a god among the egotistical, easily-unimpressed bigwigs in the fashion and photography industries, who defer to his whims without a second thought. His list of clients is both impressive and iconic: Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier; Annie Leibovitz ("Just by the fact that he works with you, you think you're good"); Inez and Vinoodh; Craig McDean, who says he gives Dangin "carte blanche" to basically do whatever he wants. Whether Dangin enjoys all the adulation and deference that comes his way, Collins does not make clear (nor does she explore the fact that from the photographers to the photo retouchers to the art directors, images of women in fashion magazines are manipulated and decided upon by men before they ever appear before a female fashion editor's eyes.) As for the things Dangin doesn't enjoy — on the women whose photographs he alters, that is — they include the following: ropy blue veins; bony temples; fleshy chins; bumps of all sorts; big knees; "slumpy" legs; bad pores. Oh, and of course, fat asses.

Several days later, Demarchelier returned to the studio to continue winnowing images for the show. The conversation turned to which shot to include of another well-known actress.

"I like her in this one, because she looks very natural," Dangin said.

"Yes," Demarchelier agreed. "In that other pose, she looks like an actress."

"But she's also very good here," Dangin said, of a shot that showed her partially nude.

"Yes, she's very beautiful in that position. Do you want to cut it?"

"No, no. I'm going to keep it for the ass," Dangin said.

"Maybe we could redo the ass."

"Yes, the ass is quite heavy."

Related: Picture Perfect [Newsweek]

Earlier: Photoshop of Horrors
Vogue Cover Girl Drew Barrymore Has Been Powerfully Photoshopped
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