Can you sense my sarcasm?  In case you didn’t hear about it, Kelly Clarkson’s picture was photoshopped on the new September 2009 cover of Self Magazine.  There has been controversy and argument over the fact.

And yet, the only thing that surprises me is that people are surprised by it!  Is it that women across our country don’t realize that cover pictures on magazines are fake?  That there are entire departments at magazine offices devoted to photoshopping and airbrushing?  They do everything from smudging out blemishes to shaving off an entire butt!  Those figures you see and think are impossible to achieve?  THEY ARE.  No one, not a single woman in this country, actually looks like those pictures.

And yet, people buy these magazines, and take the advice, and starve, suck, shave, and staple their way toward an unachievable dream.  For what??  To give more money to an entire industry devoted to image?  Seems ridiculous.

Kelly Clarkson is lovely.  Yes, she has a butt.  Oh, the horror.  Why is it that magazine art directors assume we’re not able to see her butt in its normal size and think, wow, she’s beautiful?

The only way to fight back against this practice is to refuse to buy these magazines.  I think, for the sake of our own sanity, and the health and sanity of our daughters, we should all just stop buying into the hype.  Refuse to try to be some ridiculous, unattainable ideal.  I haven’t bought a magazine in five years.  I refuse.  I, for one, will not try to be something unhealthy and sickly looking.  I want to celebrate my body.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to reach a healthy weight.  I just don’t agree that a healthy weight for a woman who is six feet tall is 155 pounds.  None of us should exchange health for a societal standard that is this warped.  Remember the hot, beautiful, sexy women of the 1950’s?  Marilyn Monroe was a normal sized woman.  She was not anorexic, nor was she a size 0.  And yet, she was perfect.

And so I say, let’s hear it for the normal, healthy female form.  Kudos to Kelly for staying herself - and shame on Self for airbrushing and photoshopping the cover woman for an issue that was supposed to be devoted to total body confidence.