What really happens when women are asked to be on magazine covers

Amy Schumer has disappointed a lot of women this week by posing for a men’s mag cover with a penis finger in her mouth. It’s not a human finger, it’s a Star Wars robot finger.

But the implication is clear: Blowjob.

Wink wink. Nudge nudge. She’s sucking something. GEDDIT?

GQ – and many men’s magazines – love to shoot famous women licking and sucking objects:

So why do powerful celebrity women agree to such a demeaning, sexualised, objectifying, humiliating request? Because they have to. No photo? No cover. No cover? No story. No publicity. And if you’re a model or singer or actress or even author, you need that publicity to sell your movie or your album or yourself. Media oxygen like this literally pays your rent.

It’s almost like a weird form of sexual harassment or coercion: “Show us your tits. Get nude. Pose in underwear. Lick or suck this object.  Then – and only then- we’ll put you on our cover.”

The power balance isn’t equal here. Because if you don’t agree to be sexualised or put something in your mouth or take your clothes off, there are 1000 other young women lining up to do it.

As Amy Schumer herself said just last month while accepting an award from UK Glamour magazine, it was such a lovely change to work with a women’s magazine as opposed to the usual shoots she does.

“…when a female comic has a photoshoot, they’re like ‘Oh cool, can you like hold this plastic dick over your head and we’re going to shoot actual cum out of it onto your head?’”

“They’re like, ‘You’re going to be a cum dumpster,’ and you’re like ‘Thank you for having me!’”

That’s why her decision to say yes to this GQ cover has upset some of her biggest fans.

In the Guardian, Jessica Valenti writes:

“Schumer – whose show has gotten increasingly and fantastically feminist – knows, and often riffs on, the ridiculous expectations that are put on women, celebrity women especially. It’s part of what has made her own rise to fame so down-to-earth for her fans: She’s criticizing the sexism of Hollywood as she works her way through it.

So to see a cover where the GQ staff literally took a woman who speaks for a living and shoved a penis-stand-in into her mouth is distressing. One Schumer fan and friend of mine opined that the cover “broke her heart”. And the cover isn’t the worst of it. One of the pictures in Schumer’s spread shows her fellating a lightsaber.”

Valenti acknowledges that Schumer may well have been fine with the shoot. This is true – absolutely. This could have been her own idea from start to finish. But it’s also true that no woman’s individual choice happens in a vacuum. There are many many forces at play when a woman ‘chooses’ to say yes to a magazine request to take off her clothes or suck an inanimate object. Amy is currently doing media to promote her new movie, Trainwreck. The success of this movie depends on the awareness she can drum up for it for its opening weekend.

This week, there was another cover of a female celebrity that was in the news. Except we can’t show it to you because that magazine cover was never shot. Australian actress and feminist Caitlin Stacey spoke out loudly on Twitter about being asked to pose nude for Good Weekend magazine.

According to the ABC,  “Australian actress Caitlin Stasey has lashed out at Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine after it chose to delay a feature on her following her refusal to pose nude for the piece. In a series of tweets, Stasey launched a scathing attack on the magazine, tagging The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.”

Good Weekend magazine suddenly doesn’t have the space to run a piece on me because I wouldn’t do a shoot in my underwear @theage @smh

— caitlin stasey (@caitlinstasey) July 15, 2015

They wanted to team an interview about my upset over the constant objectification of women with a sexualized photo shoot. I declined.@theage — caitlin stasey (@caitlinstasey) July 15, 2015

A woman appearing nude once, for her own purposes, does not have to bend to you willing her nude for yours @theage

— caitlin stasey (@caitlinstasey) July 15, 2015

 The Please Like Me star publishes a feminist website called Herself.com which sometimes features nude photos of women, including Stasey. These photos are taken with the complete creative control of the women involved and published on the platform of their choice. Being naked in one context on your own terms does not automatically mean you will agreeing to strip off for anyone who asks.

Click through to see some examples of how women are objectified on magazine covers. Post continues below. 

The editor of Good Weekend, Ben Neparstak, released a statement to the ABC after Stasey’s tweets in which he said:

“As the profile was tied to the launch of Caitlin’s website of nude photography, I thought it would be fitting to do an artful shoot in that vein while offering a change of pace from our usual celebrity portraits. But of course I fully respected and understood Caitlin’s reluctance to participate in that.”

Without the nude cover photo, he admitted the story was not ‘as strong’ and would run some time in the future. Caitlin Stasey has disputed this: “I refused to go nude, but said I was game to explore other concepts. We agreed on a new concept,” she said on Twitter. “At the last second, their editor Ben Naparstek cancelled the shoot. We said they could use existing artwork if they wanted. They then delayed the releasing of the article claiming they no longer had the space for it.”

U do understand the difference between a woman appearing naked on her own terms & one being coaxed to in order to sell your product?@theage

— caitlin stasey (@caitlinstasey) July 15, 2015

This is the weird space that women in the public eye have to navigate every time they agree to be photographed for a magazine. Profiles and interviews require photos and the whole process is contrived from start to finish. I know this having been on both sides of the camera over the years. For a long time I was an editor and now, even though I’m a million miles from a celebrity, I’m occasionally asked to do interviews and photoshoots. It goes something like this: first, you’re dressed by someone you don’t know in clothes you don’t own. Your hair is done by a stranger in a style you never wear and your make-up slapped on heavily in a fancier way than you’d ever do yourself.

You’re then asked to do weird things like lie on the grass in a ballgown. Or pretend to walk across an empty studio while pretending to laugh. Or take your clothes off.  I was once asked to throw a shabby baby doll into the air to symbolise “juggling”. It’s all to fulfill the creative vision of the art director, the photographer and the stylist. What you want (or who you are) doesn’t come into it.

That’s how I once ended up a few years ago like this:

The editor of this mag is a woman I was friends with at school, Lisa Messenger and it was lovely of her to invite me to be on her cover when her mag was very new. In the past year or so the covers of this magazine have become among the most interesting in the industry. At the time, she put me under no pressure to dress this way and had I spoken up, she probably would have been open to my suggestions. But I didn’t – women so often don’t – because I felt grateful to be asked to be on a cover and I didn’t want to be a diva.  Back then I just didn’t know how to say no. But today I wince when I look at it. I hid it from my kids when it came out because it’s not me and it’s in no way a depiction that feels authentic. It’s someone else’s vision of me and that’s something I’m not interested in participating in anymore.

Over the past few years, I’ve gradually found my voice when it comes to photo shoots – something I dread at the same level as going to the dentist. First, I began to ask (then insist) that photographs of me not be retouched. This is hugely important to me and something I’ve done since I first launched Mamamia.

Then – after growing increasingly uncomfortable being dressed in clothes I don’t own and would never wear (see above), I began to insist on only being photographed in my own clothes. I’m also far more wary of how I’m shot.

When I agreed to an interview and profile with the Good Weekend a few months ago, I knew a photo shoot would be required. I made my stipulations as above (no retouching, my own clothes) and asked if the shoot could be done in the Mamamia Women’s Network office.

The crew came, I brought a couple of changes of clothes which the magazine’s stylist helped pick out from my wardrobe and we did two different set-ups. A few weeks later the magazine’s art director emailed me to ask if we could reshoot the cover because the shots in the office weren’t right for the front of Good Weekend.

I asked what they wanted to do differently and was told the idea was to do it in a studio and make it super glamorous.

I said no. Absolutely not. I was actually pretty annoyed and pushed back hard. I am not a model or an actress. I am a journalist and a business woman. I am the opposite of super glam – it’s just not who I am. So, like Caitlin Stasey, I declined the request. In many ways, I was lucky – I wasn’t relying on this cover for my work. So many women aren’t in this position.

In the end, they understood where I was coming from. They didn’t pressure me. They found a shot from the original shoot in the office that was OK. Here’s how it turned out:

You can see the lines around my eyes and the bags under them. I’m wearing a dress I really like and feel comfortable in. The lipstick is my own. It’s still nowhere near what I look like every day but I think it was a good compromise.

And bonus: nobody asked me to lick or suck anything or take off my clothes. THANK YOU GOOD WEEKEND.

These women weren’t so lucky. Or maybe they WANTED to be shot like this. But next time you see a cover like this, ask yourself ‘what would have happened had she refused to take her clothes off?”

What do you think about the way women are featured on magazine covers?

Like this post? Try these…

What’s the difference between a men’s magazine and a rapist.

Are fashion magazines endangered?

When magazine covers make history.