I can tell from the pixels

Giant shitbag Jenny McCarthy recently decided to take some time off from her busy schedule of spreading misinformation about vaccines and autism in order to pose nude for Playboy again.

Apparently, this caused some kind of minor brouhaha in some circles. Likely, those circles were only to be found in the entertainment divisions of several 24 hour newsrooms, because nothing delights them more than ginning up some “controversy” nobody is actually concerned about in order to fill some air time talking about it. This resulted in this video being posted to CNN.com a few days ago.

As you can see, apparently people are worried that she’s “too old” to pose nude, or don’t think it’s right for her to pose nude because she’s a mom. This is all bullshit. I think Jenny McCarthy is a giant shitbag because of her continued activism against vaccines, based on the demonstrably false idea that vaccines cause autism. Anything else she may be (a 39 year old woman, a mom, an actress, a nude model) is entirely irrelevant and entirely her business. If Playboy thinks they can sell more issues if they put her on the cover and she shows her boobies inside, and she is cool with that, that’s between her and Playboy, and nobody else, and it’s stupid that I even have to waste time saying this.

But I didn’t really come here to talk about the rights and wrongs of booby-showing older moms. What I really wanted to rant about was the argument male talking head makes around the 40 second mark of the video. They put up a picture of the cover of Playboy, and he says something like “she looks great!” and “if you’ve got it, flaunt it!” They then put up a side-by-side comparison of her first Playboy cover alongside her most recent one, and Mr. talking head says something like “She still looks great!”

Taken at face value, there’s nothing really wrong with these statements. The problem, as I see it, is that she doesn’t really look like that. Those pictures, both of them, were photoshopped to hell. Don’t believe me? Here’s how I know:

1. She has no pores, in either picture. There isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t have pores.
2. She has no blemishes. No wrinkles, no spots, no lines, no skin folds, nothing. Again, there isn’t a human being alive who looks like that.
3. I can tell by the pixels, and having seen a few shops in my day.
4. It’s the cover photo of a fucking magazine.

In all honestly, the only evidence you really need is point number 4. All the others are supporting evidence, but point 4 is really the key. Take a look at any magazine rack, and you’ll see nothing but smiling, photoshopped faces staring back at you. Not just faces, but whole bodies as well. What you see on the cover of a magazine (any magazine, not just men’s magazines like Playboy) bears about as much resemblance to reality as a good pencil sketch does. So Mr. talking head using the argument “she looks great!” to defend anything is sort of like saying “This sphere is round!”  Well, fucking duh.

Even nearly “perfect” people get touched up. Check this out:

I mean, holy shit, right? Do you even see what they did? I mean, apart from de-poreing her skin? They removed two tiny shadows. Shadows that might have hinted at the fact that the woman has skin, and when she stands with her hips unnaturally cocked like that, her skin bunches up a bit around her hips.

Seriously. All you people out there lucky/hard working enough to have flat stomachs, go ahead and stand in front of a mirror, hike up your shirt a bit, and cock your hips like this lady is doing. Now fucking tell me you don’t see the same skin bunching going on. Unless you’re actually anorexic (in which case, eat a sammich please, and also seek help) I’m going to bet you fucking see them. You know why? Because you’re a fucking human and you have skin, and when you stand like that, it’s just about fucking impossible for it not to bunch just a bit in places.

Now check this out:

Without doing any research (and hey, I’m a blogger, not some kind of fucking scientist) I’m going to guess Madonna is at least ten years older than Jenny McCarthy. So think about this. In ten years or so, if Jenny McCarthy decides to pose for Playboy again, what do you think she’s going to look like? My guess is, she’s really going to look like that picture on the left, but when you open the magazine, what you’ll see will be more like the picture on the right. And some asshat talking head is going to crow about how great she looks, and how “gracefully” she’s aged.

It’s not just the skinny people they do this to. They even ‘shop the plus size models. WTF you say? Isn’t the point of “plus size” models to show, well, bigger women? Women who don’t look “perfect”, have bellies, cellulite, and require more than a postage stamp to cover themselves up?

Well, no, apparently.

Shit, does she even count as a “plus size model” any more?

So can we all fucking stop crowing about how great people look in heavily photoshopped pictures? Jesus jumped-up Christ on a pogo stick, you might as well claim George Washington was a sexy beast based on that one painting of him we’ve all seen. Or that Susan B. Anthony was a fox based on that dollar coin you got from the Post Office. They are about as close to reality as any picture in any magazine is. Jenny McCarthy may in fact be a hot older lady. But I damn sure can’t form an accurate opinion of that based on any of the photos of her I’ve ever seen, because every single one of them has been heavily edited.