Check Out the Zombie on That Cover. Oh, Wait…
One of the fitness magazines I read, Men’s Fitness, recently featured tennis star Andy Roddick on their cover. But though Roddick is a fine physical specimen, he wasn’t quite fine enough for Men’s Fitness; they enhanced his image through visual trickery to make him look more buff. It was so blatant, some readers thought they’d actually photoshopped Roddick’s head onto someone else’s body. (They didn’t; it was just airbrushing or the digital equivalent.)I could get all outraged about it, but actually, instead I think that maybe SF should do the same thing. I could try to be vague, but since the demise of SF Chronicle, there’s really only one magazine I could be talking about–Locus. I’ve seen a number of recent covers (and interior shots) that are less than flattering to their subjects. There has been more than one that I’ve seen and thought, “Yeesh, he looks like a zombie in that picture.” I mean, I’m not asking anyone to make them look beautiful or anything, but, you know, can we make them not look like zombies?