Ahh, the cover of a Cosmopolitan Magazine. Let me tell you a little story. For many of you, you have never known a world that did not have a box on top of your television, but back in the day there was a kind of cable that came through your television without any fancy digital boxes. The problem was though that the photo was scrambled, so you kind of had to play with dial and be prepared to watch your movies sideways. You were also never quite sure if you were looking at a naked breast or the sunlight. In that scrambled kind of world, everything kind of looked the same which is where a great imagination came into play. If you did not have a great imagination you could read your mother's Cosmo. You would have thought by now that Cosmo readers would have learned everything there is to know about reaching orgasm and finding the right way to please their guy and everything a man could possibly think. I think about food and booze and how miserable this diet is making me feel. If I did not live in the basement I might think about sex, but what woman in their right mind wants to come hang out on a futon in the basement of his parent's home.
Anyway, Dakota Fanning is on the cover of Cosmo. Granted, Dakota is actually a little older than Courtney Stodden, but Dakota is also not one step away from working a shift on the pole during the lunch hour. Do you think a 17 year old should be on the cover of a magazine that wants to make sure he has the best sex ever or wondering if your vagina is ok or teaching you a sex trick which is too naughty to say. I think it is kind of weird. Even if she was 18, I would think it is kind of weird because we have watched her since she was a kid. Wait a year or two after seeing her as an adult and it would probably be ok.
Well that's just great, if we can't trust Dakota Fanning to maintian a goody-goody image, than who can we trust. Oh, I forgot....she has publicist and lives in Hollywood. Never mind. I should have known better.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure she had any idea in advance what the cover copy would be.
ReplyDeleteShe's seventeen, not seven. She could very well be having sex right now -- and not only would that *not* be outlandish, but it's also really nobody's damned business.
ReplyDeleteAppearing on this rag is a rite of passage for most big actresses nowadays. It's not as if she stripped down for Maxim. And AS IF she had editorial control over the headlines accompanying her image. Please.
You've outdone yourself with the slutshaming in this post. Wow.
but that said ... it IS Cosmo.
ReplyDeleteand what is wrong with being on Cosmo? Im sure I wanted to be on Cosmo at 17
ReplyDeleteThat looks very weird, but yeah, she probably had no idea what text will be put next to her. Also isn't it some kind of achievement to be on the cover of Cosmo?
ReplyDeleteah yes. the day of scrambled porn. kids have it so easy these days.
ReplyDeletethe thing here is, cosmo is a racy magazine as far as sex stuff goes. i don't have as much of a problem as dakota being on the cover, because the cover girl articles are always pretty tame, as i do 17 year old girls reading cosmo. that's where the problem would come in. if grown women are reading the mag they know she's young, whatever whatever. if 17 year olds are reading the magazine to get sex tips, etc. then thats a different story.
I can't stand Cosmo's approach to sex. Screwing as an Olympic sport, rules for this, rules for that. I think that magazine's been responsible for a lot more bad sex than good sex. Everyone worries they're not living up to what the article instructed.
ReplyDelete@BN, I agree entirely. It's 17-year-old girls who buy into the Cosmo premise: do this, buy that, look like this and you'll have really good sex. It's selling inadequacy.
That's the reason I'd rather not see Dakota Fanning on the cover. I had no problem with her highly sexual Marc Jacobs/Juergen Teller shots - at least there was some (attempted) art in that.
Cosmo is just tacky, manipulative crap. It brings her down.
I like Dakota. She used to freak me out when she was a young kid: remember her interviews and how well spoken and poised she was? And at that time, her eyes looked VERY old.
ReplyDeleteBut all in all, I find her parents to have raised her well, as well as siblings. They're not dumb kids, they went to school, they're not stumbling out of bars drunk with Lindsay (yet?), and most importantly, they tend to separate career and personal life.
Also, I'm quite sure that younger models have graced the cover of that mag, or were pictured in one of them stories about how "bendy you should get to please your man" inside that same "young-adult sexual bible".
I used to love Cosmo back in the 80s, during the Helen Gurley Brown era. It was genuinely empowering (or at least it seemed to me). It wasn't all sex, sex, sex.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 16, I was reading Cosmo in my bedroom. It was 1981. My mother asked me what I reading, and I said, "Seventeen," knowing I wasn't supposed to read Cosmo, and turning the magazine upside down quickly. My mother said, "Since when does Seventeen have Seagram's ads on the back cover?" BUSTED.
Anyone else remember YM? That magazine WAS geared towards adolescent girls, and it was about a zillion times worse than Cosmo was, or will ever be. Every article dealt with how to starve yourself into bikini shape, be the most popular girl in school, and keep your boyfriend happy.
ReplyDeleteCosmo is terrible too, but at least it claims to aim for an adult readership.
I thought Enty put it in the article but no, Dakota is the youngest Cosmo cover girl. Selena Gomez will be one in the new few months but she's 19. Most other ladies were mid-late 20s or early 30s.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend that models and gets selected alot for the fashion spreads in Cosmo, which is the only place they use actual staged models. All the other pics that accompany the sex articles and stuff are just stock photos they license. The fashion models sometimes are young but usually they are at least early 20s. That's the whole reason people are making a big deal of Dakota doing this. Its NOT common for them to use someone so young.
@Elvira - I remember YM. I think i even had a subscription to it. My mom let me read that but she wouldn't let me go near Cosmo. She still thinks its trashy.
I wonder if part of Dakota's sex advice might be to sit on the floor with a big bottle of perfume tucked into your crotch?
ReplyDeleteBrooke Shields was on the cover of Cosmo when she was 16. But again, the magazine wasn't all SEX SEX SEX back then.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, Brooke was on the cover in February 1981, when she would have been 15. (I was born April 1965. She was born May 1965.)
ReplyDelete@Krab - Yes. I'm sorry. I was specifically referring to the past ten years or so since its become all about sex. Not back when it was still a respectable publication. Bridget Hall did it once too at 16 but again, still in the era where the mag was more about fashion and life than how give a blow job.
ReplyDelete@Krab - I remember Brooke Shields' earlier movies. She held those Lolita-esque roles.
ReplyDeleteAnyone remember Pretty Baby and Blue Lagoon?
Do you think today's society, more specifically North American, would let those movies be made in this day and age??
Highly doubt it. It is now considered material for child pornography.
Good! They were awful movies! Also caused a lot of controversy back in the day.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping the good thing about Dakota Fanning growing up was that people would stop OH MY GOD-ding over her ever publicity event. Goodness, people, it's a third-rate Hollywood personality doing a photo for a magazine that hasn't been read since 1993.
ReplyDelete"Brooke Shields was on the cover of Cosmo when she was 16. But again, the magazine wasn't all SEX SEX SEX back then.".........HA! Yes it was.
ReplyDeleteI had a subscription to YM, too! Looking back it was kind of bad, but not nearly as bad as Cosmo is now. I used to read Cosmo a lot back in the 80s, and liked it well enough. I hadn't picked one up in decades, but the other day I was in a very long grocery line and picked one up to look through the "Bedside Astrologer". I was shocked at how beat-you-over-the-head sexual the magazine had become. I'm no prude, but the magazine freaked me out. Not because of the sex, but because of how debasing of women it was. The whole magazine seemed to be devoted to telling women that they need to do anything and everything they can to please a man. Pleasing a man seems to be the be-all, end-all of each and every page of Cosmo. I have a huge problem with any self-respecting woman being on the cover of that woman-loathing rag, much less a female who is still technically a child. I can't believe what garbage Cosmo has turned into. I wouldn't put it on the bottom of a bird cage.
ReplyDelete@Elvira - I LOVED YM, I do remember thinking it was still total smut so I hid it from my mom.
ReplyDeleteI like who Dakota Fanning appears to be & she seems very mature. However she is only 17 and I don't want to see any 17 year old's face next to the words 'sex' and 'naughty' - it's creepy.
I also personally don't want to think about her sex life (or lack of) and would prefer to leave that up to her parents.
^I'm still waiting for the one about getting over your gag reflex.
ReplyDeleteThen I'd know we've hit rock bottom as a society.
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ReplyDeleteI love Dakota, and I agree that her parents have obviously done a good job raising her and Elle.
ReplyDeleteAnd in a PERFECT world, she'd be gracing the cover of Sassy this month. :-(
Alas, it's just not meant to be.
Dakota is at an awkward spot right now. She's not a little girl, but some will be uncomfortable with the idea of her adulthood, because we saw her grow up in movies.
ReplyDeleteTaking away the text, the cover is nice. Good photo, no excessive skin, nothing bad.
It is what it is. Dakota is a young woman working in Hollywood. Compared to others, she appears to be a good egg.
@RJ - excellent point.
ReplyDelete@Elvira & @Layna Day - agreed.
I loved sneaking Cosmo when I was a teen. I recall it was very much about sex then in the 80's too.
ReplyDeleteUhhh, did anyone watch the The Runaways? Her portrayal of Cherie Currie pretty much did away with the little Dakota Fanning.
ReplyDeleteI read Cosmo back in the late '60s, early '70s. It was pretty trashy back then also. I think they have a basic set of ideas they run through every 3-4 years to catch women in their late teens, early 20s, knowing they'll lose interest in their magazine as they get older.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the big deal. Cosmo has teenage models on their cover all the time. Dakota is hardly the first.
ReplyDeleteI stopped reading Cosmo in HS when I realized they did a lot of repetitive articles! It's pretty terrible. I'm guessing Dakota didn't get to choose the headlines on the cover though?
ReplyDelete"Um, Vagina are you Okay Down There?" is pretty hilarious, though.
Her little sister was on Ellen yesterday and she is adorable.
Uh, where does she teach you a sex trick?
ReplyDeleteI'm lost as to why this is bad.
The headlines werent written or have anything to do with her.
Someone please explain to a poor blond what is the big fuss.
The thing about Cosmo is that it is about sex, but it is so darn unsexy. There is just nothing appealing about sex the way they portray it.
ReplyDeleteBut I also dont see the big deal about having her on the cover. She is old enough to be there, I think.
Cosmo is so tawdry and lewd to me, I can't touch the thing. It's too embarrassing, post-high-school (loved it then, though).
ReplyDeleteI *loved* YM. It was so unapologetically trashy, which was rare back then (for the younger demographic, that is). YM taught me what "blue balls" means, ha.
ReplyDeleteshe'll be 18 next month, is enrolled in college, and has been earning an adult wage (respectfully!) for years. shes played a rape victim, traveled the world, given interviews w/ respected journalists. she's more of an adult than many actual adults. no issue with this magazine cover.
ReplyDeleteChrist, whenever anyone says anything against the over-sexualization of young girls (and all women) in our society, it gets labeled as "slut shaming." You can't win for losing.
ReplyDeleteCosmo is utter trash. Dakota should be way above it.
@Mooshki -- You must have glanced over the headline of this post.
ReplyDeleteEnty directly insinuated-- albeit in a joking way -- that Dakota embodies the wanton, wayward sexual expression that Cosmo espouses as gospel truth. That's ridiculous, and claiming that her presence on that cover is responsible for those headlines is ludicrous.
Personally, I think women deserve a magazine that delves into feminine eroticism, but we also deserve something a hell of a lot more intelligent than Cosmo.
I'd also be willing to bet that the majority of the models who appear in their spreads are only barely older than Dakota. The issue shouldn't be whether she's mature enough to be on that cover; it should be that she's way too classy and talented for Cosmo.
I remember reading Cosmo as a 17-18 year old and feeling terribly mature and sophisticated somehow, which amuses me greatly in retrospect...damn, I was SO naive & innocent! (It wasn't just all sex all the time, though; I distinctly remember an article describing how to mix prints properly if you were going to do the Annie Hall layers-of-clothes routine, which should give you an idea of how old I am. ;-) I also remember when YM was still Young Miss; it was a pocket-sized magazine, and I was reading that one from 11-13ish or so. Heck, I remember when Teen Magazine was being called "filth" by certain types of parents because, in addition to the usual celebrity gossip, media reviews, and how-to articles, it dared explain female anatomy and sex, so that their readers knew the biological facts and could use them to make their own wiser decisions--the basic truth-will-set-you-free attitude that plenty of old-school sex educators had back in the day. (Plenty of readers did write in thanking the magazine for its candid approach, describing how they were better able to navigate the perils of adolescence and end up far better off than their more ignorant peers, who had an alarming tendency to end up pregnant and miserable...in some ways, Teen in the early '70s was not unlike Sassy in the late '80s/early '90s.) And let's not forget the John Denver interview in Seventeen back in the early '70s where it came out that apparently his and Annie's wedding night was sufficiently, ahem, enthusiastic that the poor woman ended w/a cracked rib. ("I'll take 'TMI' for $500, Alex!" Gotta love the '70s, eh?)
ReplyDeleteI was a total Sassy girl as a tween, and still feel lucky we had that, even if Jane Pratt irritates, today.
ReplyDeleteSeventeen was my aspirational one, though.
I was a YM subscriber, and I don't remember it being trashy. I always thought it was the magazines for adult women that were trashy, and I still do.
ReplyDelete