On July 16, Jezebel.com revealed the winner of its un-retouched magazine cover contest: Redbook’s July’s cover of country music superstar, Faith Hill.

Over the course of last week, outrage over the magazine’s Photoshop efforts to improve on an exceptionally beautiful 39 year-old mother of three grew into a major media storm. This was fueled by:

1) Redbook’s hypocrisy. Redbook’s mission is to be the “total-life guide for every woman blazing her own path through adulthood and taking on new roles — wife, mom, homeowner — without letting go of the unique woman she’s worked so hard to become.” But Redbook has shown itself to be part of the general conspiracy to perpetuate a fantasy ideal of feminine beauty, which tells women that only unattainable, cookie-cutter fantasies are good enough, that not even Redbook values “unique.” If even Faith Hill doesn’t make the grade, what hope do the rest of us have?

2) The annotated sordid details of what exactly Redbook found was wrong with Faith Hill’s original photo.

There is a silver lining in all this: The incident has shown that we are not all jaded and blinded by the air-brushed images bombarding us every day, that some of us can still recognize and value genuine, natural beauty, and that it’s possible to challenge what Jezebel.com calls the “cover lie,”
of which all of our popular culture is guilty.

Congratulations, Jezebel, on a job well done!