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Ellen DeGeneres is now the new face of Cover Girl. What a slide, from Christie Brinkley all the way down to Ellen.
I wonder what they plan to do with Ellen? She hardly wears makeup and dresses like a tomboy despite her 50 years.
But more to the point, who will she posing for? Who will buy Cover Girl products by looking at ads of Ellen?
This is one of the strangest fashion contracts I've ever seen. It even beats Queen Latifah's presence at Cover Girl. But they did find a way around Queen Latifah. She endorses, and other models pose. Well, at least she has also developed her own cosmetic brand. What will Ellen do? Prepare jokes with mascaras and lip gloss for her talk show?
Ellen's talk show is extremely popular. Her audience is also 99% women. It could be that Cover Girl is using Ellen's popularity and have her purely as a mouthpiece to promote their goods, without putting on any of the products herself.
But I think things are more subtle than that.
There is the down-grading of appearance in ordinary women, the type that go to Ellen's shows: they are overweight, under groomed, and generally don't make the effort to make themselves look good.
It seems that ordinary women have given up on themselves. Is it the overworked woman phenomenon, where a job, a family to take care of, and one's femininity to maintain that is becoming too much?
Is that why Cover Girl chose Ellen, because they know that looks are not a major factor for the women that would be buying these products? Instead an issue might catch their attention. Why can't a lesbian talk show host, with a very popular show, do a cosmetics ad? Why not an overweight black woman become a cover girl? Everyone loves issues theses days.
So Ellen, Queen Latifah and Christie Brinkley are placed on the same level. Looks don't matter, and the model doesn't even have to wear the makeup.
Fortunately, Christie Brinkley doesn't think so. And Cover Girl even went along with it.
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at age 51, three years ago