Impossibly Beautiful

Who's That Girl? Edition: See if you can figure out who it is gracing this month's cover of Allure?


Lauren Conrad? Try again. Kate Hudson, maybe? Nope. Possibly Ali Larter? No, not her, either. Answer is below the fold…



It's Carrie Underwood! Looking absolutely nothing like herself—wheeeeeee!
In the center is the closest image I could find to the actual cover pose. It looked like it may have been a couple of years old, so I also included, on the right, a candid shot from April's Country Music Awards. Possibly, Underwood has had a chin implant IRL, but her mouth, nose, and browline look pretty much the same as the old picture—and none of them resemble the Allure cover photo. She's has a digital browlift, has been given a nosejob, and had her lips both plumped and magically reshaped.

Oh, and had all trace of character removed from her face.

Why to the why? Ya know, it's not exactly like Carrie Underwood is an ugly girl, by any definition. You know, I hate with a red hot passion when women are "thinned" or "youthified" for these covers, but at least I understand it. Despite the loathing, I get why it's done; I comprehend, even as I strenuously disagree, that thinness and youth are privileged, while anyone fat or old is considered axiomatically "ugly."

But Carrie Underwood is already the fooking pinnacle of the beauty standard—she's young, she's thin, she's white, she's blond, she's got a face that most people would consider empirically attractive. So the fact that even she has to be digitally altered until she's functionally unrecognizable just blows me right the fuck over.

And that's why this series is called Impossibly Beautiful. Because no matter how beautiful you are, you're never beautiful enough.

[H/T to Shaker Kate217. Impossibly Beautiful: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen.]