Welcome to Photoshop Land, Dudes

by Katie

Let’s say you’re a fairly attractive, incredibly successful indie rock band with a sophmore album to be released in the next two months. Let’s say that in 2007, you looked like this:

Adorable, right?

Now let’s say that Vanity Fair got ahold of you. What would you look like?

Hmmm, ok. Wait.

AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

For comparison, here’s what Ezra looks like, in real life:

He is adorable, ok?? But not in a “chiseled cheekbones and square jaw” kind of way.

It’s a testament to the dearth of retouched photos of men that I looked at this and thought, “What the shit? Ezra looks like a Ken doll, or possibly Jennifer Garner’s W cover.” There just isn’t a male equivalent for this kind of plasticizing, slenderizing, rhinoplastizing fuckery.

I, for one, would like to welcome the fellas to the wonderful world of aggressive airbrushing. Is this what equality looks like, y’all? We’re held to equally unattainable beauty standards? As the ancient Mayans used to say, “If you can’t beat them, make them feel think their talents are worthless if they are not also very, very conventionally good-looking. Our definition of ‘very, very conventionally good-looking’ is even narrower than you might think. It’s kind of freakish. PS the world is going to end in 2012.”

Folks, let me be clear: I will listen to your music even if you are not that attractive. If you are talented, I will probably still think you are attractive, and occasionally google photos of you, for blogging purposes, I swear. And if, for whatever reason, you’re photographed for Vanity Fair, I will definitely not believe that you are made entirely of latex and flannel.

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE, “White Sky” (of the unprecedented falsettos and from the forthcoming Contra) is now streaming on Vampire Weekend’s MySpace, along with “Cousins,” “Horchata,” and “Ottoman.” Also, I love all of these songs.