Pretty: Beauty eds with cred (an oxymoron?)

I am slowly making my way through Mia Freedman's memoir, Mama Mia: A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines and Motherhood (out September 1), not because it's boring or I have the reading ability of a five-year-old (debatable) but because it's the sort of book you don't want to end – like the Lindt Ball of literature, it is to be savoured, not scoffed.

I felt the same way about India Knight's The Shops, one of my most beloved 'girlie reads' (not 'chick-lit' but 'girlie', as there is no female protagonist trying to find happiness; it's mostly just Knight waxing lyrical about her love of shopping), as well as Knight's newbie The Thrift Book, which would seem to contradict The Shops in purpose but doesn't. We girls are excellent at sharing information and when it's done in a creative, entertaining way, with pretty packaging, we eat it up.

Anyway, both Knight and Freedman delve into the role of the beauty editor in their respective books, providing some insight into one of the most important (but seemingly not) roles on a magazine. While ostensibly glamorous, it's a sucky sort of position, as if you have any inclinations towards being taken seriously, as a "proper journalist", you find yourself spending a lot of time and energy validating what you do (to wit: write about lip-gloss and peptides).

Which is silly and sad, because, frankly, girls like to read about lipgloss. And if there's no one prepared to do it, because it's not a lofty journalistic calling, how would we learn to decipher our Dior Addict from our Dior Kiss; our AHAs from UVAs? Getting your first Lancome Juicy Tube is like a right of passage. But is this because magazines have CREATED this right to wear $40 shiny-sticky lip stuff to suit Lancome's business interests? Or do we just REALLY LIKE expensive shiny-sticky lip stuff?

Knight warns her readers: "Please do bear in mind that editorial coverage of beauty products in your favourite glossy magazine is inextricably and fundamentally linked to advertising, that no glossies can survive without advertising, ergo that id X's new cosmetics line is an utter disaster, you're unlikely to read a trenchant critique of it in Lovely Me magazine. When I worked on a glossy, in the early 1990s, we'd shoot the cover girl and then simply invent whatever products the make-up artist was supposed to have used on her to match the brand name of the expensive ad on the back cover. So if Dior had spent thousands and thousands advertising on the back, we'd say the make-up used on Miss Supermodel was by Dior. We made it up... I used to wonder about the poor girl who'd saved up to buy the lipstick Christy Turlington was supposed to be wearing, and who'd ask herself why it looked so different on her."

Freedman leaps to the defence of her beauty editor comrades, intellectualising the role and giving credit to the magazine reader: "A smart beauty editor can lubricate the passage of advertising dollars from the client into the magazine. She understands both the implicit and explicit connections between advertising and editorial. She knows how to keep clients happy without compromising her editorial integrity. Well, no more than she has to, anyway. It's an open secret that big advertisers are looked after on the editorial pages of virtually every magazine in which their ads appear. There is so much competition for a limited pool of advertising dollars that ethical lines are often blurred. The basic equation is simple: we'll give you positive editorial mentions for as long as you give us advertising dollars... But it's not quite as simple as a cash-for-comment. Not always. If an advertiser pays tens of thousands of dollars to buy a dozen ad pages in your magazine, it will only be because their products are targeted directly to your readers' demographic. Chanel won't buy pages in Dolly, they'll advertise in Vogue. So it's not exactly a stretch for Vogue to write about Chanel lipstick."

Freedman goes on to suggest that a good beauty editor will find a way to present advertiser products in a fair and creative way: "Writing beauty copy is part science, part politics and part bullshit with a sprinkling of journalism on top. There is a language of beauty writing steeped heavily in cheesy cliche that's best avoided if you want to succeed."

I was a beauty editor once upon a time and it was really hard work, albeit with a lot of nice rewards. Prior to taking on the role, I'd also spent 12 months making remuneration sound interesting in a corporate PR role, as well as penning copy about Yu-Gi-Oh! and DragonballZ for a kids' magazine, so the prospect of waxing lyrical about the latest L'Oreal product didn't seem such a stretch. Easy peasy! But when you have to write about said L'Oreal products month after month, and find yourself caught in a monotonous cycle of hair/skin/perfume/body stories and attending launches for leg-wax when you'd rather be at home on the couch, it's hard to muster the enthusiasm to write chirpy copy about teeth whitening. Which is why beauty editors need all the inspiration and encouragement they can get – and a little respect*.

In Freedman's conclusion to her tenure as beauty editor of Cleo, she writes: "Like working in a chocolate factory, the perks soon lose their perkiness. There were only so many posh restaurants you could be wined and dined at. Only so many lipsticks and mascaras and mascaras and nail polishes you could wear. Or give to friends. Or stash in cupboards for future use. Only so many glasses of champagne you could sip while discussing the relative merits of free radicals as a skincare ingredient. It was a dream job in so many ways. But I had a different dream."

And, on that note, I'm off to get my hair cut and coloured with a stash of magazine references in my satchel!

See also, 'In Defence of Beauty Editors'.

* That said, I'm not a huge fan of some of the beauty writing suggesting that all our prayers will be answered with a tube of $400 face cream or jab of Botox!

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel