In the celebrity world, there are three life events that absolutely warrant a magazine cover and spread: Babies (both pregnancy and newborn shots), coming out of the closet and losing a significant amount of weight.
Though some digital devotees have dismissed the print medium in today’s laptop/mobile/iPad age, the truth is that this tradition still lives and thrives quite well. It’s just that whereas before, the magazine cover was the be-all, end-all for the celebrity life event media campaign, now it’s just the starting point.
Case in point, Mariah Carey in all her pregnant naked glory posing on the cover of Life & Style. Demi Moore was perhaps the first and most memorable of celebrities to do the “Hey, I’m pregnant and naked in your grocery store aisle” thing when she teamed up with Annie Liebowitz to bare her fertilized bod for Vanity Fair back in 1991. Since then, it’s become nearly a rite of passage as many a celeb has followed Demi’s suit. So Mariah is in good company.
But Mariah isn’t interested in just sharing her pregnant flesh with the world through photography, she’s also taking to social media to keep her lambs (dedicated Mariah fans) updated with all the latest on the twin babies she’s expecting with husband Nick Cannon. She’s even turned them into a Twitter trending topic with the hashtag #dembabies. Yes, “dem babies.” Mariah’s become a lot more urban since her “Vision of Love” days, in case you didn’t know.
Mariah uses her Twitter account @MariahCarey to share her aches, pains and joys about pregnancy with fans and to share news and developments on the upcoming birth. Her fans, in turn, reassure and encourage her. It’s like having 4 million virtual doulas and Lamaze coaches. What’s not to love?
But considering the fact that Mariah has direct access to millions of her fans through her Twitter account, why did she still feel the need to photograph her pregnant belly and splash on the cover of a magazine? It’s because magazines are events.
The persistent allure of appearing on the cover of a magazine speaks to the lingering power of the print medium. It’s why some of us find stacks of magazines comforting. Or why the feel of holding a magazine or a book feels intimate. The permanence and tangible nature of the print medium makes the information included within its pages somehow feel personal and real in ways that digital media sometimes can’t quite replicate.
In a 2007 interview with BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone and US Weekly founder Jann Wenner spoke on the power of magazines. For Wenner, the emergence of the digital medium doesn’t mean magazines are disappearing, it just means magazines have to home in on what they do best and do it better.
“There are things that magazines do better than other mediums and you just have to do that and do it better than ever. There are so many media choices out there now in the world—Internet, other magazines, blah blah blah blah-that if you don’t do a really, really good job, if you’re just half-assed, why bother? The audience is just gonna wander away. If you do it really well, you hold onto the audience and you build real value.” SOURCE: Businessweek.com
With digital media, information is always subject to review. Blog posts can be pulled down, links can be broken and servers can be wiped out. But Mariah and her fans can frame that magazine cover of her in all her naked pregnant glory and look back on that fertile moment for life. It’s like a baby book shared with millions of people all over the world. Surely dem babies will appreciate that in the years to come.
