It takes an extremely striking cover image to sell 250,000 copies. Freedman sees no ethical issue in changing the colours. The clothes Cameron Diaz was wearing probably weren't hers anyway. They would have been supplied for the shoot, and she'd have done hundreds of publicity poses. She knows she's part of an industry, and that we are putting an image that publicises her film in the hands of 800,000 readers.
Freedman does, however, draw the line at changing body shapes.
I've worked with an editor who shaved inches off Elle Macpherson's stomach to make a cover shot look better. Some editors take chins off Jennifer Aniston, or duplicate a model's right eye and turn it into a left eye because she was squinting. I have a problem with that. Clearly, cover colours are more important than this column had imagined. We remember years ago being told by Lisa Wilkinson, the smartest editor Cleo ever had, that the best-selling cover colours were white, blue and pink, while the worst were green, mustard and brown.