page_title: Cover girl
section_title: Editorial approaches and the market-place
hierarchical_section_title: Cover girl / Editorial approaches and the market-place
caption_attribution_description: English: Brazilian top model Gisele Bündchen, on Fashion Rio Inverno 2006.
context_page_description: A cover girl is a woman whose photograph features on the front cover of a magazine. She may be a model, celebrity or entertainer. The term would generally not be used to describe a casual, once-off appearance by a person on the cover of a magazine.
  The term first appeared in English about 1899. A less-commonly used term for the other gender is cover boy.
context_section_description: Editorial decisions concerning the positioning of the magazine in the market-place are a key influence on the portrayal of women on the cover.
  In the 20th century, numerous women's magazines would feature royalty or aristocracy on their covers. In the 1980s and 1990s, Diana, Princess of Wales would be a popular cover choice—but usually for weeklies, usually shot by paparazzi, so strictly these were not "cover girl" images. However, there were exceptions where authorized portraits of royalty, such as Diana, Princess Beatrice of York and Elizabeth II, were taken for Vogue, Tatler and Harper's Bazaar. Despite public complaints about exploitation in the 1990s, publishers have not shied away from using royalty when possible.
  New men's style magazines founded in the 1980s, like Arena and Gentlemen's Quarterly rarely featured women on the cover, and where they did they were intended not to be sexually provocative, deliberately distancing the magazine from ‘top shelf’ soft core pornographic magazines. Notably Esquire’s first edition featured a photograph of Brigitte Bardot that was over thirty years old. However, this trend changed during the 1990s, initially with Loaded in the UK, followed by FHM. GQ’s UK edition was eventually forced to follow suit.
  Later Peter Howarth, UK editor of Esquire famously removed semi-naked women from the covers in a move to once again differentiate the magazine from the competition. The result was a drop in sales but an increase in advertising revenue, as the magazine was able to attract advertisers for more high-end products than before.
  The rise of celebrity culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s has seen to the appearance of more actresses on magazine covers, especially among fashion magazines. This may be due to a convergence in the mass media between traditional models and actresses: models gained a greater profile in the 1980s, largely through the "supermodels", and became celebrities in their own right. Actresses, meanwhile, saw appearances in fashion magazines as beneficial to their careers and overall profiles. In addition, numerous models made the move into acting. Finally, there is the issue of sales: a recognizable face will, theoretically, shift more magazines.
  The choice of model depends in some part on one's potential recognition in the market-place in which the title is sold. For example, Lucire Romania saw its sales and profile increase after using a local cover girl, Monica Gabor, rather than those photographed by the "master edition" in New Zealand.
  While familiarity is a desirable trait for magazine covers—hence the top models and celebrities can charge large amounts for a photographic shoot—there is always the problem of overexposure and dilution of one's image. If, for instance, the majority of covers featured a small handful of celebrities, then the differentiation becomes minimal (e.g. in certain months in 2005, Paris Hilton featured on numerous covers), and there would, in theory, be a tendency to promote lesser known faces.
  In the 2000s, some have predicted the demise of the actress or celebrity from fashion magazine covers, citing overexposure and growing cynicism. However, with the success of magazines such as InStyle, which uses celebrity covers, there is little evidence that the predictions are being realized in the middle of the decade.
caption: Supermodel Gisele Bündchen is one of the most famous faces usually seen featuring the fashion magazine covers.
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