Did 'Newsweek' Have to Show Palin's 'stache?

Pardon me for coming to this late -- I've been away at a conference for the past three days, with spotty wireless service, and only just returned to my packed in-box -- but I just got my first good look at Newsweek's cover, with its ultra-close-up, unretouched photo of Sarah Palin, and I have to say: Yeesh.

That's my first reaction. My second reaction to the cover -- which at full size is way more unflattering than it looks here -- is more complicated. Was it fair for Newsweek to show her like this? To me, the implicit message of the photo -- particularly in light of the critical cover essay by editor Jon Meacham -- seems obvious: Here's your beauty queen, your MILF, your 'hottest governor from the coldest state.' How do you like her now that you've seen her crows' feet, her clumpy mascara, her bloodshot eyes, her faint mustache, her cakey makeup, her gaping pores, etc? (Rachel Sklar says the cover is "fair and flattering"; I disagree. It's horrifying.)

On the other hand, should Newsweek have airbrushed her? That's easy: No. Fashion magazines can do that; news magazines have a responsibility to present images unaltered. That, in essence is Newsweek's position: "As a news magazine, it is not our policy to cosmetically retouch the photography we publish," says a spokeswoman in a statement.

But maybe they should airbrush flaws, at least if they're going to run them larger than life-size. After all, a brightly-lit blowup of a face is, in its own way, just as much an artifice as a Vaseline-on-the-lens glamor shot. How often do you gaze at someone you know, unblinking, from a few inches away?

And maybe it's sexist of me to be wondering about this in the first place? After all, when John McCain or Barack Obama appears in close-up, we don't expect their wrinkles or stray hairs to be digitally removed. (Granted, Jill Greenberg bragged that she left McCain's eyes and skin "looking bad," but those weren't her real offenses. Also, she's nuts.) Yet somehow this image seems loaded in a way no portrait of Obama or McCain ever has. (N.B. It reminds me a little of the color-adjusted New York Times Magazine photo of Mark Warner that drew a rebuke from the paper's public editor.)