I know everybody is up in arms about Harper’s Bazaar putting a recylced pic of Angelina Jolie on its July cover — the turn to tacky tabloidism must be a big morale boost in the face of a 15% drop in newsstand sales — but I’m reserving my visual ire for the wasted opportunity that is Vanity Fair’s Johnny Depp cover and feature spread. It’s not often that we get to see the most talented and courageous actor of our generation — and my lifelong “21 Jump Street” crush — in the glossies. While VF’s treatment may be the product of a commissioned shoot, it has the cheap look and feel of pickup art. Now, I understand that Depp is nearly as difficult to style as Jolie, but that’s no excuse for giving us girls nothing gorgeous to gawk at. I mean, how hard could it be to get him to take his shirt off?

Talk about disappointing! When I saw Marie Claire’s cover line, “Exclusive Pics! Ashley Olsen’s Makeover,” I thought I was in for a picture of health — you know, as far as women’s magazines are concerned — that included glowy skin, brushed-through hair, a not-quite-emaciated figure and clothes that are pressed and clean. Alas, it’s a cover lie! Because, really, wouldn’t you demand your money back, as well as an embargo on any images, if someone did this to you?

Anybody else thinking “Star Trek” cutie Chris Pine has something of an inferiority complex about his endowment? In Cosmo’s reliably cringe-inducing “10 Things Guys Wish You Knew,” Pine devotes not one, but two items to encouraging women to pump up men’s penile Napoleon complexes with such ego-boosters as “I don’t know if I can hold that thing!” and “Baby, I don’t have three hands!” Here’s hoping for an Audrina Partridge tell-all once that little fling peters out.

If Eric Wilson’s photoshopping expose in today’s New York Times points to, without explicitly revealing, a major cause of all the fakery, it is this: Celebrity domination of fashion magazines. Because with celebrities come publicists and final cover approvals and, usually, a movie studio or music company with a vested interest in a certain perfect look for an upcoming project. The magazine, in other words, loses control to the celebrity’s image and we all know what image shapers do — make things boring by keeping provocation at bay. But with a model, control belongs to the magazine, because the value of a model lies largely in her ability to be a chameleon who is eager to experiment with whatever image a creative director is trying to project. So with the nation’s supposed thirst for authenticity, why not leave the celebrities to the tabloids who have become expert at depicting their “real lives” anyway? That way, fashion magazines, who are all struggling, can differentiate themselves — and make their jobs infinitely easier by cutting out the handlers — by getting back to their roots as true style arbiters, rather than stools for celebrities.

Anna Wintour’s frank preference for the malnourished body type is admirable, at least, for its unflinching honesty. And while even the magazine editors who are most outspoken about body-acceptance might not put their concurrence in the printed word — Cindi Leive of Glamour comes to mind — they most certainly do so in the printed image. So you’d think Anna’s protege, Amy Astley of Teen Vogue, would take the easy route and simply follow in Anna’s smooth-as-glass wake. But noooo. Astley, to her major discredit, instead uses the obesity epidemic, of all things, as pro-ana justification in her editor’s letter this month: “Outrage over the boniest of celebrities and mannequins seems to obfuscate the more urgent and widespread story about Americans and weight: Only about 1 percent of women in this country are anorexic, while obesity looms as perhaps our greatest national health crisis.” Oh, I see. It’s cool to promote Auschwitz arms — and make vulnerable teen girls feel like dog poop — because such a small number actually get full-blown ana. Never mind that a huge number suffers from body-image issues. Nor that 99 percent of the imagery out there celebrates trainer-toned bods that run on less than 1,000 calories per day. Nor the responsibility one carries with a young readership whose socioeconomic standing places it squarely in the jutting-collarbone worship zone. But Astley, who truly wields the kind of the influence that could zap the pernicious skinny scourge among teen girls, cares more about her readers as commodities than anything else. Because if she really believed models “would be even more beautiful with a few additional pounds on their bodies,” then she would never run this skimpy shot of Kate Bosworth in a bikini, except as a lesson in how not to look healthy. Alas, it’s about summer beach bodies.