Tina Fey looks lovely as usual on the cover of the March issue of Vogue magazine, but fans of the "30 Rock" creator and former "SNL" head writer will notice one conspicuous difference from past Fey photo shoots: it seems the small scar on the left side of her mouth was airbrushed out of the cover photo.
The only thing notable about the scar's absence from the Vogue cover is that it has been present in the majority of Fey's past photo shoots (including a 2008 Vanity Fair cover) and, of course, on her weekly NBC show. To fans, it's never seemed that she was trying to hide it, and maybe that's one of the reasons they tend to relate to her more than they do the more "nipped and tucked" celebrities. In the Vogue article, Fey embraces her status as a "normal" celebrity, saying: "I feel like I represent normalcy in some way. People either represent youth, power, or sexuality. And then there's me, carrying normalcy...Me and Rachael Ray."
Anna Wintour, the famously image-focused Vogue editor (if Meryl Streep's Wintour-esque portrayal in "The Devil Wears Prada" is to be believed), disagrees with Fey's opinion of herself, saying in her editor's letter: "There is nothing ordinary about her brilliance, her perceptiveness, or her beauty."
Fey, who will also be seen in the upcoming movie "Date Night," has always declined to speak about the scar, telling Vanity Fair in her 2008 cover interview, "It's impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it." In that profile, Fey's husband, Jeff Richmond, explained the mystery once and for all by revealing that Fey's face was slashed by a stranger while she was playing in her front yard at age five. Fey's missing scar in closeup:
It's worth noting that subjects of magazine covers typically have little or no input on which cover is used or how the final photo is touched-up - a practice that has drawn the ire of celebrities in the past. Most famously, in 2003, Kate Winslet made a very public condemnation of British GQ's technological tinkerings of a picture that appeared on its cover.
Winslet decried GQ's digital alterations of her likeness, saying: "I do not look like that. And, more importantly, I don't desire to look like that."
We reached out to Vogue for comment, but as of publishing time they did not respond.
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