July Editor's Letter: The Body, the Image, and the Icon
A July letter from 'The Wonder Mag' on beauty, bodies, pop icons, and the stories we project onto them.
On a warm, sun-lit Istanbul morning, I boarded the first ferry to the Princes’ Islands with Madonna’s Confessions II in my headphones.
The city was slowly pulling away, the dance music was like coffee to my slightly frantic, under-slept soul - always running toward the next deadline - and the sea was doing what it usually does - looking calmer than any of us passengers.
Following the music's rhythm, movement, and release, we were approaching the first of the islands, and the album did something I was not prepared for.
It made me cry.
The music is not exactly sad, even though you can feel Madonna reflecting on themes that run through all our lives, but one track in particular - Fragile, a song she recorded while grieving the loss of her brother - made me remember my late father. I had not expected that, on a ferry, at 7.30 in the morning.
And Fragile made me remember something I return to every time I write about pop icons - the public image is never the whole story. Sometimes the most glittering surface is the threshold to something much more private.
That is where July begins for The Wonder Mag.
This month, the month we often proudly show off our perfectly-sculpted bodies on the beaches, The Wonder Mag is looking at the body, the image, and the icon, as the ways people become visible to the world, and the ways they remain unknowable even when everyone thinks they are looking directly at them.
The question first appeared when I was writing about Kylie Minogue and what happens when someone is loved as an image before they are understood as a person, but then this same question continued following me in each topic I was exploring this month.
It followed me into my interview with Bulgarian supermodel Ivelina Choeva, who over the years has appeared on the cover of Vogue Ukraine, graced the pages of major fashion publications, and worked with high-end brands like Fendi. Now expecting her first child, we talked pregnancy, the transformation of the body, the rhythm, and the self.
It followed me into fashion, where Bulgarian designer Stoyan Dimitrov spoke about corsets, beauty, and the invisible structures that still discipline the body. His point - that the modern corset is not always tied with ribbons anymore, but is made of filters, algorithms, and comparison - has stayed with me since.
It followed me into the second episode of Sex and the City, which revolves around “modelizers” - men who do not simply desire beautiful women, but collect the labels “model” and “beauty” as proof of their own importance.
It followed me into Madonna’s Confessions II, where the body is not neutral, but a symbol of scandal, power, weapon, and confession.
It followed me into Jennifer Lopez, and the impossible discipline of becoming J.Lo.
It followed me into women in media, and how they are praised for their brilliance until that brilliance becomes too inconvenient, and how they are invited into the frame until they start taking up too much of it.
So July is not just about beauty, but what beauty does once it enters the world.
How it is used, how it is sold, how it sells, how it protects, how it turns into careers, power, inheritance. It is about bodies as homes and histories, icons as people whose images have been loved, misunderstood, and projected onto by the rest of us.
Even nostalgia belongs here - the childhood shows we return to when what we want to feel is home, safety, and the memory of playing in our grandparents’ apartment where the air carries the smell of your favorite cake only your grandmother knew how to make.
We keep returning to images because they hold feeling - old clips we still watch online, fictional women we quote as if they raised us, imaginary companions we now build through technology. We keep looking because part of us still believe the surface will lead somewhere deeper.
That is why The Wonder Mag exists under its new name and new home. June did not go exactly as planned, as there was a migration of articles worth carrying into this new home, and too many pieces were left waiting in drafts.
This is where July begins.
From the ferry, from The Wonder Mag Island Bureau, from the music that was supposed to make me dance, but made me cry, from the new name, and from the old questions that refuse to leave -
To who gets seen. Who gets reduced. Who gets desired. Who gets to change. To age. To speak. To own the story.
Welcome to the first month of The Wonder Mag in its new home.
This month, we look again.