She used to be just her—real, unfiltered, familiar. Now, she’s someone else entirely: a glossy face in a magazine, draped in beauty, dipped in fame. When I listen to Eraserheads’ Magasin, I don’t just hear a story of personal transformation—I feel like it’s peeling back the layers of what that transformation costs, and who ends up paying the price.
At first glance, it sounds like a man’s recollection of a woman he once knew intimately—someone now unrecognizable beneath the makeup, the styling, the glare of the spotlight. But as I’ve listened to the song over the years—from being a teenager who just found a song to jam to, to a woman in her 20s capable of looking beyond the surface and sensing more than what’s visible—there’s something deeper beneath the nostalgia. Magasin becomes a quiet but sharp cultural commentary—a mirror held up to how society packages women, sells them, and only applauds when they become what we want them to be.
In the world the song paints, women aren’t merely admired—they’re consumed. The song mourns the disappearance of the person it once knew, not just in how she looks, but in how she now exists in the world. She’s gone from a story to a spectacle. From a subject to a symbol. From a human being with interiority to an image manufactured for public consumption. Everything that once made her real—her flaws, her softness, her complexity—has been replaced by what’s deemed more “marketable.”
And I don’t think this is just about one woman. It feels like a reflection of how we treat women in real life—especially those who chase success in the public eye.
We see it every day: celebrities pressured to alter their bodies to meet impossible standards, carefully coached to present polished, curated versions of themselves. And perhaps most heartbreaking of all—especially for women like me—is that young girls are taught early on that worth is tied to beauty. These commercial ideals don’t just influence us—they colonize us. They teach women that success requires transformation, and transformation often demands erasure.
To be fair, not every change is bad. Some transformations grow out of necessity. But when a woman in this situation looks in the mirror and sees someone entirely different—not just in appearance, but in her thoughts, values, and morals—then we’re talking about something else entirely.
This phenomenon isn’t confined to the entertainment industry, though it’s especially visible there. The Philippine media landscape, like many others, offers countless examples of young talents being repackaged to suit mainstream appeal—whitening products, body modification rumors, persona overhauls. I’ve noticed stories of actresses entering the industry wide-eyed and raw—only to be renamed, retouched, and rebranded until they’re barely recognizable. But beyond aesthetics, there’s a quiet recalibration of behavior, language, even ambition. A girl-next-door only becomes a leading lady once she molds herself into something that sells. And if she resists? She’s seen as too real, too raw, too risky. Authenticity becomes a liability when the goal is to sell a perfect story.
That’s what Magasin captures so well—the ache of losing oneself in the pursuit of fame, the tension of it all. It doesn’t preach. It simply observes: a woman transformed beyond recognition, and a society complicit in both the demand and the applause. Much like countless women, the one in the song didn’t just “make it.” She vanished. And even someone who once knew her deeply can no longer find her beneath the glossy exterior of commercial perfection. And the song asks, without directly asking: Did we force this change? Did we applaud her for vanishing?
But maybe what gets me the most is how familiar this feels. Because at one point or another, I know I was complicit too. We all are. We reward the transformation. We praise the glow-up without ever asking what it cost. We idolize the image and ignore the person behind it.
Still, a question lingers long after the song ends: What if she was already enough—before the magazine covers?
That’s the brilliance of Magasin, at least for me. It doesn’t preach or moralize. It just observes. And in doing so, it makes me examine myself—my gaze, my expectations, my own obsession with perfection.
Because behind every cover girl, there’s a cover story. And that story? It almost never gets told. So now, whenever I flip through a magazine, scroll past a perfectly glamorous post, or catch myself admiring someone’s reinvention, I try to pause and ask: Is this admiration? Or commodification? Empowerment? Or just pressure to conform?
And maybe the hardest question of all: Do I still see her—or have we all just forgotten who she really was?
