Have You No Shame, New Yorker?

In a lot of different profiles featured in The New Yorker, the writer often describes something about the subjects' physical appearance. The physical descriptions often do not have anything to do with the article -- they're not necessary other than creating a mental picture for the reader. I have come across several articles where the descriptions are not very flattering. In fact, I often find myself thinking, "Ouch! They probably didn't need to include that..." It also makes me think that I never want to be featured in a New Yorker profile (ha!) because lord knows what they'd say about me.

Here are some examples I've culled:

*McLaughlin is tall and large, but his head seems small for his frame, like a child's on a grown up's body.

*The Defense Minister was casually attired in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops. He coughed in a compulsive way, as if he had a nervous tic... He had a high-pitched giggle, which broke out at odd moments throughout the evening.

*At seventy-six, she has the flowing gray hair and cheery vigor of a cyclist in a Centrum Silver commercial.

*He's short and round-faced, smiles a lot, and displays two cute rabbit teeth as he tells you how ridiculous the health-care system is and how he plans to change it.

[These are all from the profile on Guillermo del Toro. The writer couldn't have mentioned del Toro's weight enough in the article...].
*I heard a heavy shuffling sound: del Toro, who at the time weighed more than three hundred pounds, was coming from a back room. (As Doug Jones observes, "Guillermo doesn't pick up his feet when he walks.")
Del Toro gave me a genial slap on the back, his hand like a bear paw."
*Del Toro wore black sweatpants, a black T-shirt, and an unzipped black hoodie, all of which had been laundered so many times that they had faded into clashing inky shades. He had large ice-blue eyes, round glasses, and the rubbery cheeks of a kindergartner. An unruly brown beard, touched with gray, grounded him in manhood. A film of perspiration on his forehead trapped strands of hair that were supposed to be combed to the side.
*We pulled into Ribs U.S.A., a frayed established on Olive Avenue. Del Toro ordered ribs and a lemonade, along with a redundant appetizer of "riblets." He told me that each of his notebooks was "an art project in itself"...I opened up his current notebook, which included sketches for "The Hobbit", while he put on a plastic bib bearing the inscription, "I <3 RIBS."
*At the restaurant, del Toro had trouble squeezing into the booth; he had gained weight in Wellington.
*Del Toro had transformed his own silhouette. He had lost twenty-seven pounds in three weeks, after undergoing sleeve-gastrectomy surgery. "They take three-quarters of your stomach out and throw it out!" he said. "I feel great." That day, he had eaten a light lunch with his daughter Mariana, and in an elevator they had played a family game: Guillermo aimed his belly and crushed her, gently, into a corner. In Spanish, she lamented, "This game won't be fun when you're no longer fat."
*Del Toro was pallid, and it did not look as if he had continued losing weight: he was still wearing black sweats. He went into the kitchen and rummaged through the freezer. "Want a popsicle?" he said, taking one for himself. His lips were soon stained red.

*Ibrahim, who is squat and round, with a flat nose, bulging eyes, and a shiny bronzed head...

*Denton is tall and rangy, and has a famously large head that sits precariously on a thin neck and narrow shoulders, leaving the impression of an evolved brain that is perhaps a little too conscious of its pedestrian context. He looks perpetually unshaven, with gray stubble complementing his close-cropped, receding hair, which he teases casually forward.

*Morse is a middle-aged man with gray hair who looks like the prototypical Beltway wonk: rumpled, self-effacing, mildly preppy and sensibly shoed.