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From Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” August:
There’s something about a mechanical pencil that makes us feel like an MIT graduate—even if we are just using it to apply eyeliner.
Also, successfully using an eyelash curler makes
them feel like they’ve graduated summa cum laude in mechanical engineering from
Caltech. Those contraptions are awfully
complex, you know.
Vogue normally brings us up close and personal to people with whom, given the choice, we’d rather not share the planet (William Norwich, for instance, though we acknowledge that his slice of Earth and ours are literally and figuratively quite removed). Happily, August’s issue of Vogue bucked the trend and introduced us to two people whose sensibilities are a bit closer to our own:
First, we were pleasantly surprised
(and our sentiments validated) by Dana Ridell’s letter in “Talking
Back: Letters from Readers”:
I feel compelled to ask why you insist on publishing the drivel turned out by the irritatingly pretentious Plum Sykes…It brings down the whole tone of Vogue.
We couldn’t agree more, Dana. Now can someone please write a letter about André Leon Talley?
After that small triumph, we were sure things would take a turn for the worse, especially when we arrived at the typically ludicrous “Norwich Notes.” But in this month’s edition, “Fashionably Late?,” actress Chloe Sevigny gained several points of our esteem with this bold statement:
“I pride myself on my punctuality,” Chloe said…“I don’t want to make people wait. That’s obnoxious.”
Her comments were in stark contrast to the other luminaries in the article—including Vera Wang (who was late for the White House!), Cynthia Rowley, Shalom Harlow, and Gemma Ward—who freely admit to compulsive tardiness, and we hope her comments were directed squarely at those blasé latecomers. Catty comments in the hallowed pages of Vogue? Delicious.
Also, we’re fervently hoping
punctuality will become cool.
Alas, our surprisingly pleasant trip through
the pages of Vogue screeched to a halt when we happened upon this silliness
uttered by jewelry designer Temple St. Clair:
…Sometimes my customers in their 40s and 50s will complain about how their hands look. I tell them, “Wear a big ring and nobody’s going to be looking at your hands!”
Unless Temple is advising her clients to wear their rings on a chain around their wrinkly necks like they wore their boyfriends’ class rings, a flashy bauble will almost certainly draw attention to their hands. That is the point, isn’t it?
Still, it’s better we came crashing back to earth so swiftly. This issue also contains an article canonizing the Olsen twins because—gasp! shock!—they don’t use a stylist to pick out their clothes, which, given their heavily layered looks of the past, is not at all surprising. We’re already certain we won’t enjoy that profile at all.
Do you feel compelled to share personal information with a national magazine? Please stop. Just cease blabbing the details of your life. Don’t fill in that online survey for a chance to win a $1,000 shopping spree.
You probably won’t win anyway.
We know your intentions are decent. We know you’re thinking someone out there can benefit from your foibles, so you fill out those forms in excrutiating detail. But then someone in New York decides that all those terrible things you’ve never even admitted to your best friend will make for fantastic copy, and we end up reading things like these stomach-turning bits of over-sharing in Self’s “Special Report: Sex and Love,” August:
Here are some of the other secret, ultra-personal names for sex you were willing to share with us:
“Doing laundry”
“Back rub”
“Boom boom”
“Doin’ the dirty”
“Hide the hot dog”
“Humping”
“Mailing a letter”
“Snuggies and pumpies”
“The beautiful”
“Getting connected”
“Doin’ the dirty”? “Hide the hot dog”? “Snuggies and pumpies”? Those are jokes, right? How can you even say that with a straight face—we couldn’t even type those phrases without an eye roll—let alone proposition a partner with such a phrase? “Hey, baby, do you want to play snuggies and pumpies tonight? Or would you prefer to hide the hot dog? Maybe you’d enjoy a rousing round of getting connected?”
Either Self’s respondents to this particular survey consisted largely of prank-playing college freshmen who submitted these answers as a form of fraternity initiation, or they were a bunch of completely serious adults who actually refer to their sexual activity by such ludicrous names and, even more galling, admit to it.
We’re not sure which is worse. We just ask you, the benevolent magazine reader, to pause before you fill out a magazine’s questionnaire. If your potential response to a personal question makes you cringe, then keep the answer to yourself. It’s better for all of us that way.
Our previous pleas to keep your private lives to yourselves (unless, of course, you’re famous, in which case we might want to know every salacious detail): Marie Claire Diaries Provide Little Insight, Lots of Dirt; Dauntless Glamour Reveals Secrets, Full Names
In W’s “Flying High,” July, Kate Bosworth makes it clear that she hates talking to journalists other than Clark Kent:
…Bosworth’s insecurities seem real, and she confides that they’re exacerbated by the interview process. “You’re being asked things and you’re wondering if you’re sounding somewhat eloquent or like a complete idiot…”
And then she makes a naïve attempt to stonewall reporter Marshall Heyman:
At one point she says she loves to be “passionate.” About what? “I knew you’d ask that, and all of a sudden I don’t know.” Later, I ask her where she goes from here, and she begins discussing her flight back to Los Angeles. When I tell her that’s obviously not what I’m asking, she says, “Well, it’s easier to answer that way.”
But didn’t anyone notice that she also detests being photographed? In every single photo in the spread, she appears to be desperately in need of Superman’s soothing presence. Here, we bring you a Glossed Over exclusive (and, we should note, a total fabrication): Kate Bosworth’s actual thoughts during her W photo shoot.
Oh, my sides! I told that stylist I’m bloated and that she shouldn’t fasten all the buttons, but did she listen? Nooo! Quick, someone bring me a stool—I’m so weak from pain I can’t stand any longer! Okay, now do I look sexy? Think about Orlando. Concentrate on Orlando.
This dress is so tight it’s preventing circulation in my arms. Maybe if I massage my left arm, I can save the limb before it shrivels up and falls off. Isn’t it burden enough that I’m the girl with the different-colored eyes? What kind of career would I have as the one-armed girl with different-colored eyes?
My head hurts from thinking about the completely overblown budget of Superman Returns. Didn’t anyone see the film? They obviously didn’t spend nearly enough of that cash on my wardrobe. Or on my hair. Especially my hair. Ooh, I hated being a brunette. Excedrin, please!
Stupid photographer telling me to arch my back. “More! Give me fierce, like Lois Lane tackling the biggest story to hit Metropolis in ages! Look mean, like Lex Luthor is trying to kidnap your super son Jason! Yeah!” Being an actress is sooooo hard sometimes. I hated that kid.
Implausible though it may be, the only explanation for this bizarre set of photos is that someone on the set had a sizeable stash of Kryptonite. At least Superman didn’t swoop in to rescue his beloved Lois Lane and therefore fall victim to the green remnants of his home planet—adding his awkwardly rippled burgundy cape and total lack of charisma to these pics may have been the only way to make them worse.
We expected changes at Marie Claire when Joanna Coles took over the magazine, but we didn’t expect that Coles would bring in a fourteen-year-old to write the headlines for the August cover:
Taunting titles like “Perfect Jeans: They’ll Make Your Ass Look Awesome” and “The Erotic New Trend (Everyone’s Trying It…)” remind us that we haven’t seen peer pressure so desperately applied since eighth grade.
From Elle’s “Dye Happy,” August:
“I used to be an intellectual. Now all I want to talk about is my hair,” [fashion stylist Ilaria] Urbinati says semiseriously, staring meaningfully at one shopper’s long, butter-color locks. “My friendships are divided between the people who still let me talk about hair and the people who don’t. I’m not even allowed to say the word hair in front of my boyfriend.”
It was in the news recently that hair dye might cause lymphoma, but has anyone checked to make sure that excessive use of the stuff doesn’t induce terminal vapidity? As soon as this woman finishes waxing rhapsodic about the strands of dead cells hanging from her head, she may want to check with a doctor about that.
Today marks the debut of a new feature here at Glossed Over: We Read It So You Don’t Have To. Self-explanatory, right?
The initial recipient of the
WRISYDHT treatment is “Hilarious ‘I Work at Cosmo’ Tales,” from August’s issue
of—yes—Cosmopolitan. As you
might have divined from the over-reaching title, the tales aren’t remotely
close to funny. To save you both the
trouble of reading the measly one-page piece and the subsequent brain cell death you’ll
experience, here’s what the article boils down to:
When staffers reveal to strangers that they work at Cosmo, their new acquaintances incorrectly assume:
or
Thrilling, we know.
Why was this less-than-insightful article even published in the magazine? Perhaps an actual article—and by “actual,” we mean one that doesn’t focus solely on Cosmo staffers—was canceled, and this was the quickest and cheapest way to fill page 185. Twenty-four hours before the issue heads to the printers? Quick, send out an email to everyone in the office!
It’s not like most readers have any actual experience working at Cosmo and can therefore identify with—or refute—the oh-so-wacky stories recounted. We’re fairly certain the staff doesn’t make editorial decisions in their underwear (if they did, we’d expect the team at Cosmo to be the stars of their own reality show), but it’s still self-important bad form to publish inside jokes and expect the rest of us to be amused. Next time Cosmo promises hilarity, they ought to write about something other than themselves.
Glamour, please tell us
you’re joking. In the August edition—which is the “man issue,” because, you know, the poor guys are
practically ignored in every other issue—writer Tiffany Blackstone decides to
turn the tables on the gratuitous objectification of women by presenting some
unapologetic objectification of men.
Fast-forward to the butt!
Why sit through an entire movie when Glamour can tell you when the gratuitous male nudity starts? Here, a DVD guide to the good parts.
Either Glamour thinks their readership consists solely of shrill adolescents—“Like, ohmigod, it’s Jake Gyllenhaal’s tush! Eeee!”—or they’re just taken a giant step in the wrong direction. We like ogling attractive men as much as the next girl, but we have no illusions that doing so is necessarily empowering. If we women don’t appreciate being judged solely on our appearance, why would it be acceptable to subject men to the same sort of brutish behavior?
Which isn’t to say we don’t enjoy seeing naked men on the big screen. We’re all for a more equitable distribution of nudity in films—hey, if women are taking it off, shouldn’t guys have to shed their clothes once in a while?—but we’re at least patient enough to sit through the entire movie. There’s a lot more to The Full Monty than six guys stripping.
From Allure’s “Private Eye,” July, here’s what Sarah Jessica Parker told reporter Jeffrey Slonim about her look:
I feel a little bit like I’m stuck in the ‘80s. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
The ‘80s, huh? That would be the decade before SJP was a trendsetting, Manolo-wearing fashion plate. Remember?
Photographic evidence like that is floating around the internet, and she’s questioning whether being stuck in the 1980s is a good thing. Quickly, we need to stage an intervention before she shows up in legwarmers at—well, any event, really. Are those things ever appropriate?
Anyway, the verdict is in, Ms. Parker: The ‘80s were not, in any way, a flattering decade for you. We suggest running as fast as your stilettos allow until your fashion sense collides with 1991 and L.A. Story. And don’t be intimidated by the specter of Carrie Bradshaw. We’re going to take this one step at a time.
More appreciation for “Private Eye”: They All Left Their Publicists in the Car, Too
In what’s becoming a tradition around here, we now present a selection from Lucky’s “Editor’s Letter,” July—ironically titled “Summer with Dignity”—wherein Kim France tells us more about herself than we ever wanted to know. Are you sensing a pattern?
“You need a dress in which all you can feel between the fabric and your skin is air, that on nights when you can’t be bothered to change can double as a nightgown.”
There you have it: the editor-in-chief of a national magazine just admitted that she doesn’t wear any kind of undergarments. How else could you feel nothing but air between the dress and your skin? Normally, this wouldn’t interest us, except that the Calypso Christiane Celle dress featured as meeting these criteria is white. As in see-through. As in choosing to wear the gown without the proper underpinnings could make quite a statement.
(We briefly considered that Kim’s implied suggestion to wear a sheer dress without underwear was supposed to be fashion advice. It is, after all, the ultimate way to avoid unsightly panty lines and bra bulges. But we digress. And perhaps we take things too literally.)
Then there’s the revelation that
she sometimes wears her street clothes to bed. What, is she trying to save a few quarters on laundry? It’s not a big deal, really, except that it (like her divorce) never needed to be announced to the world via a page in her magazine. If you’re
the editor of a fashion magazine, don’t you need to carefully craft your
image? Wouldn’t you want to follow Anna
Wintour’s lead and maintain a mysterious public persona? And perhaps most importantly—to us, anyway—wouldn’t
you want the world to believe you had an entire bureau full of designer sleepwear?
Or, failing all that, wouldn’t you at least want your readers to believe that you’re not frantically seeking attention by treading perilously close to TMI territory every single time you pen a few paragraphs for your magazine?
Yeah, that’s what we thought.
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